Kathmandu (Pahichan) October 8 – A referendum to change Romania\u2019s constitution to prevent same sex couples from securing the right to marry failed to draw enough voters to validate the result on Sunday, after a campaign that led to a rise in hate speech against the gay community.<\/p>\n
Data from the national election bureau showed voter turnout stood at 20.4 percent when the polls closed at 1800 GMT, below the 30 percent required for it to be valid.<\/p>\n
The two-day referendum, which cost $40 million, aimed to change the constitution to define marriage as strictly between a man and a woman from the current gender-neutral \u201cspouses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Civil society group Coalition for the Family secured 3 million signatures to trigger the vote aimed at preventing gay couples winning the right to marry in the future.<\/p>\n
The Coalition received backing from the Orthodox Church and other religions as well as all but one parliamentary parties.<\/p>\n
\u201cRomanians rejected being divided and hating each other, it is a victory for Romanian democracy and moreover, Romanians rejected the involvement of the Orthodox Church in the state\u2019s secular affairs,\u201d said Vlad Viski of LGBT rights group MozaiQ.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe politicians must now legalize civil partnerships for same sex couples,\u201d he said at a party to celebrate the outcome.<\/p>\n
They have encouraged people to boycott the ballot, with several companies and popular musicians and artists following. A library chain even offered a book discount over the weekend for those who wanted to stay in and read rather than vote.<\/p>\n
In villages across the country, people were quoted saying they had better things to do, such as canning food and making wine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe PSD staked everything on the referendum, by associating with it and trying to capitalize on it,\u201d said Sergiu Miscoiu, a political science professor at Babes-Bolyai University.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat remains is the fact that many citizens have associated the initiative with the PSD and that is why they boycotted it. Either way, it is a major sanction against the government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senior PSD member Codrin Stefanescu accused opposition parties and centrist President Klaus Iohannis of misinforming Romanians in the run-up to the vote.<\/p>\n
PSD leader Liviu Dragnea, whose appeal against a criminal conviction in an abuse of office case starts on Monday, told reporters after voting \u201cYes\u201d to the change on Saturday that Romanians had to decide the kind of country they wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know that for years we\u2019ve been told others know what is best for us better than we do. I believe it is time we decide what kind of society and country we want to have and how we want to live in our country,\u201d Dragnea said.<\/p>\n
Days before the vote, the government relaxed anti-fraud monitoring and limited options for challenging the result.<\/p>\n
Romania ranks 25th out of 28 EU states based on legislation, hate speech and discrimination against LGBT people, an annual study by ILGA-Europe, an umbrella organization advocating equality, showed.<\/p>\n
Source : REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kathmandu (Pahichan) October 8 – A referendum to change Romania\u2019s constitution to prevent same sex couples from securing the right to marry failed to draw enough voters to validate the result on Sunday, after a campaign that led to a rise in hate speech against the gay community.<\/p>\n
The vote has also been seen as popularity test of the ruling Social Democrat Party (PSD) that supported the change and whose attempts to weaken anti-corruption legislation have drawn criticism from the European Union\u2019s executive.<\/p>\n
Data from the national election bureau showed voter turnout …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":11163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,621,490,11],"tags":[953,524],"class_list":["post-11162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-issue","category-news","category-slider","category-world","tag-ilga","tag-lgbt"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11164,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11162\/revisions\/11164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}