After losing a parliamentary vote yesterday on a consultative referendum regarding defense spending, Slovenia’s ruling “Freedom Movement” party has decided to request its own consultative referendum on NATO membership, STA agency reports.
“This is the right question that citizens must decide on,” the party announced, stating that the proposal will be formally submitted next week.
“There are only two ways: either we stay in NATO and pay our membership fees, or we leave the alliance. Everything else is a populist deception of Slovenian citizens,” said Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob on the government’s official X (formerly Twitter) account. His statement followed the adoption in the National Assembly of a proposal by Levica (The Left), a smaller partner in the ruling coalition, to hold a consultative referendum on increasing defense spending.
The coalition split when Golob’s Freedom Movement voted against it, while smaller partners joined forces with the conservative opposition in supporting the public vote.
Golob described the referendum on defense spending as “another meaningless referendum confirmed by the coalition of the Democratic Party (SDS), New Slovenia (NSi), and Social Democrats (SD),” while, according to him, a referendum on NATO membership would “remove any doubt about the true will of the people.”
Source: Blic, Photo: Pixabay
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