ELECTIONS FOR UPPER HOUSE TO BE CONDUCTED BY PROPORTIONAL SYSTEM, LOCAL ELECTION BY COMBINED SYSTEM- MRKONJIC

LOCAL ELECTION BY COMBINED SYSTEM- MRKONJIC ZAGREB, Feb 12 (Hina) - Members of the Croatian Parliament House of Counties will be elected by the proportional system, whereas members of local bodies of authority will be elected by the combination of electoral systems at the forthcoming elections on 13 April 1997, the Croatian Election Commission president, Ivan Mrkonjic said to the Croatian national news agency, Hina. There will be 63 deputies in the Croatian Parliament upper house, elected by the proportional representation. Each of Croatia's twenty counties will elect three representatives, and the city of Zagreb, which has the status of a county, will also have three representatives in the upper house. Members of municipal and city councils, and members of county assemblies will be elected in the combined electoral system; one quarter of candidates will be elected in constituencies by the first-past-the-post system where the candidate with the most votes in a constituency wins; three quarters of candidates will be elected from election lists by the proportional electoral system. Candidates could be proposed by one or more political parties or by political coalitions, and voters also could propose candidates if they collected 500 signatures of residents of a certain area, Mrkonjic said. Mrkonjic expressed his personal view that elections in the UNTAES-controlled Croatian Danubian area had to be conducted under the same regulations, in line with Croatian election laws. The Election Commission is preparing the same documents and ballot papers in the entire country. "We are ready to hand over those documents to UNTAES and we are expecting from them to accept it," Mrkonjic said. (hina) jn mš 121246 MET feb 97