A second attempt to constitute the Rijeka City Assembly comes up short

Local elections were held in Croatia on May 18th, with a second round run-off poll on June 1st. Every county prefect, mayoral and municipality seat, as well as every seat in county, municipal and city assemblies were up for grabs.

Since the election, a number of city assemblies have been struggling to constitute their respective assemblies. And while Split achieved that in its second attempt on Friday, Zadar and Rijeka are still unable to muster a vote to name an assembly president. In Rijeka a second attempt to constitute the City Assembly failed on Monday. Neither of the two candidates proposed for the position of Assembly president received the minimum fifty percent of the vote required to constitute the new assembly. If a new assembly is not constituted within thirty days, new elections will be called.

Rijeka Mayor Iva Rinčić says that she is not opposed to the idea of new elections, adding that her team will not compromise at any cost: "We do not wish to participate in political barter, nor to agree to compromises that we feel will be long-term harmful to our city, just to expedite the formal constituting of the assembly at any cost. We prefer a process that will truly be to the benefit of the citizens of Rijeka."

For his part the president of the HDZ in Rijeka, Josip Ostrogović, said that a deal was not reached because negotiations were not held: "There were no negotiations. We didn't even get to that stage where we could negotiate. Moving forward, I hope that we can all sit down and see what is in the best interests of the citizens of Rijeka, and the HDZ is open to cooperation that will benefit our city."

Source: HRT