At a meeting held on Wednesday, parliamentary opposition parties agreed to send a request to the parliament to hold a debate on unequal voting rights in Croatia, saying they consider it unacceptable that all votes do not carry the same weight.

The ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) will also have to give its opinion on this matter and a new model is yet to be defined, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Pedja Grbin, said after the meeting.

He added that the opposition has agreed to submit a request to the parliament for a debate on unequal voting rights in Croatia, after which the government would be obliged with a conclusion to submit amendments to the Election Law to the parliament within 60 days.

The right to vote in Croatia must be the same for everyone and that is not the case today. After the results of the Population Census, it is clear that the government must intervene, Grbin said.

The Constitutional Court Chief Justice has pointed to the problem and the fact that there is a chance that it will be impossible to hold elections, he said.

Grbin said the opposition believes that it is important to ensure that the right to vote is equally valid in all parts of Croatia, and then “we can discuss the model by which this will be achieved.”

He noted that the SDP had already proposed a model with six constituencies that follow the territorial structure of Croatia, in which the number of representatives elected is not necessarily the same, but added that this can be altered in an effort to ensure a solution that will make the right to vote the same everywhere in Croatia.

‘The number of MPs may need to be reduced’

Ivana Posavec-Krivec (Social Democrats) said she believes the fairest solution is to define how many representatives the parliament will have.

“… We should not run away from the fact that perhaps the number of MPs should be reduced. We should see how many MPs there will be and then distribute them according to the number of voters in each constituency,” she said.

The fundamental prerequisite for this is to amend the Electoral Roll and the borders of existing constituencies or define a variable number of elected representatives by constituency. If we leave existing constituencies, then we cannot elect the same number of deputies in all of them, and if we elect the same number of deputies in all constituencies, then we cannot keep the boundaries of the existing constituencies, she said.

‘The whole country should be one constituency’

Nino Raspudic (Most party) said that the common position of the opposition is that it is necessary to amend the Electoral Roll because it does not correspond to the reality on the ground. 2022 is the last moment to introduce postal and e-voting in order to increase the participation of citizens, because we have one of the lowest turnouts in the democratic world, he warned.

He added that the whole of Croatia being one constituency seemed the fairest model and that it would provide the best cross-section of the will of the citizens.

‘Fines for those who do not vote’

Marijan Pavlicek (Croatian Sovereignists) is of the opinion that making Croatia a single constituency is the fairest model. It is necessary to adhere to the decision of the Constitutional Court that every vote is equally valid while making sure demographically devastated parts of Croatia are not deprived, he said.

It is necessary to introduce postal voting as well as fines for those who do not go to the polls, because Croatia has one of the lowest voter turnout rates, he said.

Sandra Bencic (Green-Left Bloc) said that her bloc’s proposal is for Croatia to have five or six constituencies, that they cover clusters of counties and that the number of MPs elected in them is proportional to the number of inhabitants. It is not possible to redraw the constituencies so that you have the same number of citizens in each, and for that to follow Croatia’s territorial logic. Each constituency should have a certain number of MPs based on the number of inhabitants, said Bencic, underlining that each vote must have the same weight.