On 9 March this year, the Sejm adopted a bill amending the Local referendum Act. The project, which was praised by Paweł Kukiz, assumes many pro-citizen changes, but it was not supported by opposition and, interestingly, by the majority of Members of Solidarne Poland, who was in the PiS parliamentary club. Now the bill will go to the Senate, where it may encounter difficulties, due to the fact that there is simply a majority opposition.
The Polish draft amendment of the local referendum law went to the parliament in 2021. Work on it accelerated erstwhile Paul Kukiz entered the Coalition from the Law and Justice. The fresh rules extend the time to collect signatures from 2 to 6 months, reduces the number of signatures needed to hold a referendum from 10% to 5% of the population of the municipality, reduces the required attendance by half, but besides introduces a certain limitation of the alleged referenda for thematic referendums, whose deadline will be set by the Prime Minister twice in his word of office.
The task was harshly criticized by opposition MPs on the Parliamentary Speaker. Here are any comments:
Joanna Fabisiak Civic Coalition: "It is unclear the doctrine of this bill... what this referendum is to serve, to which this referendum is to serve, surely not the local community, due to the fact that this bill in this form does not give anyone anything."
Zdzisław Wolski (Levice): "It is not hard to imagine that local populists will hold a referendum on the fact that water is to be free ... this will lead to the fight against self-government"
Mirosław Suchoń (Poland2050): "Such a solution (a lower electoral threshold) will make it the beginning of social disputes, so the question of whether changes should be made to increase this threshold significantly."
The lowered threshold of validity of the referendum was besides displeased by the analysts of the Bureau of Sejm Analysis, which besides pointed to respective legitimate formal flaws and ambiguities (which may have been the origin of opposition from Members associated with the Minister of Justice and his organization Solidarna Polska). The opinion of the Bureau of Sejm Analysis shall include the following sentence:
"Theoretically even tiny (and thus non-representative to the general self-government community) population group could comparatively easy lead to the cancellation of the body. In addition, local authorities could operate in the face of a "permanent threat of appeal", possibly taking decisions under the influence of another criteria than guided by the good of the full self-government community"
The Bureau of Sejm Analysis most likely lives in the planet of explanation and does not see the pathologies we have in local governments. Are local governments presently guided by the welfare of the full local government community? Of course not. On the contrary, they usually follow the interests of their local arrangement. For example, if a given mayor has the favour of the firemen of the TSO, he will build them guards or buy them a fresh fire-fighting car, despite the necessity of a municipal access road to a private kindergarten owned by the opponent of the mayor. The issue of appointing and rewarding employees of the office and CEOs of companies and supervisory boards could be written and written, but in short, almost always the main criterion is individual cognition and correlation of the local arrangement, not the highest competences or social benefits. Hence, usually the boards of municipal companies and supervisory boards are close to the local government, frequently without adequate cognition and experience.
As for politicians of the Civic Coalition, the Left and Poland2050, it is not amazing that their electorate is mainly large cities in which they have their rulers, and those in turn do not want individual to look at their hands, and the more they thwart their plans.
It is amazing that together with the opposition Members of Solidarne Poland voted. possibly this is due to the ambiguity of the formal-legal project, and possibly it is an intraparty gameplay of the PiS club, which entered into a coalition with MPs Kukiz15 in exchange for the amendment of the local referendum bill, for which Paul Kukiz was mediated both from the alleged "total" opposition and the "freedom" opposition. These others (Confederation, Freedomists) in contrast to the ancient opponents of PiS, supported pro-citizen changes in referendums. However, the strong voice of opposition to the “total opposition” is not meaningless due to the fact that the opposition has a majority in the legislature that may want to block changes.
Either way, the local government is safe. Even if this amendment to the local referendum bill is signed by the President, it is not due to enter into force until 1 January 2024, and so the referendum whip for local governments will only work from the next term.
A crucial simplification in the threshold of validity of the referendum raises the question whether the rulers against whom the referendum is planned will proceed to encourage the boycott, as usual. The validity threshold of 30% of turnouts (or 3/5 turnouts in elections) was usually prohibitive for initiators and led to a nullity of the referendum, although it was late succeeded in a tiny municipality in Będzin, Pomerania. Interestingly, the decommissioned mayor ran again in the referendum, but lost to the moles with only 12% support.
Artur Dziambor of the MP's ellipse The Liberals in an interview with the PAFERE Foundation stated that if the changes enter into force, referendums will be held much more often, and local authorities will be afraid to do "don't go to vote" actions, due to the fact that at the 15% threshold there is already a advanced hazard of exceeding this turnout. He added that he felt that referendums should be "prognostic", but in parallel with the introduction of direct democracy rights and principles, emphasis should be placed on social education and the improvement of local media. He besides stated that the amendment of the referendum law was an initiative by Paweł Kukiz, but it is besides in the interests of the Law and Justices, due to the fact that it most hits mayors and city presidents who are usually opposed to the Law and Justice. So specified a referendumal whip for government is even good for the government. However, he agreed that in large cities there was greater inefficiencies and little social control. Under the current rules in his household Gdynia would gotta collect 25 1000 signatures to initiate a referendum – that is 5 times more than to registry a list of candidates for parliament throughout the district.
An extended interview with associate Arthur Dziambor on the subject of functioning of local governments and fresh local referendum regulations will shortly appear on the Youtube channel of the PAFERE Foundation.
Bartholomew Kirzych
PAFERE Foundation
Open Wieliczka Association
#pafere #referendum #kukiz #djimbor #along #panbartek #krzych
