Robert Van Voren: Dutch referendum blessing for Putin’s “useful idiots”
For the past twenty-five years I have been working in Ukraine, mainly in the field of mental health care reform and the defense of human rights. During the same twenty-five years, as a Dutch citizen, I voted for the political party D’66, a democratic-liberal party that after many years of lobbying managed to introduce the referendum concept into Dutch political life as a means to decrease the gap between the people and political structures. How paradoxical it is, that it is this very referendum tool that has become a threat to the democracy we have enjoyed since World War Two.