Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – The green-black state government wants to strengthen citizen participation and also give reluctant people a voice. “We get the quiet citizens to speak,” said Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) on Tuesday in Stuttgart. In the future, a forum with so-called random citizens is to be set up ahead of even more legislative projects. Modern societies are strongly influenced by lobby groups and citizens’ groups that use campaigns to express their opinions. But you shouldn’t just listen to “the loud ones”. By selecting random citizens who should come from all parts of society, it could be possible to discuss new arguments in the case of significant legislative projects. Because: “Random citizens don’t have an iron in the fire.”
Barbara Bosch, State Councilor for Civil Society and Citizen Participation, explained that the country is changing its strategy with the citizens’ forums. In the past, the “politics of being heard” propagated by Kretschmann was about getting the opinions of minorities. Now it’s about “giving the silent majority a hearing”. The people would be selected by lot, strict attention was paid to the fact that there were differences in age, gender and origin. There will be two citizen forums per year. These would then be on a par with the hearing of the associations after a draft law.
Experience shows that the citizens involved know that the primary concern is to be heard and that not every vote is reflected in the law. After all, you have a representative democracy in which the parliaments ultimately decide. As examples where a citizens’ forum would have been possible, Bosch mentioned the national park in the Black Forest or the state hunting law.