The Croatian Parliament is the only parliament in the European Union, that, with the corona excuse, does not publish how a particular member voted for more than a year. The pandemic has seriously degraded democratic standards in the work of the Croatian Parliament. It is unacceptable that the Parliament has been, since March 202 and the declaration of the pandemic, withholding the key information on the work of its members, hiding behind epidemiological measures and the shortcomings of the electronical voting system, provided only for the Parliament. In doing so, the ruling party relies on a slim majority of only 76 MPs, and the data on individual voting is of great public interest.
The way in which the work of the Croatian Parliament adjusts to the epidemiological measures has been disregarding the basic democratic principles since the beginning. The Croatian Constitutional Court pointed that out when it declared the provisions of the Rules of Procedure on the limitation of the number of Members who may participate in plenary sessions unconstitutional. On that occasion, the Constitutional Court reminded that the representatives are elected representatives of the people, who, in their actions and decisions, are not bound by the views of the party or the club of representatives.
Even then, Gong has, respecting the pandemic working conditions, called on changes to the Rule of procedure, that would enable the publication of each individual vote even during manual voting, when the Parliament cannot use the electronical system. We asked that the digitalisation of the Croatian Parliament enables the regular transmission of the sessions of the working bodies of the Parliament and that it be an obligation which does not depend only on the good will of the body president, as it is now.
The speaker of the Croatian Parliament Gordan Jandroković, after the Croatian Constitutional Court decision, announced the possibility of forming a working group and that the Committee on the Constitution, Standing Orders and Political System is going to oversee working on the changes to the Rules of Procedure. It has been six months since then and no one even mentioned the changes to the Rules of Procedure. We have the right to know how our elected representatives work and, according to that knowledge, make an informed decision, instead of a decision based on “empty promises”. We demand that the Croatian Parliament starts working on a way to gain back the citizens’ trust they have lost.
We invite the citizens, but also the Croatian Parliament representatives: join the Parlametar appeal and invite the Parliament to have a greater responsibility to the public.
Gong is a beneficiary of operational support - structural support to European think-do-tanks in its entirety "Democratic and Civic Participation" under the Europe for Citizens program.
Gong is a Knowledge Center in the field of civic activism and building democratic institutions of society within the Development Cooperation with the National Foundation for Civil Society Development.
