GLAS MP Anka Mrak Taritas said on Thursday, after Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic announced that Branko Bacic will be the new minister of construction, that there will be no post-earthquake reconstruction without essential changes and announced an interpellation in parliament.

Mrak Taritas told a news conference in parliament that Plenkovic decided to put Bacic at the head of the Ministry of Physical Planning, Construction and State Assets in order to show that the reconstruction is exceptionally important to his HDZ party, but without essential changes and a change in the way it functions, there will be no reconstruction.

Therefore, she announced she will send an interpellation to the Croatian parliament about the government’s work related to post-earthquake reconstruction, in which she will request that the government send a report on the state of the reconstruction to parliament every three months.

“If the ruling party accepts that conclusion from the interpellation, then there is a small light at the end of the tunnel that the reconstruction will speed up. If they do not accept, it only means that there will be talk and no work,” she said.

The shame of Plenkovic and his government is called “reconstruction that does not exist”, says Mrak Taritas, adding that Zagreb also remained “under the radar” after the 2020 earthquake because there is no reconstruction.

Asked if Bacic could initiate changes in the reconstruction better than outgoing construction minister Ivan Paladina, she said that he could do it incomparably better, but if Plenkovic really cared about the reconstruction, then Paladina would not have “sat” there for ten months.

Asked to comment on the dismissal of the Minister of EU Funds and Regional Development, Nataša Tramisak, Mrak Taritas replied that it was obvious that Plenkovic had already decided to dismiss her, and now he used the opportunity.

“It is very unusual to replace a minister who has results, and about whom people who work with her say that she works ‘by the book’,” she said.

She believes that the dismissal of Tramisak is the result of a fight between different factions within the HDZ.