President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic said she supports the holding of a referendum advocated by conservative campaigners who want to change the country’s electoral law and restrict ethnic minority MPs’ voting rights.
Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic has said that “the will of the people must be respected” after a conservative campaign group called The People Decide gathered more than 370,000 signatures, equal to 10 per cent of the total electorate – enough to have its referendum proposal considered by officials.
Grabar Kitarovic said on Saturday that the signatures were a “demonstration of a desire for changes”.
The campaigners want the number of MPs to be cut from 150 to 120, for an increase in voters’ options to choose specific candidates from party lists at elections, and for a restriction on minority MPs’ voting rights.
On Thursday, The People Decide announced it had collected more than 370,000 signatures, which it will submit to the Croatian parliament in few days.
After this, the Constitutional Court has 30 days to decide whether the questions in the proposed referendum are in line with the Croatian constitution.
Grabar Kitarovic also confirmed on Sunday that before the campaign to collect signatures for a referendum began, she met Zeljka Markic, head of the ultraconservative initiative In the Name of the Family campaign group, which is closely tied to organisers of The People Decide initiative.
The Croatian president told reporters that she wanted to hear from Markic about the campaign’s goals and intentions, and insisted that it was not a secret meeting.
“We didn’t publish it simply because I didn’t want to interfere in the process of collecting signatures and I think it is a decision that is ultimately fair and correct,” Grabar Kitarovic said.
However, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic has said that the referendum questions are irresponsible.
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