What is going on in Italy with the new Electoral law?

16th september 2005 | an italian

[an italian]

Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Italian Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini threatened to block a proposed electoral law backed by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, underscoring divisions within the ruling coalition less than a year before national elections.

Fini made the threat after the Union of Christian Democrats said they would seek to amend the draft legislation announced two days ago to eliminate a 4 percent threshold for parties to be given seats in parliament. Fini backs the voting limit to exclude marginal parties from gaining seats in legislature.

``What is essential is that the electoral law safeguard the bipolar system,'' said Fini, who heads the second-biggest party in the ruling coalition, the National Alliance, after a party meeting yesterday in Rome. The coalition agreed just a day earlier on the text of the bill.

The coalition in recent months has remained divided on everything from how to cut the budget deficit to whether Bank of Italy Governor Antonio Fazio should resign over his handling of a bank takeover battle. Berlusconi's allies trail the opposition by about 9 percentage points with about eight months to go before elections, according to polls.

Proportional Voting

The proposal would reintroduce proportional representation, which was abandoned in 1993 for a predominantly majority voting system. Berlusconi agreed to the new law after the Union of Christian Democrats, the No. 3 partner in his four-party coalition, threatened to run independently in the elections scheduled for May.

``I regret that one of our allies is setting traps and creating difficulties on our path,'' Marco Follini, the secretary of the Christian Democrats party, said today in Cagliari, Sardinia in response to Fini's comments, Ansa news agency reported. Fini ``will have to take full responsibility'' for his position, Follini said. His spokesman confirmed the comments.

The fight over the electoral law comes after two months of disagreement over what to do about Bank of Italy Governor Fazio, who Finance Minister Domenico Siniscalco says favored an Italian lender over a foreign one in a takeover battle for a local bank. Wiretapped phone calls made during a criminal investigation showed Fazio, who isn't under investigation, kept the chief executive officer of the Italian bidder informed of the central bank's oversight.

Fazio

Siniscalco and Fini called for Fazio to resign, while the Northern League, the smallest party in the coalition, defended the governor. Berlusconi said Siniscalco's position was ``justified'' without ever calling for Fazio to step down.

The fight over Fazio has prevented the government advancing its legislative agenda. With two weeks before a deadline to present its 2006 budget to parliament, the administration hasn't figured out how it will meet its deficit reduction targets, which will require more than 20 billion euros in spending cuts and revenue measures.

``The government started quarreling over Fazio and it showed that they were divided,'' said Franco Pavoncello, a professor of political science at Rome's John Cabot University. The electoral law ``is a bone thrown'' to appease the Christian Democrats in an attempt to head off another dispute, Pavoncello said.

More than half of Italy's of voters surveyed said they would vote for the opposition, according to an Ispo Ltd. poll published in Corriere della Sera newspaper on Sept. 13. That compared with compared with 37.7 percent for Berlusconi's coalition, according to the poll of 1,607 of voters conducted on Sept. 7-8 with a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

Opposition United

``It's going to take a miracle for Berlusconi to win,'' said James Walston, chief professor of international relations at the American University in Rome. ``The government has run out of steam.''

While the proposed election legislation has divided the ruling bloc, it has united the nine-party opposition coalition. The legislation, proposed so close to elections, is an attempt to fix the results and a threat to the democratic process, said opposition leader Romano Prodi.

The proposed law includes a mechanism that would give the coalition that wins only a relative majority of votes an absolute majority in parliament. That mechanism combined with the 4 percent threshold would penalize the opposition, Prodi said.

``This proposal must simply be rejected,'' Prodi said yesterday in a speech to lawmakers. ``There are moments in the history of nations and parliaments in which nothing less than democracy is at stake.''

The opposition's coalition includes five parties that probably wouldn't gather 4 percent of the national vote, but which when added together may win about 10 percent. Were those parties' not to make it into parliament, the governing coalition could take control without winning a majority of votes, Prodi said.

[Tribune7]

Interesting. Thanks

[JasonC]

It is a good proposal, and those opposing it are helping keep the Italian political system disfunctional. When laws like this exist, small splinter groups are forced to enter larger parties and work things out with the leaders of those larger parties. It ensures compromise, there is nothing undemocratic about it. Parties can form electoral alliances by simply asking their supporters to vote for larger party X while negotiating with the leaders of X for some portion of its party-list seats. It enforces organization and working together with others of similar views. It also makes the process of forming majorities in the parliament much more straightforward.