Parliament on Wednesday gave a vote of confidence in Ivan Paladina as the new minister of construction, physical planning and state assets, after which he was sworn in.

He was supported by 77 lawmakers in the 151-seat legislature, while 51 were against and three abstained.

An entrepreneur and manager with more than 15 years of experience in strategic and executive leadership in different fields of business, Paladina is taking over the ministry from Darko Horvat, who resign last month on suspicion of illegal allocation of incentives to small businesses while he had serves as the economy minister in 2018.

Paladina is faced with numerous challenges due to slow post-earthquake reconstruction in the Zagreb and Banovina areas.

Earlier today the parliamentary construction and economy committees supported by majority vote a conclusion to appoint Paladina as the new minister.

During the hearings, the opposition questioned his private businesses such as Kupari, Hidroelektra, the Croatian Postal Bank and the IGH Institute as well as his alleged Russian ties.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic attended the hearings, calling the argument that Paladina is “a Russian player” ridiculous and reiterating that Paladina has not had contact with Russian companies in four or five years.

Paladina called on the MPs to report him to the authorities if they felt there was anything contentious in his role.

“I will also say that even if someone was Russian, should we really sever all contacts with him just because of the brutal aggression on Ukraine?” said Plenkovic.

With his entrepreneurial and managerial experience, he added, Paladina should accelerate the reconstruction process.

Addressing the committees, Paladina said “it’s a fact that reconstruction has not started on even one building in Zagreb. That’s what we must work on the most.” He added that reconstruction was under way in the Banovina region and that progress would be seen soon.

Paladina said he would call Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic tomorrow to convene a meeting and start to actively deal with every obstacle on a daily basis so that reconstruction could start as soon as possible.