SABOR TO VOTE ON CHANGES TO ELECTION LAW WEDNESDAY

ZAGREB, April 1 (Hina) - The Croatian parliament will on Wednesday vote on a bill of changes to the Election Law as proposed by the parliament's Committee on the Constitution, Rule Book and Political System. #L# The changes are necessary to adjust the Election Law the already adopted changes to the Constitution and the new Constitutional Law on Minority Rights and they do not represent any major interventions in the 1999 law. Under that law, according to which the January 2000 parliamentary elections were held, voters elected 14 deputies in ten constituencies (140 in total), five minority representatives and six Diaspora deputies, who were elected under the so-called non- fixed quota. One of the major changes in the bill enables minorities to elect eight deputies (the current law envisages five minority MPs) - three Serb, one Hungarian and Italian each, one joint representative of the Bosniak, Montenegrin, Macedonian and Slovene minorities, and one joint representative of the Czech, Slovak, Polish, Romany and Ruthenian minorities. The Austrian, Albanian, Bulgarian, German, Romanian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vlach and Jewish minorities would also elect one representative. The bill also offers an alternative solution - the Serb minority would elect one deputy at least and three at the most, and their final number would be determined by the non-fixed quota. The adoption of the bill requires a majority vote, i.e. the votes of 76 deputies. The adoption of the bill will enable Croatian voters to participate, for the first time in modern Croatia, in two consecutive elections according to more or less the same criteria. The deadline for the parliament to fulfil a constitutional obligation of defining basic electoral regulations one year before elections expires tomorrow. The mandate of the current parliamentary composition expires on April 2, 2004. (hina) rml sb