Referendum: Slovenes Scared and Will Not Sign

Jelincic evaluates that around 100 to 200 people have signed for the referendum, Podobnik says 1,000 to 2,000, Vincec says 10,000.

The publicised referendum has fully entered the Croatian-Slovenian bilateral scene. The person responsible is Lovro Skrinjaric, the vice-president up and until recently, and now president of the SSN (Party of the Slovenian People).

The party, remember, was previously run by Zdenko Vinkov-Vincec, who left the party after a disagreement with all the other party members, and an agreement with premier Borut Pahor, who talked him out of starting a referendum procedure in the Slovenian parliament.

The possible referendum has put fear into the bones of the Slovenian diplomats who showed understanding as far as the ratification of Croatia’s NATO accession is concerned, if they already do not agree with Croatia’s negotiations with the EU.

However, the issue of the referendum has been circulated around Slovenian legal organs. The starting enthusiasm of the Slovenian right slowly wavered, and the initiator of it Marjan Podobnik gave it up, as well as his “Zavod 25. junij” (25^th June Association). Other to give up were Zmago Jelincic and his Slovenian National Party that did not want to have business with marginal parties.

Small non-parliamentary SSN party hampered by poor organization

However, the small non-parliamentary Party of the Slovenian People remains, which is led by Mr. Skrinjaric, who is trying to collect 40,000 signatures needed in order to file a referendum, parallel to gathering money, means and volunteers all over Slovenia.

So how is the collection of signatures for the referendum going, which could delay Croatia’s entry into NATO? There is no precise answer, because the SSN party has declared that data to be secret, but prominent right orientated parliamentarians estimate that the situation is not the best.

“I think that they gathered one or two hundred signatures. I do not know, we have not entered their ‘operations’, we do not know what they (SSN) are doing” Zmago Jelincic told us briefly.

Marjan Podobnik’s estimate was around ten times better.

“They gathered between one and two thousand” he said. He added that this was “not the tempo that was expected for collecting the signatures”.

Podobnik also claims that the organization failed, so it is probably this reason why they will not succeed with delaying the decision on ratifying Croatia’s entry into NATO. If the Slovenians decided that they do not want Croatia in NATO due to the border issue, according to the law, they cannot decide on the same thing for at least one year.

Closer to SSN – larger estimate

In the end, the former president of the SSN, Zdenko Vikov-Vincec, gave the most optimistic estimate for the number of signatures collected. Vincenc claims that his former party collected about ten thousand signatures, which could mean that the Slovenians, or Croatians, could experience a referendum.

The president of the party Lovro Skrinjaric did not answer our telephone calls, so we do not have a statement about the signatures and his expectations.

It seems that the mentioned answers show a certain pattern: the closer people are to the SSN party, their estimate is larger. Should this concern or relieve us is a question that will be known on March 26, when 40,000 signatures should be filed in order to start the referendum procedure.