The Senate on Wednesday forged
ahead on the government's Constitutional reform bill, even as
various opposition parties cried foul.
The bill is currently in the Upper House for its third
parliamentary reading and aims to overhaul Italy's slow, costly
political machinery, featuring a controversial transformation of
the Senate into a leaner assembly of local government
representatives with limited powers.
The Senate approved Articles 21, which changes the way the
president of the Republic is elected, with 161 in favor, three
nays and five abstaining.
Senators from the rightwing, anti-immigrant Northern League
party walked out before voting began.
"You trampled on the rules and transformed the future
Senate into a motel for politics. You're killing democracy,"
League Senate whip Gianmarco Centinaio said.
Senators from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S)
boycotted the vote, while remaining in the chamber.
Also in the opposition, the small leftwing Left Ecology and
Freedom (SEL) party said after the vote that it is withdrawing
all its amendments to the bill, except for one to Article 33.
"There is absolutely no sign on the part of the majority of
wanting to understand our reasons," said SEL Senate whip
Loredana De Petris. "There is a feeling of frustration. There's
no point wearing ourselves out to make you understand some
changes were necessary".
Earlier the Senate also passed Articles 12, 13 and 14,
which essentially rewrite Article 72 of the Constitution -
covering procedures for how proposed legislation is to be
debated and how laws are to be promulgated.
Since the government's bill would cut the Senate from its
current 315 members to a body of 100 members with limited
lawmaking powers, new rules will have to apply.
Also on Wednesday, the Upper House approved Article 17 of
the reform, which covers procedures for how to declare war.
It passed with 153 votes in favour, 107 against and nine
abstaining, in spite of the fact that 14 dissidents from Premier
Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD) bucked the party line and
voted in favour of an amendment tabled by one of their own,
Nerina Dirindin.
The rejected amendment said that an "absolute majority" of
MPs should be needed for a declaration of war. Another five PD
lawmakers abstained, but the government was helped by 28 votes
from members of Silvio Berlusconi's opposition center-right
Forza Italia (FI) party.
This led to the Northern League calling FI "Renzi's crutch"
and saying they won't team up with them again in future.
The opposition parties earlier in the day called a press
conference to announce they intend to write to President Sergio
Mattarella asking him to intervene over how Senate Speaker
Pietro Grasso is handling procedures during voting on the bill.
By the end of the day FI said it had written such a letter,
the contents of which it would not divulge.
The M5S also wrote a letter asking Mattarella for a
meeting, professing its "shock and dismay over the method which
with the form of the State and the republican government are
being manhandled".
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