Maja Hrgović’s text in Novi list, entitled “Women excluded from political life: Majority of parties go into the elections with gender-unbalanced lists,” discusses the principle of gender-balance prescribed by the Gender Equality Act and the positioning of women on electoral lists, that is, the fact that they are still placed at the bottom. In conversation with Tatjana Broz from CESI – Center for Education, Counseling and Research, we learn that if gender-unbalanced lists were penalized, the state budget would be increased by 2,25 million HRK. The text contains an imaginative consideration of the utilization of thus collected money. Source: Novi list.

Josip Šipić’s text on the website Libela entitled “The Duplicity of CDU and the Impersonality of the Kukuriku Coalition,” in the photo finish of the pre-election campaign, analyzes several points in the electoral programs of the two most powerful parties, concluding that nothing really happened during this campaign. Text speaks about the issues of gender equality, the status of LGBT persons, the anti-discrimination act, hate speech, and the coalition’s closet.

The extreme right-wing movement “I Love Croatia – No to EU” served in the sports fans’ campaign preceding the EU referendum as a perfect scarecrow for those who are still undecided whether to vote “for” or “against”. The mass media headed by HRT mostly ignore criticism of joining the EU voiced by leftist intellectuals.

Eurosceptics are die-hard rightists filled with irrational fears about the onset of a new Yugoslavia in which the Croatian language, identity, history and holy ground will be left to the mercy of the big EU players. Thus an almost unanimous consensus on joining this supranational entity is disrupted by some mindless, uninformed rightists, while other voices are hardly heard. Partly because they do not exist, and partly because it is not in the interest of the ruling political elite and their pet dog media machinery.

On this occasion Stipe Ćurković, Hrvoje Jurić, Mate Kapović and Boris Postnikov speak for H-Alter.

Competing with this year’s record number of 241 Nobel Peace Prize nominees, including Assange and WikiLeaks, the Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim, Afghan human rights activist Sima Samar and the former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the prize was won and shared by three women: the Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Yemeni activist Tawakkul Karman.

They were recognized for their non-violent struggle for women’s safety and women’s human rights and for participating in peace- and democracy-building work. The award was also intended to emphasize the important role of women in building peace and democracy.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the first democratically elected president in Africa. Since her inauguration in 2006, she has contributed to securing peace in Liberia, to promoting economic and social development, and to strengthening the position of women. Leymah Gbowee mobilized and organized women across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war in Liberia, and to ensure women’s participation in elections. She has worked since to enhance the influence of women in West Africa during and after war. In the most trying circumstances, both before and during the Arab Spring, Tawakkul Karman has played a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen.

So far, only 12 women have won the Nobel Peace Prize: Bertha von Suttner, Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, Betty Williams, Mairead Corrigan, Mother Theresa, Alva Myrdal, Aung San Suu Kyi, Rigoberta Menchú, Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi and Wangari Maathai.