Speaking at a press conference in Zagreb, Sobol said that the Croatian Women's Network had drafted amendments to the Local Government Elections Act proposing that 40 per cent of candidates on all lists should be women and that the State Electoral Commission should reject any candidate lists not meeting this requirement.
The NGO asked the Committee to include its proposal on the parliamentary agenda.
The HDZ first requested that voting on the proposal be postponed, but at the next two sessions of the Committee the members of this party did not show up and the proposal could not be put to the vote for lack of quorum, Sobol explained.
"I am sorry that the Committee has failed to take a position on this issue and that the proposal has not been forwarded to Parliament, because there is no need for this initiative to be stopped and not debated in Parliament," she said.
Sobol said that only seven women on average sat on local councils today and that this figure was rapidly decreasing.
Sadika Zvirkic of the Women's Network said that it was unacceptable that members of Parliament, by not attending sessions, should block initiatives of citizens who elected them to represent them.