Open letter from the Citizens’ Initiative “In the Name of the Family”

Distinguished ambassadors, Your excellencies,

In its open letter, the Citizens’ Initiative “In the Name of the Family” warns all foreign ambassadors in the Republic of Croatia that the current Government, through constitutional changes being discussed in the Croatian parliament, obviously wishes to prevent future citizens’ referendums on changes of the Constitution, thus directly suspending democracy.

The aim of constitutional changes that the so called Kukuriku coalition wishes to implement is to practically disable Croatian voters from changing the Constitution of their country by direct decision-making in the future, which is absolutely incompatible with democracy. 

Therefore we address all ambassadors in Croatia in order to warn you of antidemocratic steps of the current representatives of public authorities and “pro-government” NGOs, taking place, quite indicatively, after the citizens have clearly sent a message to the Croatian Government, MPs and the Croatian President, through a referendum, on the exceptional importance of marriage and family for the people of this country.

Examples of the activities undertaken by the current Government, “pro-government” NGOs, and even by the Croatian President over the recent period, all of which completely ignore the will of two thirds of Croatian voters who on December 1voted FOR marriage as a union of a man and a woman, are as follows:

1. Draft of the Life Partnership Act, under which the representatives of the Ministry of Administration assign attributes that belong to marriage to a union which is completely different in its content, and thus directly disregard the will of the voters who have established what marriage is and their indisputable wish to bestow special legal status on such a union.
2. The Government’s proposal for already rigorous criteria of referendum success to be made even more difficult by introducing a new criterion that cannot be found almost anywhere else in the world. According to the said proposal, a referendum is valid only if over 50% of the total number of citizens with voting rights vote in favor of a certain issue – while at the same time only a smaller part of the Croatian citizens who do not live in their homeland have the possibility of exercising their voting right. In addition, it would be made possible for the ruling political parties to interpret and decide on which issues a state referendum could be called and on which it could not, and the authorities of the Constitutional Court would also be limited.
3. President Ivo Josipović’s proposal of constitutional changes seeking to include in the Constitution living unions different from marriage, which is completely in contravention with the will of the voters expressed in the referendum.

4.         The role of GONG, which is supposed to work on encouraging citizens to participate in democratic processes, but which nevertheless acts as the “extended arm” of this Government and thus, instead of encouraging, like numerous other “pro-government” NGOs actually obstructs democratic processes.

5.         Also visible are direct interventions of the current Government in the voters’ freedom to decide, by the imposition of its views and incessant reiteration of being against, and by financing from the state budget, directly or indirectly, a part of the campaign of referendum opponents.

Finally, we must emphasize the role of two public media institutions – Croatian Radiotelevision and Hina (Croatian News Agency) in the campaign AGAINST the referendum, which with their unprofessional reporting made it impossible for Croatian citizens to be informed objectively. The Croatian Radiotelevision, which is a public television, reported one-sidedly with about 75% of the content against the referendum, 10% of the content FOR, and only 15% of neutral content. Hina, also a public media institution, boycotted the reporting on referendum results and the press conference of the initiative “In the Name of the Family”, thus withholding from the public the information from the side that had successfully initiated the only national state referendum in the history of the Republic of Croatia.

We expect you, as observers of democratic processes in Croatia, to take a clear stand on these traces of communist practice present in the government structures in Croatia, and we invite you to help, with your presence, declarations and reporting to your countries, the continuation of democratic processes and overcoming of the remnants of that same communist mentality.

May these unfortunate events finally move Croatia towards full democratization of its society, in line with the European standards, where Croatia belongs.