Independent presidential candidate Dejan Kovac on Tuesday called for the establishment of a registry of examples of abuse of public office in Croatia and called on other candidates to back his initiative.

Kovac, supported by the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS), said that abuse of public office was one of the biggest problems Croatia was faced with.

For instance, he said, there is strict control of tax collection whereas no record is kept oft how taxpayers’ money is spent, and this is one of the examples of that problem.

He added that other examples could be found in employment, allocation of grants and subsidies, the favouring of some parties in public procurement processes and in pre-bankruptcy proceedings.

For this problem to be successfully tackled, it is necessary to introduce a registry of abuse of public office by politicians, said Kovac.

He believes that the registry could also facilitate efforts to objectively inform the general public about such cases, which he says is the first step in the fight against corruption.