Head of the Osijek-Baranja County, Ivo Anusic of the HDZ party, is reportedly opposed to a plan on revamping the election constituencies which would see the heavily depopulated eastern Slavonia region lose three seats in the 151-seat Parliament, with capital Zagreb and the southern Dalmatia region gaining three more, state agency Hina said on Friday, summarizing an article published by Jutarnji List daily.

Croatian lawmakers have never updated the country’s constituencies since adopting them in late 1999. According to Croatian law, there shouldn’t be more than a 5-percent difference in the number of voters in each of the ten territorial constituencies which produce 14 MPs each.  Hoever, due to heavy depopulation in some areas, the differences in representation in terms of voters per MP have grown significantly over the last decade.

The remaining 11 seats are elected by Croatian nationals abroad and by ethnic minority voters.

The region most heavily hit by mass emigration is eastern Croatia, traditionally a stronghold of the conservative HDZ party.

“The main reason why the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party has not yet embarked on amending the election law, which was promised earlier this year, is a dispute within the ruling party, and the fierce resistance to the plan that HDZ leader and Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic, encountered in Slavonia,” Hina cited Jutarnji as saying.

“A decision was made to keep the existing model of ten constituencies, but scrap the rule of having 14 MPs from each constituency, which would see fewer MPs from regions with the greatest population declines,” Hina cited Jutarnji as sying, without naming any sources.

The idea reported by Jutarnji would include reducing representation of constituencies in the eastern part of the country to either 12 or 13, while some coastal constituencies and two constituencies which include parts of the capital would now elect 15 MPs.

According to unnamed sources, Anusic “was the most opposed to this, as his constituency would be left without two MPs.”

“Politics is not just about people, constituencies are not just about the number of people who live there. A constituency is also a geographic area and it must be politically  equally represented in parliament. If Slavonia has fewer MPs, that would mean it would have less political influence,” Anusic was cited by Jutarnji List as saying. He reportedly added that “he had made it very clear to everyone in the party that he was against such a proposal.”

Anusic also said that Slavonia, and especially its two constituencies, had “borne the brunt of the Homeland War” and experienced “the greatest suffering and displacement,” losing part of its population, as evidenced “by the latest population census.”

“If the number of MPs from Slavonia gets reduced, that would mean the continuation of what has been happening for the past 30 years, and that is the lack of political care for eastern Croatia, except for the past couple of years when the government invested a little more in this region,” Jutarnji List quoted Anusic as saying.

Eastern Croatia, which was affected the most be wartime destruction in the 1991-95 war, is still one of the poorest part of the country, in spite of many government-assisted programs and investments over the past three decades. Traditionally a stronghold of HDZ, the region was also hit by a mass exodus after Croatia joined the EU in 2013.