Voting on Premier Matteo Renzi's
Constitutional reform bill resumed Wednesday after the Senate
OK'd the use of the so-called "kangaroo rule" to speed up work
on some 7,800 amendments filed by opponents of the bill.
"They will run out of time, but we won't run out of
patience," the premier tweeted in thanks to his MPs.
The kangaroo rule, which says that the outcome of voting on
one amendment automatically counts for all similar amendments,
was used late on Tuesday on an amendment submitted by the
opposition Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) party, knocking 1,400
similar amendments off the Senate to-do list.
SEL has filed 6,000 amendments in a bid to obstruct passage
of the bill, which it says the government is not open to
debating.
While the word 'kangaroo' is not written in any Senate
rulebook, it is in common usage and has given rise to other
related terms such as 'kangarooed' and 'unkangarooable'.
MPs from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which has
tabled 200 amendments to Renzi's bill, 'voiced' their discontent
in the shape of a stuffed kangaroo, which Speaker Pietro Grasso
immediately ordered removed.
"Stuffed animals are not allowed," Grasso reprimanded them.
The Senate then proceeded to vote down a proposal to keep
the Upper House the way it is, and an opposite one suggesting it
should be removed entirely.
While opponents and supporters of his reform duked it out
on the Senate floor, Premier Matteo Renzi reiterated that his
bill must pass at all costs.
"This is the right time, no matter what the cost," Renzi
said.
"These reforms are not the whim of an authoritarian
premier," Renzi said.
"They are the only way to get Italy out of the
conservatism, the quagmire, the stagnation that are in danger of
taking over the mind as well the economy. I'm not leaving the
future to those who are resigned (to defeat)".
Renzi's reform bill aims to overhaul Italy's slow, costly
political machinery by reducing the number of Senators and
transforming the Upper House into an assembly of regional
officials with limited lawmaking powers.
Senators have been ordered to work this week from 9am
through midnight, seven days a week and with speaking time
limits, in order to complete a first reading of the reform bill
before parliament's summer recess next month.
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