Socialists abandon signature drive for Sunday shopping referendum

Budapest, May 19 (MTI) – The Socialist Party has stopped collecting supporting signatures for a referendum on scrapping the already-repealed law on Sunday shopping restrictions, lawmaker Zoltán Gőgös told the Thursday edition of daily Magyar Idők.

The signature drive was abandoned two-three weeks ago, Gőgös said. He said the party had made the decision to end the campaign because “it can now see guarantees” that the government will not reintroduce the law.

He revealed that the Constitutional Court has also thrown out the party’s referendum initiative.

After parliament scrapped the law in mid-April, the Socialists continued collecting signatures for the referendum they had initiated against Sunday shopping restrictions because they believed there was a chance that the government could bring it back in the future.

Gőgös told Magyar Idők that the reason why his party had pushed for a referendum to ensure that the shopping law could not be restored for a period of three years was because government office chief János Lázár and Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén had been “unclear” about whether or not the government intended to bring it back.

He said his party would continue collecting signatures for the referendums concerning the government’s state-owned land privatisation programme and the introduction of a 2 million forint (EUR 6,300) cap on public officials’ salaries. So far, they have collected 150,000 signatures for each question, he said.

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Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters