REFERENDUMS… OR ‘FALSE FLAGS’
UKRAINE Leonid Pasechnik wants a binary referendum in Luhansk, all part of Putin’s war effort… to break-up Ukraine. As were the referendums 8 years ago in Crimea, Donetsk, etc., and the word Scotland (Shotlandiya Шотландия) was used by Russian separatists in 2014, to ‘justify’ the unjustifiable.
BOSNIA Although “all the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a referendum,” (Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo’s newspaper, 7.2.1999), Milorad Dodik wants yet another referendum in Republika Srpska… to break-up Bosnia. He’s also rattling his sabres, asking for the establishment of a separate RS army.
GEORGIA Anatoly Bibilov wants a similar plebiscite in South Ossetia, a ‘yes-or-no’ on joining Russia… to break-up Georgia. It could restart the 2008 war.
IRELAND Sinn Féin is (still) asking for a border poll.
SCOTLAND The SNP, which in 1992 argued for a multi-option ballot, (now) wants a binary poll. (A Multi-option Referendum – Let the People Decide, SNP Research Department, May 1992.)
CATALONIA Ramón Llull, a Catalan, the father of social choice, spoke of preferential voting, in 1299. He’s now gyrating in his grave, poor feller; some of the worst (non-fatal) violence in the 2017 binary referendum was outside the Ramón Llull University…
TAIWAN ………….
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And so it goes on, division, threats of violence, and seldom any talk of multi-option decision-making. And yet the UK held a three-option plebiscite in Newfoundland in 1948. Guam had six options in 1982, when they settled their constitutional status. Why can’t we enjoy more nuanced debates? Pluralism, multi-option voting, is possible; preferential voting can even be consensual...
Peter Emerson
Director, the de Borda Institute
Russian speaker, (and some Serbo-Croat). OSCE election observer in 10 contests in Ukraine, 2004-14; 1 in Russia, 2004; 4 in Bosnia, 19896-2000. Served in the EUMM for South Ossetia in Georgia, 2008-9.
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