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Seventh Referendum in Slovakia's History Begins
Saturday 18 September 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, September 18 (TASR) - The seventh plebiscite in Slovakia's history has begun on Saturday.
People can voice their opinion on cancelling licence fees for the public media, removing MPs' immunity, reducing the number of MPs from 150 to 100, setting limits on the cost of Government limousines, online voting, and changes to the Press Act that would exempt public officials from the right to reply guaranteed by law.
The referendum will be valid only if more than half of registered voters take part in it, with more than half of those who take part required to pass or reject individual items on the list. If the referendum succeeds, it will become the first valid referendum initiated by a public petition in Slovakia's history. The previous five referendums were unsuccessful, and one was marred. Only one has been declared valid so far: on Slovakia joining the EU, but this was initiated by politicians in Parliament.
According to Statistics Office Chairman Ludmila Benkovicova, the results should be known at around midnight.
Any citizen with the right to vote in a general election is eligible to take part, including those with a permanent residence abroad.
The referendum costs will be in the region of €7.2 million, with 720 people hired to process the results and required to draw up 5,060 protocols. A total of 452 computers, 120 printing machines and two database servers will be used in the process.
President Ivan Gasparovic initiated the vote based on a petition submitted on June 9, 2010. A total of 368,000 signatures out of 400,000 were declared valid, meeting the requirement of at least 350,000 set by law.
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