Earlier this year the first digital citizen’s initiative was organized to force parliament to talk about the right of citizens to light fireworks at New Year (the people behind the initiative want that right taken away). Recently however the committee that needs to verify whether citizen’s initiatives are legit, led by former Minister of the Interior Johan Remkes, has shot down the fireworks initiative with the most spurious arguments, reports Geen Commentaar (Dutch):

He states that minister Ter Horst indicated at a committee meeting on January 29, 2008, that she did not wish to outlaw consumer fireworks. According to Remkes, “parliament has implicitly endorsed this point of view by not tabling any motions from which the opposite could be inferred.”

And with that kind of argument he basically killed every future citizen’s initiative.

On a totally unrelated matter, yesterday I heard three politicians on the radio whine, again, that citizens are not interested in politics and that they seem think all politicians are crooks. Hm…