The parliamentary Committee on the Constitution unanimously concluded on Monday that the trade unions had collected the sufficient number of signatures for a referendum on government-sponsored amendments to labour legislation, committee chairman Vladimir Seks said, confirming that the government had withdrawn the proposed amendments on September 3.
The committee unanimously adopted the conclusion moved by Seks, establishing that the organising committee had collected 717,149 signatures of voters, or 15.5 per cent of the electorate. A referendum may be called if so requested by 10 per cent of the electorate.
Seks said that the government had sent a notification to the Speaker of Parliament briefly explaining why it had withdrawn its amendments to the Labour Act.
The committee met to decide whether or not to call a referendum based on the unions' petition. A decision was expected later in the day.
The unions collected signatures of 809,378 people, of whom 92,220 were found not to have voter status and therefore should not have signed the petition, Administration Minister Davorin Mlakar said.
Mlakar said that the books in which the signatures were collected were not pre-bound and numerated as required by the Referendum Act. He added that his ministry did not have the authority to assess the quality of the petition and left it to the committee to decide on it.
