Thursday could be a key day for a
controversial bill to introduce a new election law.
The bill, nicknamed the Rosatellum, is set to be put to a
third confidence vote in the Lower House after passing two on
Wednesday.
It could then face a final test in the Lower House with a
secret vote, when it risks being scuppered if lawmakers
belonging to groups backing the bill do not following the line
of their parties.
The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the
left-wing MDP groups both staged protests in Rome on Wednesday
against the bill and the use of confidence votes to try to push
it through.
There is also tension within the ruling Democratic Party (PD)
and former president Giorgio Napolitano criticised the
confidence move, lamenting the limitations it put on the
parliamentary debate and lawmakers' ability for shape the bill.
Ex-premier Massimo D'Alema, a member of PD splinter group
MDP, blasted the bill as "an unacceptable law, the (PD) leaders
are wearing out democracy".
Those who attack the ruling centre-left democratic Party (PD)
weaken the only "bulwark against populism," PD leader Matteo
Renzi said Wednesday, citing as populists the anti-establishment
5-Star Movement, former centre-right premier Silvio Berlusconi
and the anti-euro, anti-migrant Northern League (LN).
On the PD-led government's controversial use of confidence
votes to push through an election-law bill, ex-premier Renzi
recalled that postwar Christian Democrat statesman Alcide De
Gasperi used confidence votes for key policies.
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