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It is noteworthy that currently 10,000 citizens, including youths who have reached the age of 16, can introduce in the agenda of the Saeima any matter that has to be reviewed according to legislative procedure; therefore, referendums on draft laws should no longer be regarded as referendums for probing public opinion, emphasised Deputy Speaker Inese Lībiņa-Egnere on 20 July at the conference The Arithmetic of People’s Will: Elections and Referendums in Latvia.
Lībiņa-Egnere informed the conference’s participants about the procedure used by the Saeima in adopting and reviewing the Law on National Referendums and Initiation of Legislation, and she indicated that parliament has introduced significant amendments to the Law. “When linking this issue to the arithmetic of referendums, one should consider not only the legal aspects but also society’s readiness to pay millions of lats for testing the initiative of 0.6 per cent of the electorate. Also in the Saeima, a draft law can be initiated by at least five MPs; half an MP is not enough,” said Lībiņa-Egnere.
The Deputy Speaker indicated that adoption of a law in a referendum should once again serve its true purpose and essence – people as legislators should adopt laws which they themselves have drafted; they should not use signature collections as a means for expressing their dissatisfaction with political processes in general or for probing the ideas of a small interest groups.
“We had heated and even emotional discussions on the most appropriate number of signatures, and the Legal Affairs Committee of the Saeima finally managed to reach an agreement on a reasonable threshold of 50,000. For instance, in Lithuania a referendum for or against an issue requires 300,000 signatures. The right answer usually can be found somewhere in the middle,” said Inese Lībiņa-Egnere.
She also pointed out to the participants that since the draft law has been submitted to the Saeima for second review, it has delayed enactment of several similarly important provisions governing areas such as the European Citizens’ Initiative and campaign monitoring aimed at screening the origin of financing behind referendums.
The conference The Arithmetic of People’s Will: Elections and Referendums in Latvia was held in honour of the 90th anniversary of Latvia’s Central Election Commission. It gave lawyers, politicians, lecturers, scientists, journalists and experts from the Commission an opportunity to look back at the referendums held in Latvia between World War I and World War II, the popular vote on restoring Latvia’s independence, as well as to discuss current trends, the role of mass media in shaping voters’ opinions and the use of online voting.
Photos from the meeting are available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/saeima/sets/72157630665650824/
When using the material, please give credit to the Saeima Chancellery.
Saeima Press Service