Voting resumes on Renzi's Senate reform

(ANSA) - Rome, October 5 - The Senate on Monday continued voting on the government's hotly contested Constitutional reform bill aimed at revamping Italy's slow, costly political machinery.
    The Upper House was called on to read Article 6 of the 41-article bill named after Reform Minister Maria Elena Boschi.
    Article 6 calls for changes to Article 64 of the Constitution, which covers Upper and Lower House rules. The Boschi bill would add commas saying house rules "guarantee the rights of parliamentary minorities" and that the Lower House has authority over the statute of the oppositions.
    The government's bill would also specify that members of parliament have a duty to show up for all parliamentary sessions as well as the meetings of any committees they may sit on.
    Absenteeism is a huge problem among Italy's elected officials.
    The Senate in a secret vote struck down an amendment to Article 6 of the bill filed by the rightwing Northern League, which had previously filed 82 million amendments to the bill in an unsuccessful effort at obstructionism.
    Voting resumed in the early evening after the Senate Speaker's council met to discuss disciplinary measures against Senators Lucio Barani and Vincenzo D'Anna for making obscene gestures at female colleagues during debate on Friday. Barani, a Socialist who leads the so-called Liberal-Popular Alliance - Autonomies (ALA) caucus, allegedly mimed a blow job in the direction of Senator Barbara Lezzi from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S). D'Anna, also from ALA, allegedly repeated it. This caused women Senators from various parties to attack Barani, demanding he apologize, and Senate Speaker Pietro Grasso had to suspend the session for several minutes in the ensuing clamor. The alleged culprits, however, insisted their gestures had been "misunderstood", but disciplinary action was taken nevertheless and the two Senators were suspended for five days each. The liberal, center-right ALA emerged from a split from Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party and is led by Senator Denis Verdini, who wants to support the reforms put forward by center-left Premier Matteo Renzi and his Democratic Party (PD).
    On Monday, ex-PD leader Pier Luigi Bersani lamented the new alliance with Verdini's ALA as "a debasement" of his center-left party's values and ideals. Also on Monday, the Speaker's council suspended M5S Senator Alberto Airola for one day after finding he insulted members of government and Senate secretaries. M5S whip Gianluca Castaldi got censured, as did the caucus of the rightwing, anti-immigrant Northern League party for waving fake bills in the Senate to imply vote-buying by the ruling majority. Grasso said the incidents "are so serious they offended persons and Senators, and undermined the credibility of the institutions". "From now on, no exception to the principle of decorum will be tolerated," he added, calling on whips to "cooperate" to avoid further "conduct unbecoming" to parliament.