KLARIC SAYS CONSTITUTIONAL COURT WILL REMAIN INDEPENDENT

ZAGREB, Dec 8 (Hina) - The newly-elected president of Croatia's Constitutional Court, Petar Klaric, has said that he will take "constant, persistent and strict" care to ensure that the court remains free from influence of other branches of power. #L# Klaric on Monday held a news conference together with his predecessor, Smiljko Sokol whose four-year term of office as the Constitutional Court's head expired on 7 December. Klaric was recently elected as Sokol's successor with seven out of 13 votes in favour. Sokol said that in his capacity as the court's president, he had worked in compliance with the Constitution and laws and shunned any political influence, adding that no one had exerted any political pressure on the court in the past period. "The Constitutional Court is as powerful as it wants to be, but it would be not good for it to usurp that power, because the court, being the guardian of the Constitution and treading a thin line, could easily slip into the political sphere," Sokol said adding that the court is inclined neither to the right nor to the left. Sokol presented some figures on the court's performance in the past four years when it had received 11,383 cases, and solved 8,291 of them, or 70 percent. With the influx of some 4,000 cases annually, the Croatian Constitutional Court is in a similar position as the German Constitutional Court, which receives the highest number of cases in Europe annually. Commenting on his new position, Klaric told reporters that he was the first among the equal. Klaric went on to say he would invest more efforts in the rationalisation of processes before the court, including the settlement of constitutional complaints. He believes that the court should use and allocate budgetary funds on its own, and said that a lack of adequate offices was one of the biggest financial problems of this institution. (hina) ms