ptaipale

The recent dramatic policy shift in Russia has brought out two Citizens' Initiatives in the Finnish government's net portal. Both are about NATO membership in the country which is traditionally militarily non-aligned.

First initiative (open Feb 21) proposes a NATO membership referendum, the other (open Feb 28) proposes that parliament should go ahead to membership procedures without referendum, because of expected Russian harrasment and influence on the referendum procedures.

The government portal for initiatives has been very slow today. The authentication to sign any of the initiatives is done either by a person ID smartcard, or bank-based identification. Most people use the bank authentication (in most cases 2FA using mobile phone) because they don't bother with smart card readers.

The first of the initiatives has already passed the threshold (50 000) which automatically brings it to the table in Parliament. The other initiative has collected 35 000 signatures in 30 hours, meaning it will also pass the threshold tomorrow, despite many people not being able to sign it due to bank connections failing under DDoS.

YLE (state broadcaster) news about the attack: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-12338542

Initiative 1 (referendum): https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/9866 Initiative 2 (parliament direct decision): https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/9997