Social Democratic Party president Peđa Grbin said on Saturday the adoption of a decision on the training of Ukrainian soldiers in Croatia was a moral question of helping Ukraine and a question of respecting order, and that the president and the prime minister must consult each other about it.

“We must help Ukraine because what it’s going through is horrible, but as a state we must also be aware that order in our society must be respected,” he said in Sibenik.
If the Constitution says that before such decisions are made, the president and the prime minister must consult each other, or if the Constitution requires the president’s consent and that they are made by the two of them, “so it must be,” Grbin said, adding that the SDP “will defend that constitutionality in parliament.”

He told President Zoran Milanovic and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic that “we’ve had it with this circus,” adding that serious people must reach an agreement and “if they can’t, they must tell the public what the problem is.”

Grbin said the ruling HDZ party “is trying to manipulate both the public and institutions, shifting onto parliament what they haven’t been able to do.”

He also commented on a Zagreb County Court ruling under which journalist Davorka Blazevic must pay former Supreme Court judge Senka Klaric Baranovic HRK 40,000 (€5,300) in defamation damages.

Grbin told Hina that on the one hand, this was an issue of a journalist’s labour rights, but it is also about “the protection of the right to the truth, the protection of the right to free speech.”

In a conflict between worker and employer, the state must protect the weaker party, he added.