The President of the HDZ Parliamentary Club, Branko Bačić, stated on Tuesday that HDZ is very close to reaching an agreement with SDP regarding the establishment of a parliamentary investigative commission for Agrokor, while the head of the SDP Club, Arsen Bauk, said they are “four-fifths of the way there,” which means they have taken another small step closer to the decision to appropriately select the investigative commission for Agrokor and constitutional judges, but neither of them specified when the Parliament might vote on this.
– We believe that this should be done as soon as possible, if we have agreed on what needed to be agreed upon, if we have reached a consensus on the selection of constitutional judges, if we are in agreement with the work of the investigative commission, we have no reason for further delays. It is important to complete and select the judges of the Constitutional Court as soon as possible. We do not want there to be any gap between a fully and partially filled Constitutional Court because one of the judges’ mandates is expiring these days, so we have no reason to delay, Bačić told reporters ahead of the meeting of the parliamentary Constitutional Committee.
The HDZ Club, Bačić says, is inclined to proceed with the selection of constitutional judges as early as tomorrow.
– If SDP requests it, we are inclined to establish a Commission to investigate all circumstances surrounding the emergence of the Agrokor conglomerate. We do not connect one with the other. We have made a decision and it is important to us that before the mandate of one of the judges of the Constitutional Court expires, the entire composition of the Constitutional Court is completed, Bačić emphasized.
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– After we in HDZ made the decision, it is all the same to us and it absolutely does not matter which decision will go first or later. It would be logical, if we are to observe the Rules of Procedure, that the point that was discussed earlier is also decided earlier. It would be both correct and in accordance with previous practice for the order of voting to be according to the order of discussions in Parliament, which means it would be correct to first select the judges of the Constitutional Court, Bačić responded to a journalist’s question about what should be voted on first – the constitutional judges or the commission.
Journalists were also interested in what the undisputed ‘one-fifth of the agreement’ defined by Arsen Bauk is.
– He is right when he says we are close to an agreement, but whether that is one-fifth or two-fifths… for us, it is all the same, it is important that we define several contentious points and as far as HDZ is concerned, we can freely proceed with both decisions, he said but did not specify the contentious points with SDP. He only added that it is “a question of whether former ministers who were in governments can be members of the Commission.
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– Today we are four-fifths of the way there. This means we have taken a small step closer to the decision to appropriately select the investigative commission for Agrokor and constitutional judges, Bauk said.
When asked how likely it is that Parliament will vote tomorrow on the investigative commission for Agrokor and constitutional judges, he said: ‘I would not predict tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, Friday, next Friday. When we agree on everything, then we will vote.’
Bauk did not comment on the party composition of the investigative commission but noted that it will have five seats for the ruling party and four for the opposition, and reminded that according to the Law on Investigative Commissions, the leading position in the commission belongs to the opposition and added that he thinks it will be agreed that “that from the opposition will be from SDP.”
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When asked if that SDP member would be Gordan Maras, Bauk briefly replied that he would not discuss names now.
Arsen Bauk submitted a proposal at the meeting of the Constitutional Committee that the three constitutional judges be voted on in a package, rather than individually, and told the committee members to review it so they could express their opinions on it.
Unofficially, it is learned from SDP that HDZ, in talks with SDP, allegedly requested that the vote first be on Miroslav Šeparović and Mato Arlović, who are HDZ candidates, and then on the SDP candidate Goran Selanac.
