The secretary general of the strongest opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP), Vedran Babic, has resigned after being indicted for falsifying signatures for a nomination for Slavonski Brod-Posavina County Prefect at local elections in 2021, the party's leader Pedja Grbin announced on Wednesday.

Babic and four of his colleagues allegedly copied 22 signatures from one SDP slate to another SDP slate at local elections in Slavonski Brod two years ago.

“They have offered their resignations today and I have accepted them. Regardless of the fact that they deny the charges … we firmly take the view that political responsibility is broader than criminal responsibility,” Grbin told a special press conference.

“Their resignation was the only right thing they could do. They did what is not done enough in the Croatian political sphere: they showed with their own example how a politician should behave,” he added.

Asked why he had not responded when the now former SDP member Stribor Valenta had drawn attention to this irregularity, Grbin said that all the persons involved in this case had denied any wrongdoing, just as they did now, but that the State Attorney’s Office found that there were grounds for indicting them.

After a second round of local elections in Slavonski Brod in 2021, Valenta filed a complaint against Babic and several other SDP officials, claiming that they had falsified signatures for Mario Vucinic, the SDP candidate for Slavonski Brod-Posavina County Prefect, who apparently failed to secure enough signatures for his nomination two days before the expiry of the deadline.

This crime carries a sentence of up to three years in prison.