Left starts collecting signatures for anti-military investment referendum

Ljubljana – The opposition Left launched on Saturday a campaign to collect signatures for a referendum that would block EUR 780 military investments after the parliament adopted changes bypassing the Constitutional Court decision to stay the legislation allowing for the investments.

This is the second attempt to block the investments with a referendum. Earlier this year, the Left and the Social Democrats (SD) collected in only a few days enough signatures to call the referendum against the original investment legislation.

This was followed by the coalition MPs passing a decision that a referendum could not be held on the matter, while later the Constitutional Court stayed the legislation until delivering its decision on whether the legislation is in line with the Constitution.

Yesterday, the parliament passed changes to the budget implementation act effectively bypassing the Constitutional Court’s decision, as it would allow funding of investments based on military investment programme documents and not on the legislation stayed by the court.

The Left finds this option even worse than the first. “There are no limits to prices and the total value is no longer EUR 780 million but could practically be limitless… The government is trying to get a blanc cheque for weapon deals,” the Left’s deputy group coordinator Luka Mesec said today.

The party believes that it could collect the 2,500 signatures needed quite fast, as many people have already supported the initiative. The deadline is Friday.

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