Latvia will spend upwards of 1 million lats to decide how to cut excessive government spending.

The Central Election Commission announced late Oct. 5 that enough voters -13 percent - signed a petition that authorizes a public referendum on controversial cuts in the country_s pension system. By 9 p.m., just over 179,000 people had signed the petition, said Kristine Berzina, a commission spokeswoman; Latvian law requires one-tenth of its voters, or just over 134,000 people, to support a referendum before it can go forward. The referendum drive was launched by opposition parties this summer shortly after the new government, feverish to trim the state budget, announced a package of pension amendments that would have rapidly raised the retirement age and prohibited working pensioners from simultaneously collecting a salary and a pension. The cuts were condemned as draconian and insensitive by opposition parties, trade unions and pensioners. "We achieved our aim, that [the government] will not interfere with social and economic rights without our permission," said Juris Bojars, head of the Latvian Social Democratic Alliance that spearheaded the referendum campaign. "It was our aim to have them acknowledge that they made a mistake." Preliminary results showed support for the referendum was highest in the Latgale region in eastern Latvia, home to some of the country_s_ poorest cities. In Rezekne, 37.9 percent of voters backed the referendum, in Daugavpils, 33.8 percent. In the affluent western port city of Ventspils, 19.8 percent of voters signed the petition. Juris Radzevics, chairman of the Latvian Free Trade Union, told the Baltic News Service that the results ought to be a lesson to the government: social problems must be solved through consensus and dialogue. Opposition parties and Latvia_s pensioners, many of whom joined a protest march against the proposals in downtown Riga Oct. 1, say this is exactly what the government did not do in August, when it pushed through cuts to social insurance.