ZAGREB, 9 Feb 2022 - The strongest opposition Social Democratic Party and We Can!, which ran separately in last year's local elections in Zagreb, are no longer hiding that they are coming closer at national level, Večernji List daily said on Wednesday.

Although the next regular parliamentary election is two years away, both parties are saying off the record that they will not run independently because nobody can form a government alone, and only together can they be a strong alternative against the ruling HDZ.

The only dilemma at the moment, top SDP officials say, is whether it is better to run in one bloc, all centre-left parties together, or in two, one comprising the SDP and We Can!, and the other with Centre, GLAS, Focus and similar parties.

The SDP and We Can! say they are satisfied with their cooperation in parliament, and that their ruling coalition in Zagreb will be an essential factor for a possible joint success at the national level.

"The SDP-We Can! coalition is the first step without which there is no chance at all of defeating the HDZ in the next election. If it's done soon enough, like (the then SDP leader) Ivica Račan did in 1998 with Dražen Budiša and the HSLS, which means offering a clear platform and people, it's a really good alternative which can look for voters' confidence in the election," an eminent SDP member was quoted as saying.

The fact that you have coalition potential and that there is a wish before the election to change things points to an honest approach which will certainly bring results, he adds.

Večernji List's We Can! sources think the same. They say the constant attacks on the HDZ over its scandals is counterproductive in attracting attention, and that in the months ahead the SDP and We Can! must solely present their policies to citizens, showing that they have both a platform and a vision, and are capable of solving problems.

The latest public opinion polls speak in favour of the SDP-We Can! cooperation, showing that together, they have higher support than the HDZ, the newspaper said, adding that the next most popular party, Bridge, has not clearly said whether it will run in the election together with the SDP and We Can!, but "swears" it will not go with the HDZ a third time.

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ZAGREB, 8 Feb 2022 - Istria County prefect and former Pula mayor Boris Miletić on Tuesday dismissed "all the unfounded accusations and ill-intentioned insinuations" made by Social Democratic Party county councillor Danijel Ferić, who said he had pressed charges against Miletić.

Speaking for HINA, Miletić said this was not the first time Ferić was using criminal complaints "solely as a tool for political promotion."

He said Ferić's MO was "to press charges, call a press conference and then, making bombastic statements and announcements to exert pressure on the Croatian judiciary, because he knows very well that when the charges are dismissed as unfounded and false, he will not carry any responsibility."

Miletić said Ferić, like every individual, was personally responsible for every publicly uttered untruth "which the court will easily establish."

Ferić told the press earlier today he had filed criminal complaints on behalf of the SDP against Miletić and his closest associates when he was the mayor of Pula on suspicion of financial wrongdoing.

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ZAGREB, 8 Feb 2022 - Social Democratic Party leader Peđa Grbin on Tuesday presented a proposal designed to help alleviate the impact of growing inflation on pensioners in the form of a pension allowance bonus for allowances amounting to less than HRK 4,000, proposing also adjustment of pensions to wage and inflation growth.

"Croatian pensions are low and at a time of growing inflation they become even lower, which requires action. The government is late with responding, it first capped fuel prices for two months, which was insufficient, and now it has to cap them again at a higher amount," the SDP leader told a news conference.

Long and short-term measures for pensioners

Other countries introduced measures to alleviate the inflationary effects of euro adoption a year before adopting the euro, while in Croatia a bill on euro adoption is still under public consultation, Grbin said.

"We cannot expect its entry into force before April, and neither can we expect before that date measures that should cushion the inflationary blow to citizens," he said, proposing two measures to help pensioners.

One is a long-term measure envisaging a change of the model of adjusting pensions to wage and inflation growth, and the other is a short-term measure in the form of an inflation bonus.

SDP MP Branko Grčić said the current adjustment of pensions did not follow wage growth. Five years ago, when the incumbent government took over, the average pension accounted for around 40% of the average wage while now it accounts for less than 37%, he said.

Grčić said that if inflation growth was higher than the growth of wages, pensions should be adjusted 100% to the inflation rate, and if the wage growth was higher, pensions should be adjusted to the wage growth rate.

Average pension could drop below 30% of average wage

Had this model been used over the past five years, the average pension, which now amounts to HRK 2,645, would have been HRK 200 higher, Grčić said, warning that if the current model of pension indexation was not changed, the average pension would fall below 30% of the average wage in the next 10-15 years.

SDP MP Boris Lalovac believes that the parliament can introduce the inflation bonus already this month so that pensioners can receive it in April.

"The government has said it will give a HRK 200 bonus only to pensioners with guaranteed minimum allowances, and there are around 60,000 such pensioners. We believe that the scheme should be expanded... to cover around 850,000 pensioners whose pension allowance is below HRK 4,000, which would cost up to HRK 700 million," said Lalovac.

The SDP proposes that pensioners whose allowance is below HRK 1,500 should receive a one-off bonus in the amount of HRK 1,200, those whose pension amounts to HRK 1,500-2,000 should get a HRK 1,000 bonus, those with pensions ranging from HRK 2,000 to 3,000 should receive a HRK 600 bonus, and those with pensions ranging from HRK 3,000 to 4,000 a bonus of HRK 400.

Lalovac said that the state budget was the biggest winner at a time of inflation growth, which was why there should be no problems in securing funds for the inflation bonus for pensioners.

Everything supposed to be creative turns into corruption in Croatia

Grbin also commented on a scandal involving the falsification of the motif on the national side of the €1 coin, saying that "everything that is supposed to be creative turns into corruption in Croatia."

If the process of selecting the best designs for the national sides of euro coins had been conducted by professionals, if the profession had been consulted, this whole affair would not have happened, Grbin said, adding that not only the central bank but the government, too, was responsible, as it was quite late with the process of euro introduction.

Grbin believes the call for applications for the design of the national sides of euro coins should be repeated despite the lack of time.

ZAGREB, 7 Dec, 2021 - Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomašević said on Tuesday that an amendment put forward by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to the city budget proposal for 2022 would be accepted to increase kindergarten capacity in the capital city amid plans to phase out allowances for stay-at-home parents.

The SDP is a junior partner in the city assembly to Tomašević's We Can! party.

"We plan an amount of HRK 52 million, which is twice as much money as the average in the past five years. An additional HRK 15 million will be set aside to rent facilities to serve as temporary kindergartens," he said.

The mayor said that an amendment regarding the stay-at-home parent scheme, put forward by the opposition HDZ party, would not be accepted.

"They asked that we take around HRK 200 million in subsidies from the ZET (city public transport company) to compensate for the decrease in allowances for stay-at-home parents. That would make ZET a lossmaker and prevent it from applying for EU funds," he explained.

Tomašević said that the opposition Bridge party was late with submitting an amendment regarding teaching assistants, which was why it could not be accepted but added that an even higher increase in the hourly wage for those assistants would be accepted, to make it amount to HRK 30. The mayor said he hoped next year money for that purpose would be obtained from EU funds.

The city administration will propose the City Assembly a budget in the amount of HRK 15.12 billion, which is 1.1 billion more than the revised budget for 2021.

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ZAGREB, 4 Dec, 2021 - Viktor Gotovac was elected leader of the Zagreb branch of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) on Saturday after winning 696 votes in the second round of the internal party election on Saturday, while his rival Matej Mišić received 325 votes.

Of the 1,700 members of the party's Zagreb branch entitled to vote, 1,031 cast their ballot.

Speaking after the announcement of the election results, Gotovac thanked everyone for taking part in the election process and "showing that the SDP is important to them because they want it to be better, have new people and work honestly."

He called on SDP members, sympathisers and voters, as well as other people, to stand by them and help them become better. He said that the SDP should fight for social and existential values, municipal issues, as well as for ideas and ideology.

"We have to fight to get back Marshal Tito Square, to ensure that Aleksandra Zec gets a street or square in Zagreb. We have to fight to take power and nothing will stop us. The SDP is going forward," Gotovac said.

Aleksandra Zec was a 12-year-old girl executed together with her parents, Marija and Mihajlo, by Croatian police reservists under Tomislav Merčep in Zagreb in December 1991 during the war. The Zec family were ethnic Serbs.

Mišić congratulated Gotovac on being elected, saying that as of today the SDP continued working together.

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ZAGREB, 28 Nov, 2021 - The first round of intraparty elections in the opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP) was held on Saturday, and the leader of the SDP Zagreb branch will be known next Saturday, with the two main contenders being Viktor Gotovac and Matej Mišić.

SDP members on Saturday elected presidents, vice presidents and members of party presidencies at the municipal and county levels.

The second round of intraparty elections for the Zagreb SDP branch will be held next Saturday, when SDP members will choose between Gotovac and Mišić.

Gotovac, a labour law professor at the Zagreb Law School, won 524 votes and Mišić 261.

In the first round of party elections the leaders of SDP town branches were elected, with Rijeka Mayor Marko Filipović having been elected the new president of the SDP branch in Rijeka, while the SDP branch in Osijek elected Milan Blagojević its leader and the branch in Split Damir Barbir.

Ostojić, Hajdaš Dončić re-elected leaders of SDP county branches

In the first round of party elections, Ranko Ostojić was re-elected leader of the SDP branch in Split-Dalmatia County while Siniša Hajdaš Dončić was re-elected president of the SDP branch in Krapina-Zagorje County.

Also re-elected to their posts were Mihael Zmajlović as head of the SDP branch in Zagreb County, Barbara Antolić Vupora as head of the party branch in Varaždin County, Umag Mayor Vili Bassanese as head of the Istria County SDP banch, Mitar Obradović as head of the SDP branch in Požega-Slavonia County and Kristina Ikić Baniček as head of the SDP branch in Sisak-Moslavina County.

The newly elected heads of SDP branches in other counties are Ivica Lukanović in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Jure Zubčić in Zadar County, Ploče Mayor Mišo Krstičević in Dubrovnik-Neretva County, Krešimir Čulinović in Lika-Senj County, Mario Vučinić in Brod-Posavina County, Sanja Bježančević in Osijek-Baranja County, Goran Heffer in Vukovar-Srijem County, Tomislav Golubić in Koprivnica-Križevci County and Dalibor Domitrović in Karlovac County.

SDP members will choose between Karlo Klarin and Ivan Rajić for head of the SDP branch in Šibenik-Knin County in the second round next Saturday.

Elections for the SDP branch in Međimurje County were postponed due to a repeat of local elections in that county on 28 November, as were intraparty elections in Bjelovar-Bilogora County.

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ZAGREB, 30 Oct, 2021 - Former Social Democrat minister of the interior Ranko Ostojić was to have been appointed Ambassador to Qatar, Social Democrat Mihael Zmajlović was to have been appointed Ambassador to Montenegro and university professor and former ambassador to France Ivo Goldstein Ambassador to Greece.

Those were nominations that came from the office of President Zoran Milanović, who co-creates foreign policy with the government, but they were flatly rejected by the government, the Večernji List daily of Saturday says.

The Foreign Ministry said it considered the nominations to be partisan and an attempt to secure meal tickets for former party colleagues Ostojić and Zmajlović, who were not re-elected to the parliament while Zmajlović also lost the elections for Zagreb County head.

The ministry also considers that all candidates, notably Goldstein, are politically very active on the left.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, too, has expressed disagreement with Milanović's nominations. Without specifying who he was referring to, he said on Friday that the president was nominating failed Social Democrat county heads who had nothing to do with embassies and diplomacy.

Milanović said on Friday that the issue of ambassadorial nominations was being dealt with by his chief of staff Orsat Miljenić.

The president's other nominations were Nacional weekly reporter Dragan Đurić for Consul-General to Tuzla and Maja Čavlović, but those nominations did not cause controversy in the government.

On the other hand, the ministry proposed appointing diplomat and PM Plenković's advisor Vladimir Drobnjak as Ambassador to the United States, Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) MP Davor Ivo Stier Ambassador to the Vatican, and HDZ member Miro Kovač, who served as foreign minister in the Tihomir Orešković government in 2016, Ambassador to France.

The appointment of new ambassadors, which under the constitution the government and the president have to agree on, reached a deadlock just after New Year, when President Milanović said he would block the regular rotation as he wanted to be a barrier and prevent the HDZ "from taking everything it can," the daily said.

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ZAGREB, 2 Oct, 2021 - The Social Democratic Party's Main Committee decided on Saturday that the four MPs ousted from the SDP could no longer be members of its parliamentary group and that this would also apply to all members of representative bodies at all levels who did not implement decisions of the party's bodies.

Main Committee chair Marija Lugarić told the press that 58 members voted for the decision, eight were against and five abstained.

She would not say what would happen to the MPs who voted against the ousting of Nikša Vukas, Zvane Brumnić, Rajko Ostojić and Marina Opačak Bilić from the parliamentary group at a group meeting expected on Wednesday nor if they too would be ousted from the party.

Besides those four, another 14 SDP MPs signed a document against ousting the four from the parliamentary group, which means that SDP leader Peđa Grbin has 18 of the party's 32 MPs against him.

Grbin: SDP's leadership and policy can be only one

He said the majority by which the Main Committee decision was adopted "shows that there are no doubts in the SDP as to the direction the party should take. That also shows that the SDP leadership is not divided and that the SDP's leadership and policy can be only one."

Grbin said he could not predict what would happen at the parliamentary group meeting, but that everyone would decide for themselves if they wanted to be part of the team or not.

Asked if he would see a possible rift within the parliamentary group as his political defeat, Grbin said he would be very sorry if any SDP member were to decide not to be part of the team any longer.

He said the MPs "who decide not to implement the Main Committee's decision will be saying that they don't want to be part of the team called the SDP." 

Grbin said Vukas, Brumnić, Ostojić and Opačak Bilić were ousted from the SDP because "we were faced with serious manipulation not befitting a serious political party."

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ZAGREB, 19 Sept, 2021 - Social Democratic Party president Peđa Grbin said on Saturday he was ready for radical measures against the caucus members who would be for the four ousted members staying in the caucus, adding that he would do his best to prevent a split within the party and that it was now up to the caucus.

The SDP parliamentary group has 32 members, of whom 18 demand that Grbin convene a caucus meeting to vote on the ousting of four caucus members - Rajko Ostojić, Zvane Brumnić, Nikša Vukas and Gordan Maras - who have been expelled from the party.

Speaking on Croatian Television, Grbin said the question was whether there was will in the caucus to resolve the situation through dialogue or continue the conflict.

He said it was now up to the parliamentary group to decide whether "the party will continue to deal with itself or start dealing with what citizens elected us for, which is to care for their interests and standard."

Asked if he was prepared to possibly have 12 or 14 MPs, Grbin said his goal was a strong SDP that was willing to stand up for people's interests.

He said there were many problems in Croatia and called the ruling HDZ "a clientelist organisation and a party which has done Croatia too much evil."

Grbin said if the situation in the SDP could not be solved through dialogue, he was prepared to take radical action, although he would rather not have to. He added that the situation was untenable and might become even more difficult if it was not solved shortly.

COVID certificates necessary because of negligence

Commenting on a protest against COVID rules held in Zagreb earlier in the day under the name Freedom Festival, Grbin said it was a festival of irresponsibility.

As for making COVID certificates a requirement in health and social care, he said Croatia's vaccination rate was the same as in India, Guyana and Colombia, and not as in Scandinavia as he would like.

Grbin said the certificates needed to be introduced "considering the inaction, negligence and poor government work," adding that "it's an indicator of failure and inaction."

He said the government should have but failed to assure people that nothing happened from vaccination, other than being safer.

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ZAGREB, 11 Sept, 2021 - Social Democratic Party president Peđa Grbin said on Saturday he felt stupid because of SDP member Stjepan Kovač, who made up threats over which Grbin comforted him, but would not talk about his future in the party until he talked to him.

Grbin was responding to reporters who asked if Kovač would be punished by the party or even ousted after being arrested yesterday on suspicion of having staged death threats.

Grbin said he expected to have an answer in five to six days, adding that anyone who committed a crime must be held to account, regardless of which party they were from.

Asked if he felt deceived because he comforted a teary-eyed Kovač in front of the cameras over threats which Kovač allegedly made up, Grbin said he would do it again if a colleague told him that they were being threatened and if the police took the threats seriously enough to give them protection.

"A threat in politics is not allowed because it's not just a threat against a person, but is also a threat against the rule of law."

He said that if the charges against Kovač proved to be true, the colleagues who had been threatened for real would be brought in a "very unfavourable position because tomorrow everyone will question if the threat is real... making their life and work difficult."

Grbin said if Kovač was indeed guilty, "that's totally inappropriate." He added that he did not feel deceived. "But stupid? Certainly."

Reporters also asked him about Matija Posavec, who resigned as Međimurje County head today after admitting to bribe-taking. Posavec won a seat in parliament on the SDP slate and could now activate his term.

Grbin said a corrupt person who admitted to bribe-taking had no place in politics, including in the SDP and its parliamentary group.

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