Voter committees will have to include representatives of all political groups in the municipality or town where the elections are held, and violations of the electioneering ban will be subject to fines.
The mandate of acting representative bodies will cease on the day when regular local elections are called.
The parliamentary majority did not accept an amendment by the Committee on National Minorities which proposed that local elections not be held in the local self-government units which have not adjusted their statutes to the Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities.
Deputies supported the government's position that the possible shortage of minority representatives in some local self-government units be solved, as is the case now, through additional elections.
The parliament sent into the second reading the final bill on counties, towns and municipalities, which provides for the establishment of nine new municipalities, and a bill on changes to the Law on Local Self-Government Units.
It also sent bills on distraint and police solidarity into the second reading.
All parliamentary parties, except for the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS), supported changes to the Law on Permanent and Temporary Residence under which persons found not to be living on the reported addresses would be erased from the permanent residence register.
The Interior Ministry would be able to erase from the register persons who have moved away permanently, but failed to cancel their residence, persons who have permanent residence in another country, or persons who are found to have given false information on their permanent residence.
The changes would not apply to displaced persons and refugees.
Since the SDSS opposed the proposed changes, it was agreed that they would not be put to the vote tonight, but that efforts would be made to reach agreement on disputed regulations.
Ratko Gajica of the SDSS said that the bodies of state administration which made decisions on who would be erased from the register of permanent residence did not have information on persons of Serb nationality who left Croatia for Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and third countries.
He said that this would leave without permanent residence tens of thousands of people who "were forced to leave their homes", which he said "would open the possibility of cancelling citizenship and other rights".
The SDSS proposed an amendment under which the Ministry of the Interior would be bound to submit, within a period of 30 days, information on refugees and displaced persons that would be harmonised with relevant information in Serbia and Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The parliament will continue its 13th session on March 30, since deputies agreed not to sit on Thursday and Friday because of the Easter holidays.