Word: referendum
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Miami politicians with a reputation for probity, had raised the salaries of his chief of staff and other top lieutenants this year as high as 15% while calling for a 5% pay cut for county workers. Alvarez spokesperson Victoria Mallette says the raises resulted from a 2007 referendum that gave Miami-Dade's mayor, until then a relatively weak post, broad new powers that in turn thrust heavier duties on his staff. She also notes that Alvarez actually cut his office's budget last year by almost 15% and that he helped build an $80 million reserve fund. Still...
...electoral scenario became even muddier just before midnight Tuesday. On the face of it, the decision by Colombia's lower house should be a clear victory for the popular president. It approved by a bill to hold a nationwide referendum on the president's right to a third term. Had lawmakers rejected the measure, Uribe's hopes would have died. Instead, "the Colombian Congress has responded to the popular will of the people," said Interior Minister Fabio Valencia Cossio, who shepherded the bill through the Congress. "It was an act of grandeur." (Read a story about the huge populations displaced...
...rather than steamrolling to a third term, the clock may now be running out on Colombia's president. Uribe must register as a candidate by March 13, 2010. But there are several steps to go through before then. After Uribe signs the referendum bill, the new law must be sanctioned by the Constitutional Court, which, though dominated by pro-Uribe magistrates, could take up to five months to get through numerous legal challenges, according to Rafael Pardo, a presidential candidate for the opposition Liberal Party. Valencia Cassio, the interior minister, predicts a decision by December. But even if the court...
...referendum itself, at least one-quarter of the electorate - about 7 million people - would then have to show up at polling places with the "yes" votes outnumbering the "no's" by at least one. But in Latin America it's notoriously difficult to convince citizens to turn out for referendums. That means Uribe will have to spend a lot of energy on a get-out-the-vote compaign just to ensure enough people vote to make the referendum valid. He might just barely make it across the registration deadline. If he does, he will have two-and-a-half months...
...would put too much power in the hands of Uribe, turning him into a right-wing version of Hugo Chávez. Others, like Senator German Vargas Lleras who is the grandson of a former president, want a crack at the top job themselves. That's why the original referendum bill in Congress would have allowed Uribe to run in 2014 but not 2010. It took months of arm-twisting by the goverment to change the language in the final version, and even at that the measure barely squeaked through: the government coalition needed 84 votes Tuesday night...