Referendum against politicking and corruption
In Colombia the Referendum is a mechanism of citizen participation created by Colombian Law in 1994 and based on direct democracy, with which citizens can approve, reject or repeal legal or constitutional texts, laws or bills. In this way, there are two types of Referendums. The Approval Referendum, with which a bill or ordinance is submitted to the citizens for consideration to decide whether to approve it or to reject it, totally or partially; and the Repeal Referendum, with which a law already in force, a legislative act, law, ordinance, agreement or local resolution may be revoked by the citizens in some or all of its parts. A Referendum can be raised either by the executive or by the citizens, but in order for it to be carried out, it is necessary to obtain the signature of 5% of the electoral census and the approval by Congress, Assembly or Convention, according to the territorial level. In Colombia, only one referendum has adequately filled the whole process to reach the polls, which was against the politicking and corruption promoted by then-President Alvaro Uribe Vélez in 2003. With this Referendum, Uribe was seeking the acceptance of the citizenry on several proposals, including reducing the Congress of the Republic, the hardening of causal loss of investiture, the elimination of aid with public money, new resources for education and basic sanitation, a greater requirement for obtaining legal status by parties and political movements, and the elimination of territorial comptrollers. However, with a vote of 6 673 050 people, only the first question of this referendum managed to surpass the necessary threshold and was approved by the citizenship.
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- embedded in the constitution/legislation
- Frequency
- single
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields a binding decision
- Co-Governance
- yes
Means
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Ends
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