President urges referendum review

Aug 06, 2008
In cooperation with BNS

RIGA- Latvian President Valdis Zatlers submitted a legal initiative to the parliament, calling them to urgently decide on constitutional amendments, enabling citizens to dissolve the parliament.

The president, addressing the parliament at a special meeting, said that this is the right time for such a decision and the parliament has to prepare respective amendments.

"To solve the parliamentary and state crisis quickly and successfully, the president and a certain number of citizens should be empowered to initiate dissolution of the parliament," said Zatlers.

He does not offer his variant of the bill, but asks the parliament legal committee to invite representatives of the constitutional rights expert commission to work jointly on the amendments.

The president said that the result of the referendum held on August 2 is worth an assessment. "A large part of the society has clearly said -- it wants bigger control over the parliament's work. More than 600,000 people want to be heard not just once in four years. They are active citizens, ready to cooperate, who care for Latvia's fate, and I am proud that we have so many of these people," said Zatlers.

He said that the task of the parliament and the government is to promote civic activity, react on it and lawmakers have to listen to people's opinion.

"It is the only way towards cooperation between the power and the nation. Cooperation has always been more fruitful than conflict, as well as trust is more perspective than disbelief," said Zatlers.

"Even though the parliament reached a compromise, trilateral dialogue was launched only when the signature collecting campaign had been already started, but confidence in the parliament and the government was damaged. Assessing last year's events, it is clear why the number of people participating in a referendum has risen two times. Even though the necessary number of votes was not gathered on Saturday, the results of the referendum carry a very significant message," said the president.

He said that 40 percent of eligible voters voiced support to the constitutional amendments, and it is not possible to ignore the wish of such a large part of the society, but at the same time he underscored that it is important to ensure that dissolution of the parliament "does not become a daily weapon to achieve politically selfish goals".

According to preliminary results of the August 2 referendum, 629,064 Latvian citizens participated in a vote on the constitutional amendments, allowing people to initiate dissolution of the parliament, and 608,601 people or 40.17 percent of electorate supported the amendments.

In order for the proposed amendments to become a reality, the support of about 757,600 people was needed.