The civil initiative proposing changes to the national election law published on Thursday the number of signatures collected in the petition for a referendum to change the law.

“We are celebrating a festival of democracy,” said the initiative’s representative Zvonimir Troskot.

The initiative collected signatures from May 13 to May 27. They needed to collect signatures from some 380,000 people, or 10 percent of the electorate.

The first question, on increasing preferential voting on party slates from one to three votes, enabling voters to vote electronically or by mail, and decreasing the number of MPs from the existing 150 to a maximum of 120, had 397,024 signatures.

The second question, on restricting minority MPs voting rights, barring them from voting on the country’s budget or the composition of the government, had 390,189 signatures.

The proposed referendum questions raised a lot of controversy in the public sphere, with the biggest political parties in Croatia, along with the election monitoring NGO Gong, vocally opposing the suggested changes.

Gong said that the proposed referendum question aimed at restricting the minority MPs’ voting rights was contrary to the principle of parliamentarianism, and Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandrokovic said the changes would weaken the political system and allow populist candidates without experience to “draw attention to themselves.”

Now, the Constitutional Court will decide whether the questions in the proposed referendum are in line with the Croatian Constitution, and allow or veto the referendum according to the decision.

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