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It is thus perfectly logical, that the MPs will not like a referendum and would be happiest cancelling it. Of course, our politicians cannot afford cancelling a referendum just like that, and therefore they will do it on the sly – to the two existing conditions, which already make it hard enough, they will add a third one, which makes all future attempts fail in advance.
The first two conditions are the number of required signatures and a minimum voter turnout. For the president to be obliged to declare a referendum it is required to collect 350 thousand signatures. This condition alone makes direct democracy efforts significantly harder. In Hungary, for example, which has almost twice the population, the condition is only 200 thousand signatures. The second condition (a minimal 50% voter turnout) is responsible for the fact that out of six referenda held in Slovakia's history only one was successful (joining of the EU). Direct democracy therefore exists in Slovakia mostly on paper, but any theoretical possibility of the people imposing their will upon the politicians scares the hell out of them and so they thought of a third condition, and that is the requirement to collect dates of birth alongside the name and address.
We collected signatures for the formation of the SaS and we are collecting signatures for the declaration of a referendum with six questions (by the way, we already have more than 300 thousand) and therefore I know how difficult efforts for direct democracy are. Already today. When another condition is added, in the form of a compulsory date of birth, the referendum will effectively cease to exist, and the constitution will only contain a memory of the times, when voters could directly express their views.
