The head of the Italian Union and member of the Croatian Parliament, Furio Radin, said on Sunday he was confident that President Ivo Josipovic, in his statement about the Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities, wanted to put emphasis on the part of the sentence that related to respect for the law rather than on the part about changing it.
"Knowing President Josipovic's attitude towards the minorities and the rule of law, I am certain that he wanted to say that the law should be respected," Radin told the media.
Earlier on Sunday Josipovic commented on Saturday's rally in Vukovar where 20,000 people protested against the introduction of bilingualism and the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in official communication demanding that the town be exempt from the Constitutional Law because of what it had been through during the war in the early 1990s.
"I expect political parties in Croatia, especially those that have participated in government, to explain to citizens why it is important to respect the Constitutional Law, but if there is no desire to respect it, then it has to be changed," Josipovic said.
Commenting on the statement, Radin said that a situation in which laws were not observed was inconceivable. "Until the law is changed, it should be respect," said Radin, who represents the Italian minority in the Croatian Parliament.
The vice-president of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) and member of the Croatian Parliament, Milorad Pupovac, said that the Constitutional Law could not be changed because it was one of the country's international commitments.
"Croatia assumed those commitments at the time of its international recognition and accession to international institutions. You cannot accept a piece of legislation on the international level and challenge it at home, or give an impression abroad that the rights of national minorities are respected, while they are being trampled upon," Pupovac told the press on Sunday when asked to comment on Josipovic's statement.
