So, the final results are in. Turnout was just below 11 percent and all but two regions were supported. Janez Janša declared victory (surprise, surprise) and when pressed over the low turnout predictably said that everyone had a chance to vote and if they didn’t, well… tough luck.
Janša being rather pleased with himself: I once caught a fish this big…
Also as predicted, Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković claimed responcibilty for the extremely low turnout in Ljubljana. I mean, he might have played a part in it, but since turnout wasn’t exactly brilliant in the rest of the country, Ljubljanchans we probably just as beffudled by the whole idea behind the referendum, or – maybe even more so – just couldn’t be bothered to vote.
In the end, the referendum result gives Janša some much needed pre-election ammo. He announced that his government will propose regional legislation again, and will do it toot-sweet. The motion is doomed to fail as he will never get a 2/3 majority in the parliament (coalition only has 49 out of 90 seats), and this will enable Janša to play the referendum angle more or
less forever, possibly even after the elections and regardless of whether he looses or wins. And that was probaby his plan all along.
As I half-assedly expressed in the blog entry previous to this one, I feel that the question was too vague, and no real explicit opinion of the public can be garnered from the results. I mean, it’s been done before (for instance, I voted “no” on the “should shops be closed on Sundays” referendum, but the message I was attemting to convey was “shop clerks should get paid fair wages for Sunday work, and have the option to decide, whether they want to work Sundays or not”… I doubt that message got through, though…), but this time it’s all just ridiculously vague. A “no” can be interpreted to mean diametrically oposite stances, as Igor pointed out in the “less than 10 percent” entry.
I felt powerless and unable to express myself in light of this referendum.
Also, Janša’s response to the Central Slovenia region “no” is apparently: “Well, we’ll divide it into Northern Central and Southern Central then.” Excellent, following the “a municipality for every village” logic we now have the “a region for every municipality” logic.
I believe it was Gustinčič who wrote in an editorial a few weeks ago that we are so obsessed with the “smallness” of our country, that we put on airs and try to pretend we are bigger than we are and that we, too, can have over ten regions in our country. The counclusion of that editorial was that, if we could only accept that we *are* a small country and stop pretending we’re not, and that being *small* is not necessarily bad and nothing to be ashamed of, we could work much more efficiently towards a better future, without wasting all this energy on all the Potemkin village building.
if we could only accept […].
Amen to the guy.
Hear hear!