Opposition blasts Renzi, Napolitano

(see related)(ANSA) - Rome, April 15 - Opposition politicians on Friday blasted Premier Matteo Renzi and former president Giorgio Napolitano for urging voters to abstain from Sunday's referendum on offshore drilling.
    Deputy Lower House Speaker Luigi Di Maio from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) said Napolitano's call for abstention is "scandalous in a country where we're already having enormous problems with voters abstaining...I'm going to vote and I'm voting 'yes'," he said.
    A yes vote on the April 17 referendum would strike down an option to renew existing 30-year concessions for offshore oil and gas prospecting and drilling in Italy's Adriatic Sea.
    The Lower House whip for Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party, Renato Brunetta, accused Renzi and Napolitano of "attacking the Constitution", which says "voting is a civic duty".
    Puglia Governor Michele Emiliano - who is from Renzi's Democratic Party (PD) - tweeted that encouraging abstention is "a violation of the Constitution".
    Genoa Mayor Marco Doria from the Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) party said Renzi government purposely wasted taxpayer money by not including the referendum in June local elections for the sole purpose of "undermining participation" and voter turnout.
    Monsignor Giancarlo Maria Bregantini, the Catholic archbishop of Campobasso-Bojano in the Abruzzo and Molise regions, told La Repubblica daily paper that he will vote "yes" and that he hopes authorities will promote "a more environmentally respectful lifestyle with the use of renewable energies".
    Renzi wrote in his online newsletter Thursday that abstaining from the referendum is "constitutionally legitimate".
    Renzi has berated the referendum promoters - led by Greenpeace environmentalist group and local administrations - for wanting to "shut down working plants, losing 11,000 jobs and increasing fuel imports from Arab countries or Russia".
    Supporters of the referendum - which was promoted by nine Adriatic coastal regions and environmentalists - say offshore drilling damages to the marine ecosystem on which Italy's tourist and fishing industries depend and that the risk is not worth the reward.