Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Tuesday rejected the claim that he had instructed the HDZ members of the Zagreb City Assembly to vote in favour of the Blok Kvatric project.

Tomislav Tomasevic (We Can!) asked Plenkovic during Question Time in Parliament why he still supported Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic and why he had instructed members of the City Assembly from his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party to vote in favour of the Blok Kvatric project.

Plenkovic rejected the claim, advising Tomasevic to seek answers in the City Assembly because “these are not matters that the government deals with.”

On 28 October the Zagreb City Assembly endorsed the mayor’s plan to establish the Blok Kvatric company, which the opposition considers extremely harmful. Before the plan was endorsed by a vote of 24 to 20, the opposition said that the city would have only a minority share in the company, strongly opposing the mayor’s proposal.

Stjepo Bartulica (Homeland Movement) told the prime minister that the stability he was talking about all the time was false, citing the government’s debt to drug wholesalers. He also commented on Plenkovic’s statement made in Brussels that he guaranteed that the Homeland Movement would never come to power, likening Plenkovic’s style of government to that of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

“This is a new level of unbelievable theses and I must admit that you disappointed me,” Plenkovic responded, citing statements by members of the Homeland Movement after the St Mark’s Square shooting in which they said that it was an expression of rebellion.

“Your colleagues tried to find some sort of sympathy for that. You see, that’s the difference and the reason why we say that the line has been crossed,” the prime minister said.