The vice-president of the leading Croatian Serb parliamentary party, Milorad Pupovac, told a news conference in Zagreb on Friday that the right to dual citizenship often entailed dual permanent residence, which was why voter lists contained 400,000 more people than registered in the last national census.
Pupovac refuted media allegations that voter lists had not been updated and that this process had been hampered by his party.
He stressed that voter lists had been "updated" by unlawfully erasing Croatian nationals of Serb origin who had sold their houses and flats and who had lost their tenancy rights in Croatia, and by registering in voter lists people who had never lived and did not live in Croatia.
Pupovac was referring to Croats from Bosnia-Herzegovina who were granted Croatian citizenship and were registered in voter lists.
According to statistics, Pupovac said, from 2002 to 2007, more than 100,000 Croatian nationals, mostly Croats from Bosnia-Herzegovina, settled in Croatia, and 50,000 Croatian nationals, who were predominantly of Serb ethnicity, left the country.
According to Pupovac, state institutions removed from permanent residence registers individuals whose primary domicile was in Croatia, and added to those registers individuals who had no property in Croatia and who had secondary domicile in Croatia.
It is therefore not true that registers on permanent domicile have not been updated, Pupovac said, accusing relevant state institutions of unlawfully removing from voter lists people who did not personally declare any change of address.
He described as unfair calls by the State Election Commission head, Branko Hrvatin, and the head of the Central Administration Office, Antun Palaric, to put voter lists in order before the 17 May local elections, saying that there was not enough time to do it.
He said that the State Election Commission and the government should raise the question of responsibility for the disorder in voter lists and for the violation of relevant legislation.
Pupovac recalled that his party had proposed that a time term of 6-12 months should be introduced during which individuals would decide which of their domiciles should be treated as primary, but that the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) had turned down the proposal.
Commenting on problems and irregularities concerning voter lists and media claims that as many as 400 voters are registered at some addresses, the State Election Commission recently sent a statement to the Croatian Interior Ministry and the Central Administration Office underlining the necessity for an urgent investigation and correction of all data, because such information bring the credibility of voter lists into question.
"Given that such information bring the credibility of voter lists into question, the State Election Commission stresses that it is necessary to take every step to investigate and correct all data based on which updated and correct voter lists are made, so that the lists could be completed and confirmed by 8 May 2009," the commission said in a statement.
The media in Croatia recently published information that in some municipalities in Dalmatia which border with Bosnia-Herzegovina, there were up to 400 voters registered at a single fictitious address.