Croatian parliament defeated a no-confidence motion on Friday brought against the health minister by the opposition parties.
The motion was rejected by 77 “no” and 53 “yes” votes in the 151-seat parliament. It was the sixth no-confidence motion against ministers brought by the opposition in the last two years and the ruling center-right party survived all of them.
The opposition initiated the no-confidence vote against Health Minister Milan Kujundzic on grounds that he has failed to implement much-needed reforms in the health system. The system, they claim, is not functioning well. The motive for the action was the tragic death of a young man in August in the central Croatian town of Zapresic when the emergency medical team that arrived at the scene didn’t include a physician.
Although the official autopsy report later showed that the presence of a doctor would not have changed anything, and Kujundzic claimed that the emergency medical service system did not fail, the case raised concerns about emergency services in the southeastern European country.
On Thursday, during an eight-hour-long debate in the parliament, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic rejected all opposition charges as “unfounded”.
Plenkovic said during the debate these are continued attempts at discrediting ministers and the government who have found solutions to numerous problems that have accumulated in different sectors of Croatian society.
(Source: xinhua)
