The main goal of every democracy is to ensure the citizens with as large as possible representation and participation in the government. The practice of a classic referendum is extremely clumsy and expensive, since just like the elections requires election committees (over 530 for the Municipality of Plovdiv), bulletins, envelopes, security and waste of time for the citizens. For the region of Plovdiv the approximate cost of a referendum would be 600 000 -650 000 lv. The decision of Plovdiv Municipality is to use a correct representative excerpt, which would represent the opinion of all citizens of Plovdiv. Association for Plovdiv Revival developed a project for All-town meeting , supported by the United States Agency for International Development. With the cooperation of the Plovdiv Municipal Council, the first stage of the project was realized in 1998. In the fall of 2002, the Association for Plovdiv Revival with the cooperation of the Delegation of the European Union started realizing the second stage of the project All-town representative meeting , also called small referendums . The second stage continued in the year 2003.
The main goals of the All-town meetings are the following:
- to experiment with a modulus of a Plovdiv all-town meeting as an example of a direct democracy;
- to inspire the citizens of Plovdiv to confident in the usefulness of the results of the citizens activities and the significance of the public opinion;
- to establish new ways of interaction among the non-government organizations and the local authorities; to stabilize the authority and the role of the NGO s as representatives of the civil society;
- to develop democratic attitude of recognizing the public opinion among the representatives of the local authorities;
- to resolve a number of important local problems together with the election officials for the sake of the city sustainable development;
The All-town meeting of the citizens of Plovdiv held two sessions with the participation of over 1000 citizens, included in the representative excerpt.
The materials and methods used are the following:
- highly precise one-exponent representative excerpt;
- plenty of information materials covering the referendum problem, showing all the opinions of the citizens represented in the excerpt;
- options for direct or distant voting (through the mail);
Plovdiv Municipal Council adopted a system to recognize the vote of the citizens included in the representative excerpt. The Council included the referendum matter in its agenda and voted citizens proposals. This way, the Municipal Council recognized the All-town meeting as a Referendum. Any decision is enforced only if both organs approved it (e.g. it is a form of bicameral parliament). In case of contradictory positions, the decision of the Municipal Council is the valid one, but only after it has been worked on again in the different commissions, and once again voted for with a qualified majority. The decision for this procedure ( 126 since 1998) was taken according to the proposal of the Association for Plovdiv revival. Enforcing it means establishing of a mechanism of influence of the citizens opinion on particular decisions of the municipal counselors. The innovative form of small referendums applied in Plovdiv represents realistic, inexpensive, and effective combination of direct and representative democracy.
There were two small referendums with the participation of approximately 2000 citizens. The first one discussed the problem with the homeless dogs, and the second one the establishment of environmental police. These matters were subjected to voting by the Municipal Council of Plovdiv. The municipal administration started executing the decisions taken by the municipal counselors and the citizens. Citizens interest towards participation in the local self-government, as well as their trust in the power of civil society has significantly grown due to this initiative.
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