Although the legislation committee is not directly in charge of media matters, it should consider the Government's motion, said Pero Kovacevic of the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP), describing the Sanader Cabinet's decision as questionable in the legal sense.
"The Government has made this decision hastily, and it may be legally questionable and detrimental to Hina's functioning," said Kovacevic.
The HSP parliamentarian went on to say that the Government failed to offer a solution for the functioning of the agency until the appointment of a new Governing Council.
Josip Leko of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) said that it was the parliament rather than the Government that should address the issue, given that the former is Hina's founder.
Florijan Boras of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) holds that this is a big problem in the legal sense and that the matter is too complex to be settled during today's discussion.
The HDZ deputy proposed that the committee should collect more information and data on the situation and resume the debate tomorrow.
Other committee members accepted his proposal.
Last Friday the Government proposed to parliament to relieve of duty Hina's Governing Council because it believes that without the fifth member representing employees, employees have been denied the possibility to state their opinion about candidates for Hina's director.
We believe it is necessary to react to a deficit of democracy which happened in this particular case, notably because the Governing Council extended the mandate of the incumbent director of Hina, Mirko Bolfek, until year's end. The decision (on the new director) could have been made after the election of the fifth member to the Governing Council, and this would have been more important for democracy, Prime Minister Sanader said on that occasion. He reiterated that the week before the government had proposed to parliament that Vladimir Lulic be appointed fifth member of the Governing Council. Lulic was nominated by the Hina's Workers' Council. We accepted the proposal of the Hina Workers' Council and forwarded it to parliament, which should have discussed it during the ongoing session, so as to make Hina's Governing Council complete, the PM said.
"If it wanted to act in accordance with the law, the Governing Council shouldn't have ignored the procedure for the election of the fifth member," Sanader said a day after the four-member Council elected Smiljanka Skugor-Hrncevic among five candidates to succeed Mirko Bolfek as the agency's director. According to the Council's decision, Skugor-Hrncevic was to take up the new post no later than 1 January 2007.
On Sunday, three of four members of Hina's Governing Council resigned from their posts.
In a note sent to the government, the parliament and its Committee on Information, Computerisation and Media and to Hina, the three members of Hina's Governing Council said that their decision was motivated by their disagreement with the government's treatment of the Council, which they said had been faced with a dead-end situation in which the appointment of the fifth Council member representing the agency's employees was being procrastinated, while the legal deadline for the appointment of the new agency director was running out. The Council members who tendered their resignation consider the situation politicised and detrimental to the normal functioning of the agency.