Yesterday pengovsky busied himself with taking apart a particular initiative to change referendum legislation. The post ended with a call for surgical precision when changing instruments of direct democracy, which implicitly means that even pengovsky recognises certain things must be amended.
(source)
I know it’s lame to re-post one’s own comment, but I really think that rather than changing the referendum legislation, the parliament should change its Rules of Procedure (article 169) and no longer ratify multilateral international treaties, where Slovenia is no the primary signatory in a form of a law, unless the treaty falls under the provisions of Artice 3a of the Constitution.
In my opinion this would be quite enough to prevent small bands of referendum raiders from wrecking havoc on key foreign policy decisions. If rules regarding the number of signatures needed to start the process were amended as well (from 2500 non-verified to, say, 7000 verified signatures), things would be just peachy.
And that’s all you need. I think abuse of referendums for one party’s political goals would diminish greatly since it would demand a greater effort on the part of the referendum bidders, leaving the state with more important referendums, where attendance would be higher as well, regardless of the day the vote would be held.
Dr. Onyx suggested a corrective in form of counter signatures. Say you don’t agree with spending 1 mio €+ for a bullshit* referendum – go to the municipality and verify a counter signature.
*referendum without clear question and/or consequences