The GONG election-monitoring NGO on Wednesday welcomed the Constitutional Court ruling repealing the Electoral Constituencies Act, saying that it expects Parliament to amend electoral legislation as soon as possible. Pročitaj više

The court ruling said that the boundaries of future constituencies should match as much as possible those of administrative units, which is similar to GONG’s proposal that Croatia should be divided into six electoral units, the NGO said in a statement.

Under GONG’s proposal, Croatia would have six electoral constituencies instead of 10 as is now the case, while the constituencies for the diaspora and ethnic minorities would remain. The boundaries of constituencies would correspond to the boundaries of counties and the historical regions of Slavonia, Dalmatia, Istria and Rijeka, Zagorje and Medjimurje, while the City of Zagreb would be a single electoral unit.

The constituencies would provide an unequal number of legislators, from 17 to 29, depending on the updated number of voters residing in them.

GONG supported the warning from the Constitutional Court that changes in the number of voters should be monitored and the Voter Register periodically updated to reflect the actual number of voters and that the Voter Register should provide credible information, which is now not the case.

“The census has shown that 3,177,740 adult nationals are habitually resident in Croatia, which is 496,925 fewer than the number of voters listed in the Voter Register,” GONG said.