Equality is not only a constitutional category but the foundation of democratic societies

03. June 2022.
Equality is not only a constitutional category but the foundation of democratic societies 1
Zagreb, 17.05.2022 - Konferencija za medije "Gongovih 6 izbornih jedinica za ustavne izbore", na kojoj je Gong predstavio svoje rješenje, prema kojemu, kažu, sljedeći parlamentarni izbori ne bi bili neustavni. Na slici autor analize Goran Čular. foto HINA/ Damir SENČAR/ ds

Equality of suffrage is not only a constitutional category and value expressed in the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, but a real political and symbolic foundation of a democratically organized political community as a community of equal citizens, said Gong member and professor of the Faculty of Political Science Goran Čular during the consultative discussion on the constitutionality and legality of elections before the Constitutional Court.

On June 2 and 3, a consultative discussion on the constitutionality of the existing constituencies, i.e. the inequality of suffrage in the constituencies, was held before the Constitutional Court under the leadership of the Judge Rapporteur Goran Selanec.

Čular, the author of the Gong analysis "Will the next parliamentary elections in Croatia be unconstitutional?", which we published in September 2020, proved that the current distribution of votes in the current constituencies has resulted in an unfair distribution of no less than 64 parliamentary seats in the election cycles since 2000. In the 2020 parliamentary elections, the inequality of voting rights directly affected the formation of the government. Had the constituencies been in accordance with the law, the ruling party would have lacked three mandates to form a majority.

During the consultative discussion, Professor Čular explained Gong's position on the inequality of suffrage. He said that the equality of suffrage is not only a constitutional category and value expressed in the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, but a real political and symbolic foundation of a democratically organized political community as a community of equal citizens. Moreover, the real inequalities of suffrage should be fundamentally addressed and the evaluation of the legal solutions that produce them should not be linked to influencing election results, which is the pragmatic approach advocated by the Constitutional Court in its 2011 opinion on constituencies.

He also pointed out that in all democratic states, regardless of the different tolerance of deviations in the ratio of inhabitants/voters and mandates, periodic adjustment is mandatory, either in terms of the number of mandates per constituency or in terms of constituency boundaries. In comparison, only two constituencies in Croatia meet the requirements of the Croatian Parliamentary Election Constituency Act for the Election of Deputies to the Croatian Parliament in terms of permissible deviations.

Gong proposes that the electoral reform divides Croatia into six constituencies that respect the constitutional equality of voting rights and in which a different number of mandates are elected, and it implies that the boundaries of the constituencies follow the boundaries of the counties.

The consultation was also attended by Berto Šalaj, Nenad Zakošek, Đorđe Gardašević, Sanja Barić i Anita Glagojević, Sven Marcelić, Bojan Basrak, Kristijan Sabo, Grozdana Stolnik and Petar Fijačko.

Equality is not only a constitutional category but the foundation of democratic societies 2
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