Two proposed referendums which petitioners wanted to call for vote on changes to Croatia's election laws and the repeal of the Council of Europe's Istanbul Convention on combating violence against women were rejected on Friday in a Parliament vote.

With 105 votes in favour, 16 against and two abstentions, MPs in the 151-seat assembly upheld parliament’s committee’s earlier ruling which said that conditions had not been met to call the referendums, which two separate conservative groups launched public petitions for in May last year.

According to Croatian law, petitions need to collect signatures by 10 percent of the registered electorate in Croatia, which amounts to about 374,000 signatures. Although both groups said they had collected the sufficient amount of signatures, a later check performed by a government agency found that both petitions fell short of the target, on account of about 10 percent of signatures deemed invalid.

Had they passed the check, the parliament would have voted on holding the referendums.

Both groups accused the government of being partial, and sabotaging the “will of the people” as proposed questions had been vocally criticised by members of the government, leaders of parties in the ruling coalition, as well as NGOs.

One of the referendums proposed an overhaul of the election law, including a provision barring the eight MPs who represent ethnic minorities in the 151-seat parliament to decide on government cabinets and the state budgets.

The other referendum wanted to repeal the Parliament’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention from April last year, which the centre-right government led by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic backed in spite of vocal criticism and protests by right-wing groups.

The vote in parliament was observed by members of the two groups which over the past few months had been accusing the government of doing all in its power to prevent the two referendums.

The parliament’s vote prompted an ironic round of applause from members of the two referendum groups who attended the session to observe the vote.

Follow N1 via mobile apps for Android | iPhone/iPad | Windows| and social media on Twitter | Facebook.