Word: referendum
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...farmers' congress toss back vodka at a rate their visitor cannot match. Danuta Hübner, the demure and determined Polish Minister for European Affairs, has been hitting the boards in places like Skaradki for months to persuade Poles to vote yes to joining the E.U. in the national referendum set for next year. Amid the din, one of the delegates turns to her and speaks softly. "If we held an open vote in this room about joining the E.U., 100% would vote no," the man says. "But if you did a secret ballot, 90% would...
...Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is supposed to answer hundreds of thousands of opponents who marched through Caracas last week and gave him an ultimatum: either resign, call an early referendum on your presidency, or face a massive general business and labor strike this month. But Chavez, whose radical left-wing demagoguery has violently polarized the oil-rich nation, can probably afford to ignore the call - and not just because most of Venezuela's poor, who make up 80% of the population, are on his side. Chavez has another, albeit unlikely ally for the moment: George W. Bush...
...polls say Chavez, whose term ends in 2007, would win a referendum on his presidency, which, under Venezuela's new constitution, he is not required to call until next August. The impoverished masses who march for him, and who had little if no voice in pre-Chavez Venezuela, are the key to his resilience, just as Brazil's exasperated poor, fed up with the unfulfilled promises of a decade of capitalist reforms in Latin America, are likely to vote Workers Party candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva into the presidency next week. "The oligarchs in this country just want...
...prefecture unilaterally canceled a major nuclear power plant, a project as dear to Tokyo's planners as Nagano's dams. And in Tokushima, Governor Tadashi Ota won re-election in April 2002 by promising to stop construction of a giant sluice dam on the Yoshino River. In a recent referendum, 90% of Tokushima city voters opposed the dam. Nor is the trouble found only in outlying prefectures. Governor Akiko Domoto of Chiba, right on Tokyo's doorstep, announced in September 2001 that she was halting a project to fill in Sanbanze, Tokyo Bay's last major wetlands...
...Fighting words, and sources in Tehran tell Time that Khatami intends to back them with action - by calling a referendum on the issue if his adversaries use the legislative veto power of the hard-line Guardian Council to block his initiative. A president elected by a solid 70 percent majority on a mandate of reform and democratization is unlikely to have any trouble winning the electorate's endorsement, and the sense of panic in the hard-line camp is evident: Tehran sources reveal that some in the hard-line camp are pressing the unelected spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini...