Word: referendums
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...vota,” or “Life can’t be put to a vote.” Responding to calls from Benedict and the College of Cardinals to boycott the vote, the vast majority of eligible Italian voters declined to take part in the referendum, thus voiding its results...
Having laid low while President Jacques Chirac took the heat for losing France's referendum on the European constitution, Nicolas Sarkozy is back, in the guise of a self-styled crimebuster. After an 11-year-old boy was killed by a stray bullet while washing the family car in La Courneuve, a desolate banlieue outside Paris, France's newly reappointed Interior Minister vowed that "the thugs will disappear" and that he'd "cleanse" the quarter. Two days later, Sarkozy decried that a man who had been granted early release from life imprisonment is now implicated in the June murder...
Even so, to many the effort seemed hopeless only two weeks ago. Anti-NATO activists were attracting hundreds of thousands to rallies. Also, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, head of the Popular Alliance, the main conservative opposition party, urged people to abstain, claiming the referendum was just a political ploy by the Socialists. One prominent voter who ignored the boycott was popular King Juan Carlos, who said he was doing his "civic duty" when he and Queen Sofia cast ballots amid television cameras at a school near their Madrid palace. The King does not vote in municipal and general elections so that...
...countries of Western Europe, only Ireland, which is 95% Roman Catholic, and tiny Malta still ban divorce. That could soon change, at least in Ireland. Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald last week announced plans for a summer referendum on whether to amend the constitution to permit couples to end their marriages legally. If voters approve, the government will seek legislation allowing husbands and wives to divorce after five years of separation...
...referendum is overwhelmingly opposed by Ireland's Catholic hierarchy. But a poll taken in February by the Market Research Bureau of Ireland found that 77% of those surveyed favored divorce in some circumstances. FRANCE A Teenager for All Seasons...