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Zagreb - HDZ MP Željko Reiner said on Tuesday that the opposition motion for a vote of no-confidence in Health Minister Vili Beroš was "an act of politicking, a defamatory pamphlet, a superficial, unprofessional and confused document full of platitudes and general statements."
"The only thing you did not say is that Beroš had personally infected bats in Wuhan with coronavirus," said Reiner, adding that the Opposition should be ashamed.
"Do the authors of this defamatory pamphlet think that Croatian citizens are goldfish and cannot remember what happened?", he said, stressing that the health system was functioning well.
The Opposition disagreed, with Hrvoje Zekanović of the Croatian Sovereignists adding to the list of the minister's 'sins' also disregard for the Constitutional Court's decision ordering the parliament to adopt a new law on abortion.
The Health Ministry is ignoring the decision of the Constitutional Court, which back in 2017 instructed the parliament to pass within two years a new law regulating abortion, the MP said, asking the minister to say if the task force entrusted with drawing up the new law had done anything.
Bridge MP Nino Raspudić said that Beroš had not carried out rationalisation in the health system, that the system for the procurement of vaccines was in disarray, that the minister did not punish any of the out-of-turn vaccinations of influential politicians, and he also cited the health system's debt to drug wholesalers and the devastation of state hospitals in Zagreb.
He noted that one should not speak about the responsibility of only one person but about "an entirely failed (healthcare) policy" of the HDZ-led government.
Social Democrat Željko Pavić, too, criticised the vaccination system and the lack of clear criteria for vaccination, noting that working people should have been vaccinated first.
"When did you invite teachers and shop assistants to vaccination?" he asked the minister.
"Teachers were invited but did not respond in sufficient numbers," the minister said.
MP Sandra Benčić of the Green-Left Bloc recalled that guidelines for vaccination were made five months ago and that the system for registration for vaccination was still not functioning.
MP Marija Selak Raspudić of Bridge wanted to know how many people "have died with COVID-19 and not of COVID-19", considering the "dramatic number of fatalities."
The minister admitted that there were certain ambiguities in the interpretation and counting of those data and that the Croatian Health Insurance Fund had launched a review of all fatalities during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Social Democrat MP Andreja Marić said that even though problems in the health system were not new, they were either not being dealt with or were being dealt with but not fast enough.
"It was the medical profession that said that the health system is on the brink of collapse, we did not make that up," she said, calling on Beroš to say who was responsible for that, he or the Prime Minister.