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Italian deputies balk at electoral reform plan: Parliament debates new electoral law

Patricia Clough
Monday 14 June 1993 23:02 BST
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AFTER months of bickering, a bill supposed to transform Italy's bankrupt electoral system finally landed yesterday before the Chamber of Deputies. Members were asked to approve a bill which would replace the ultra-proportional voting method with one that would condemn many of them to oblivion.

Many are sour because they are under investigation for corruption, or because they do not want to lose prestige and privileges. Sabotage similar to the House's shock refusal to allow proceedings against the former prime minister Bettino Craxi for corruption, is not ruled out. To avoid 'ambushes', two deputies yesterday demanded that the optional secret vote be abolished before starting work on the bill. The Speaker, Giorgio Napol itano, said there was no time and urged groups and parties to show 'responsibility' by not calling for secret voting.

'It is time to decide,' Sergio Mattarella, the Christian Democrat who drew up the bill, told the House. Under his bill, three-quarters of the Chamber would be elected by a British-style first-past-the-post system. The remaining 25 per cent would be elected on separate ballot sheets under a proportional system. Parties with less than 4 per cent of the vote would not get seats.

Critics argue that the provisions for a proportional component would undermine the stability offered by a majority system, and would perpetuate a larger number of parties instead of forcing them to merge into fewer bigger ones.

Above all, they see it as an attempt to salvage the party bur eaucracies, since it is they - not the voters - who would have to decide which candidates entered parliament in the proportional contingent. Discredited politicians with no hope of being elected directly could get back into parliament, they fear.

The Senate electoral law was reformed on majority lines in the referendum in April which made it clear that the nation wanted such a system.

Remarkably, the bill arrived in parliament on schedule. Leopoldo Elia, the Minister for Electoral and Institutional Reform, said: 'This allows us to hope that it will be passed before the summer recess as the government had asked.'

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