The necessary amount of signatures for organization of referendum for Russian language as a second official language has been collected, informs the Central Election Commission of Latvia.
CEC has finished inspection of signatures received during the collection of signatures for amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia, and today during the CEC meeting final results of the collection of signatures were confirmed.
187 378 signatures have been confirmed which is 12.14% of those having the right to vote in the last elections.
Collection of signatures for amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia took place from November 1 to 30 this year, and the bill initiated by voters provides amendments to Articles 4, 18, 21, 101 and 104 of the Constitution, including a provision for the Russian language as a second official language. In order to organize a referendum it was necessary to collect 154 379 signatures.
Results of the collection of signatures indicate that the number of voters necessary for submitting the bill for review in Saeima have participated in it.
Now CEC will submit the project of amendments to the Constitution, supported by more than one tenth of all voters, to the President who has to submit it to Saeima.
Considering that the project of amendments to the Consitution provides amendments to the Article 4 of the Constitution, no matter what will be the decision of the Saeima, a referendum will have to be organized. The referendum in this issue has to be organized not earlier than one month and not later than two months after the project’s of amendments review in Saeima.
Referendum will cost 1.7 million lats for the state budget.
Amendments to the Constitution will be accepted if for them will vote more that half of voters having right to vote numbering 1 543 786 in the last elections of Saeima, thus for the second official language will have to vote at least 771 893 voters.
Ref: 102.110.110.035