Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic said on Tuesday that his green-left We Can! platform was open to cooperation with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) branch in Zagreb, but that if there was no cooperation, the platform was also prepared to go to a new election.

“We are always open to cooperation but if it does not happen, for any reason, we are prepared to go to a new election if necessary. We are not afraid of it,” the mayor said, adding that he did not have any expectations regarding today’s meeting of the SDP because he did not want to interfere in other parties’ internal matters.

Tomasevic said that all items on the agenda of the 15th session of the City Assembly had been proposed in good faith and that they had expected councillors to vote according to their conscience, “which was what they eventually did.”

As for what further cooperation with SDP councillors would look like, Tomasevic said that that remained to be seen in the coming days.

He dismissed as untrue the claims that the latest borrowing by the city-owned Zagreb Holding multi-utility conglomerate was the reason why the local SDP had terminated the coalition agreement with the We Can! platform, saying that the head of the SDP Zagreb branch, Viktor Gotovac, had voted to put that item on the agenda of the session under fast-track procedure, because that was what they had agreed, just as in the case of other topics.

Asked if one could say that We Can! holds the majority in the City Assembly with SDP councillors Josko Klisovic and Davorka Moslavac-Forjan, who supported him on Monday, Tomasevic said that one could not say that because that had to be cleared up in the SDP.