Slovakian President Zuzana Caputová will call the referendum, the initiators of which collected about 400,000 signatures with the aim of immediately ousting the government led by Eduard Heger and amending the part of the constitution on referendums, the Slovak public service news agency TASR reported on Monday, referring to the statement of the head of state.
It is still questionable whether it will be possible to answer one or two questions in the referendum, as the head of state has indicated that he will have the question aimed at the immediate ousting of the government examined by the Constitutional Court, as in his opinion it is not in accordance with the Basic Law.
The collection of signatures was initiated by the strongest Slovak opposition party, Irány, led by Robert Fico, and several other opposition parties assured their support.
According to Slovak legislation, 350,000 supporting signatures are required to call a referendum. The referendum is called by the head of state within no more than 30 days after the signatures have been submitted. At the end of August, the proponents of the referendum submitted their petition forms containing 406,000 signatures to the head of state's office, of which 381,000 signatures were found to be valid.
The referendum - the date of which is not yet known - will include one or two questions. One of them - which is already included in the referendum - is about whether to amend the constitution so that the term of office of the legislature can be shortened based not only on the decision of the parliament, but also on the basis of the result of a referendum. The second question of the referendum - if the Constitutional Court qualifies it as compatible with the Basic Law - will be whether the government led by Eduard Heger resigns with immediate effect.
Based on the head of state's announcement on Monday, it seems certain that, despite the idea of the initiators of the referendum, the referendum will not take place on October 29 - together with the local and county elections, which will be held at the same time for the first time this year. About this, Zuzana Caputová said on Monday: "Regardless of whether one of the questions of the referendum will be considered or not, it was not possible to set this date." The initiators of the petition wanted to reach October 29 because it would have significantly increased the chances that a sufficient number of voters could participate in the referendum and thus it would be valid.
The background to the current referendum initiative is that last year, in a petition campaign - also initiated by Irány - around six hundred thousand signatures were collected to call a referendum aimed at early elections. However, the referendum did not take place in the end, as President Zuzana Caputová decided not to call it, after the Constitutional Court declared the referendum questions incompatible with the Basic Law based on her submission.
Source: MTI
Photo: Vladimir Simicek / AFP
