Only about 300 thousand signatures for the referendum in accordance with the law

After reviewing the signatures of voters on the petition for a referendum on amendments to the Labor Law, the Ministry of Administration and the Ministry of Internal Affairs identified a number of irregularities.

According to them, the books with signatures should have been properly bound, što was not the case with any of them, to prevent data from being inserted or altered; signatures could only be collected from voters in person, and the last signatures could only be collected at designated locations. Keeping these fundamental criteria in mind, about 356 thousand signatures were collected at locations that are not the electoral unit of the signatories, and as Mlakar added, some voters signed the petition several hundred kilometers away from their place of residence. Overall, about 300 thousand signatures can be considered satisfactory, while 92 thousand signatures were definitely rejected, mostly due to incorrectly entered personal identification numbers (60 thousand). 

However, despite the interesting results of the signature control, the Government decided not to send any conclusions to the Parliament, but exclusively a report, thus leaving the final decision to the Parliament. Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor noted before presenting the results that the Referendum Law indeed has a number of ambiguities and that soon there will be either amendments or the drafting of a completely new law. For this reason, neither of the two ministries responsible for verifying the regularity of the signature collection process could precisely determine to what extent the entire process was or was not in accordance with the law. 

The Government decided at its regular session to continue the privatization process in three shipyards for which valid offers have been received: Brodograđevna industrija Split, Brodotrogir, and 3. maj. Samoborski DIV is competing for BIS, Jadranska ulaganja from Zagreb for Brodotrogir, while the last accepted offer is from Crown Investment. After harmonization and the opinion of the Competition Agency, the plans will be sent for approval to the European Commission. The fourth offer in the second round of privatization, More Trogira for Brodotrogir, was rejected, while there were no offers for the remaining shipyards.

Regarding the implementation of the Economic Recovery Program, the Prime Minister reported on the measures taken during August, which include a reduction in budget expenditures by 1.5 billion kuna, a proposal to limit expenditures over the next two years, a regulation on the implementation of public tenders, the Employment Mediation Act, a proposal for amendments to the Pension Insurance Act, and a reduction in the number of health institution bodies. In accordance with the program, a decision was made to sell apartments owned by the Republic of Croatia, which would allow protected tenants to purchase the apartments they already live in (3000 apartments) at prices lower than market prices and with some benefits such as 1.5 percent less for each year of displacement, or 2 percent less for participants in the Homeland War.   (Vanja Figenwald)