The leaders of three trade union federations on Tuesday demanded the resignation of Labour and Pension System Minister Marko Pavic, saying that the minister had deceived the public about the amount of taxpayers' money spent on a campaign against the unions' referendum initiative "67 is too much".

The resignation was demanded by Kresimir Sever of the Croatian Independent Trade Unions, Mladen Novosel of the Federation of Autonomous Trade Unions and Vilim Ribic of the Matica Association of Trade Unions.

“This minister of labour has killed social dialogue in Croatia. He is a party soldier and we consider him an executioner of orders from Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, who in turn will be remembered as the person who totally killed social dialogue,” Novosel said.

Novosel said that Pavic had lied about how much money had been spent on the anti-referendum campaign. “The minister has said that he paid media organisations about a million kuna for this advertising campaign and that he paid as much in the autumn,” Novosel said, adding that the unions had been told that HRK 2.230,000 had been spent last autumn.

Novosel said he was confident that over HRK 5 million of taxpayers’ money had been spent on informing the public about the good intentions of the law which parliament passed by only one vote more than the required majority.

While the unions are trying to make it possible for the citizens to say what they think about such laws, the minister is trying to inform them by spending so much money while at the same time the workers at the Uljanik shipyards haven’t received their wages for months, Novosel said.

He added that while refusing to financially support the shipyard workers, the government had shamelessly spent over HRK 5.6 million “to prevent the unions and citizens from thinking for themselves.”

Ribic said that no dialogue was possible with Pavic, and that the most important thing to the government was to manipulate the masses and stay in power. “Great ambition, political obedience and loyalty to the leader is why this man has lost it,” he added.

Ribic claims that Pavic told the untruth when he said that if successful, the unions’ referendum against raising the statutory retirement age to 67 would create a debt of HRK 45 billion. “Show us the calculations. If you are right, I will be the first to say that I was wrong. Let’s see what the truth is,” he said.

Ribic said that the government was not implementing the pension reform now because they would lose the elections, “and the only true criterion is to stay in power.”

Sever said that working until 67 years of age was not a prerequisite for higher pensions. “The only prerequisite for higher pensions is higher employment, higher wages and a policy that would attract back as many of the people who have emigrated as possible.”

The unions said they were confident that in the remaining four days they would gather enough signatures for the referendum.