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11th of February because it is an ideal date to submit a referendum call request, and that is because of the deadlines the president has to follows according to the Constitution. He is obliged to call a referendum within 30 days of the submission (this being March 13th), and the referendum has to be held within another 90 days (article 96 of the Constitution), that is no later than June 11th. At the same time (article 97 of the Constitution) it cannot be held within less than 90 days before the general election, held on Saturday 12th of June. It can, however, be held on election day. And that is our chance.
Of course, we do know that out of six referenda held so far only one was successful, and even that one was organized by the government and with full support from almost all politicians (entry into the EU). The remaining five failed to reach the required 50 percent turnout, thus becoming not valid. It is therefore almost certain that any other random day the required numbers would not turn up, that, however, does not have to be true of the day of the general election, under certain circumstances. Everything is different that day. More and more people are dissatisfied with the politics of this government and, furthermore, it has become clear a number of times that their own (and completely unnecessary) privileges will not be cancelled by politicians themselves.
Sure, the president has the option of putting the questions for approval to the Constitutional Court. Maybe he will choose one or several, which he, as a lawyer, will not agree with and will suspect that they might be breaking the conditions in the Constitution, which is that the subject of referenda cannot be taxes, levies, the budget or basic rights and liberties. But I am convinced that he will not think this of all six of them.
The question then is whether more than 50 percent of voters will participate in the referendum on June 12th. It will be a good test of whether Slovaks have any sort of interest in deciding about things regarding them. For 40 years people were saying that yes, they would like to decide themselves, but the Russians do not allow them to. Now they will have a real opportunity to show it wasn't all just an excuse.
And one more important thing: The results of a referendum are not just advisory in character, they are binding.
