Mayor Janković will also have to face his opponents at the referendum. Bojan Velikonje’s photo was taken during a meeting with the residents of Štepanjski settlement at the end of January.
Parking referendum: “We will not withdraw the request, the campaign starts on Thursday!”
Klemen Fajs, the initiator of the referendum on the controversial parking ordinance and the first to sign the request, still has time today to withdraw the request. But he assured us that he would not do that, and announced that during the referendum campaign they would also draw attention to other problems in the city.
The thirty-day referendum campaign will begin tomorrow, and preparations are already underway. “Campaign organizers must be registered to register an organization and open a transaction account. Each organizer then has its own campaign. Klemen Fajs will apply with us, the municipality will probably be on the other side,” summed up Borut Hočevar, a member of the Civil Initiative for Ljubljana (CILJ). We are still waiting for answers from the municipality on what their next steps will be.
Of the parties, the Pirate Party and the Voice for Children and Families party have applied as organizers of the referendum for now. “We will encourage people to vote against Janković’s terror,” city councilor and president of the Voice for Children and Families Aleš Primc summed up the campaign plan. The Left will also register as an organizer of the referendum, they announced.
First they withdrew the decree, then they adopted a referendum
We remind you that CILJ collected enough certified signatures for a subsequent referendum at the end of May. At it, voters will decide whether they agree to the implementation of Article 4 of the Decree on Regulation of Traffic in the Municipality of Ljubljana (MOL), which introduces regulation of parking in neighborhood areas. On Monday, June 1, at an extraordinary meeting, the city council decided to withdraw the controversial decree. According to the mayor, this would save the municipality one million euros and meet the request of the initiators of the referendum. Councilors from the opposition have repeatedly warned that it is a legally disputed procedure and that the referendum is the right of the people.
A new extraordinary meeting followed the same evening, as those gathered realized that the request to hold a referendum had already been submitted. That is why they determined that there will be a referendum. “Nobody in this room is the master of the referendum process,” Zoran Janković emphasized at the time and explained that only his initiator and the first signatory, Klemen Fajs, could withdraw the process.
Why decide on an “invalid decree”?
In the last few days, the mayor and MOL shared a post on social networks where they explained that the voters in the referendum will “vote against a decree that does not exist, i.e. against nothing”. They pointed out that in this way they will spend one million euros, which could otherwise be allocated to children’s playgrounds, new trees, benches and the like.
At CILJ, however, they do not agree with the fact that the referendum is pointless. “We will not withdraw the referendum because we do not want to support Janković’s manipulation. His behavior has been problematic from the very beginning,” emphasized Klemen Fajs, representative of the Initiative for Štepanjska naselje. As he explained, at the extraordinary session, they should commit that the decree will not be adopted. “The mandate of the city council only lasts until the end of 2026. They cannot commit to the next year,” the interlocutor emphasized. “The mayor wants to turn the situation around as if the cost of the referendum is the responsibility of the people – although he tried to impose additional costs on the residents, which they refused – and this is really inappropriate, low-level,” he added.
As Klemen Fajs explained, the referendum will clarify what the residents think. When asked what the outcome would be, he answered: “First of all, we are deciding on this decree. The answer to the referendum also represents what democracy is, whose voice is heard and in whose favor we want to govern the city. Everything will be a very clear message to the municipality.”
In parallel with the campaign, they will also start addressing other controversial issues that plague the residents. “We will start collecting signatures regarding the incinerator and the construction of a garage under the market. Everything shows that informal talks do not work, people’s initiative is the only way,” announced Klemen Fajs.
