Democrats: President Is Seeking Excuses to Avoid Referendum

Bratislava, 28 March (TASR) - President Peter Pellegrini can call a referendum with a clear conscience, but he must truly want to do so, stated the extra-parliamentary Democrats party in response to Pellegrini's claims during STVR's politics programme 'Sobotne dialogy' (Saturday Dialogues) where he said that he was still reviewing a petition from the Democrats calling for a referendum on shortening the current government's electoral term. "On the one hand, the President says he supports the referendum and that he would 'want' it, but simultaneously looks for excuses and someone to blame, so that he can shift the responsibility for not calling it," according to the Democrats. In their statement, they also suggest that Pellegrini's hesitation is linked to his inclination towards the current coalition. According to the Democrats, the current wording of the Constitution allows the head of state to call a referendum incorporating all three questions. On the STVR's politics programme, Pellegrini recalled that the Constitutional Court has already issued a decision on this matter following a previous motion submitted by former president Zuzana Caputova, ruling that a referendum cannot be used to shorten the electoral term of a government. Therefore, the future of such referendums may have been determined by the Democrats themselves during the government of then-Prime Minister Eduard Heger (currently the vice-chair of the Democrats), because coalition MPs did not support a proposal to amend the Constitution at that time. On Monday (23 March), the Democrats handed over more than 384,000 signatures collected to President Peter Pellegrini to declare a referendum on shortening the current government's term. The referendum aims to bring the current government's term to an early end, to reinstate the Special Prosecutor's Office and the National Crime Agency, and to scrap Premier Robert Fico's (Smer-SD) lifetime annuity. jrg