(ANSA) - Lucca, August 22 - The next general election will be held in 2018 no matter what the outcome of a winter referendum on the government's constitutional reform law, Premier Matteo Renzi said at the weekend.
This appears to run counter to previous statements in which the reformist premier said he was staking his political future on the referendum result, and that if a majority of Italians nix his constitutional reform law he was ready to quit.
Renzi said Monday he invited the National Partisans Association (ANPI) of Resistance fighters who battled the Nazi occupation of Italy in World War II to a "public debate" on the contents of the referendum on his government's constitutional reform law to revamp Italy's notoriously slow, costly and inefficient political machinery. Neither he nor his center-left Democratic Party (PD) fear debate on the contents of the referendum, Renzi wrote on his online newsletter. ANPI said in May it would vote against the reform. This was followed by a comment by Reform Minister Maria Elena Boschi that"real partisans would vote 'yes' on the referendum", to which ANPI replied it would "resist attempts at intimidation".
Renzi's reform would, among other things, reduce the Senate from its current 300 members to an assembly of 100 regional officials with limited lawmaking powers in a bid to break the gridlock Italian politics is famous for.
Under Italian law, any changes to the Constitution must be approved by popular referendum.
That reform ending the Senate's equal status to the House was passed into law on April 12 by 361 votes to 7 after opposition parties boycotted the vote.