Opposition parties in the Croatian parliament called for an early election on Wednesday, in the wake of the arrest of former construction minister in a graft probe.

Opposition MPs added that merely appointing a new minister to replace Darko Horvat “would not change anything” and that “corruption would continue to thrive in the country.”

“The fact that minister Horvat is no longer in this post and that an extension of the deadline has been granted for the use of funding from the EU Solidarity Fund doesn’t change anything. People are still living in container homes and do not know for how long,” said MP Anka Mrak-Taritas from the liberal party Glas.

She was referring to the reconstruction effort following the December 2020 quake that hit the central Croatian region of Banija, and EU funds which have been granted to help in the effort but were hardly used up until now. The original deadline to use the funds was June this year, although Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic, reassured the public last week that an extension would be granted.

“Everything has changed in the last five days, but actually nothing has changed. Now we are waiting for a new minister, and should political math be the main criterion, instead of competence, a year from now we will once again have a discussion on the construction minister, unless he or she is arrested before that,” she added.

MP Stephen-Nikola Bartulica from the right-wing Homeland Movement said that regardless of who the new construction minister would be, things would remain the same.

“We will continue to have a dysfunctional public administration unable to respond to citizens’ needs,” he said.

MP Ivana Kekin (Green-Left Bloc) agreed that the replacement of one minister was not a solution. “This is not (merely) a tooth inflammation, it’s a chronic incurable disease called corruption and the only way to deal with it is to hold an early election.” MP Ivana Posavec-Krivec (Social Democrats) said that corruption was widespread in Croatia and was affecting the government as well. She said that the government had lost its legitimacy and therefore an early election was needed.

Leader of the Social Democrats, Pedja Grbin, said that Croatia could not function this way because “the rules of democracy had been violated” and the only way out of this situation was to hold an early election. He said that the Croatian Democratic Union’s (HDZ) coalition partners should decide whether their priority was to save the Plenkovic government and HDZ or Croatia, adding that “one excludes the other.”

MP Branko Bacic of the ruling HDZ reiterated that HDZ insists on the independence of courts and “zero tolerance for corruption.” He recalled the opposition saying several months ago that the state prosecutor’s office should be dismantled because they called it “an arm of HDZ.”