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Zagreb - Representatives of the "The Truth About the Istanbul Convention" civil initiative on Wednesday delivered to parliament books with the signatures of 377,635 Croatian voters for calling a referendum to repeal the Convention. They submitted a request for calling the referendum to registrar Davor Orlović.
Initiative representative Kristina Pavlović said they managed to collect enough signatures despite many obstructions and that they expected the referendum to be called in the autumn. "Regardless of the referendum outcome... we have shown that we have raised Croatian citizens' awareness of the Istanbul Convention and gender ideology," she said. As for criticism that there was no such ideology in the document, she said a recent memo by Education Minister Blaženka Divjak asking school principals to properly treat children who had changed their sex or who could choose their own gender identity showed that there was a desire to introduce gender ideology in Croatia.
Pavlović was hopeful their awareness raising campaign would hamper the introduction of gender ideology, which she said was hidden in the Istanbul Convention, in Croatia. She said their petition had made it easier on all future referendum petitions as the Constitutional Court ruled that local officials could not decide what complied with the constitution and that no referendum initiative needed to pay or ask local authorities for permission to collect signatures. Asked by the press why it took them so long to bring the signatures to parliament, Pavlović said it took a certain time to collect the books from all over Croatia and count the signatures.
The initiative's representatives denied collecting signatures after the deadline.