The election monitoring NGO Gong said on Monday it is opposed to the latest referendum initiatives, adding that Croatia's political elites need to regulate legislation on election and referendums.

Gong said in a press release that they disagree with the initiative to repeal the ratification of the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, which was ratified by Parliament in April amid much criticism from conservative and right-wing groups. A petition to collect signatures to request a referendum on the issue was launched on Sunday.

Gong said they believe that the ratification was a first step forward in the protection of human rights in Croatia in a long time, and that its repeal would represent a step backwards in terms of respect for human rights and equality, something which they will not and cannot support.

The group also commented on another initiative supported by conservative and right-wing groups, aimed at changing election legislation. Gong said they opposed this initiative as well, because one of the proposed referendum questions is aimed at restricting voting rights of MPs elected to represent ethnic minorities. That would be contrary to the principle of parliamentarianism, which demands equal status and rights for all MPs, Gong said.

“Without denying the importance and relevance of the need to regulate and democratise the election system and political parties, we believe that the content of the proposed referendum question aimed at reducing the constitutionally defined number of MPs, reducing the number of MPs representing ethnic minorities, introducing three preferential votes without thresholds, changing the borders of constituencies, reducing the election threshold for some election slates from 5 to 4 percent, and introducing postal and electronic voting, should not be regulated by the Constitution, but by a comprehensive election law,” Gong said.

A coherent and consistent regulation of election legislation should be put up for expert and public consultation as urgently as possible, so that Croatia can finally have a single election law allowing an effective and fair balance of representative and direct forms of democracy, Gong added.

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