If premiership goes to referendum sure yes will win - Meloni

(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 14 - Premier Giorgia Meloni said on Tuesday she is sure that if the government's controversial constitutional reform introducing the direct election of the premier by the Italian people were to be put to a referendum the 'yes' vote would win.
    "We drafted the reform after gathering the sensitivities of the vast majority of Italians, listening to political forces, associations and social partners," Meloni told Affaritaliani.it.
    "Now it is before parliament, where we will work for it to reach a two-thirds majority," she continued.
    "If we fail to achieve this, the word will pass to the Italians" and "I am convinced that in that case" they will seize "the historic opportunity to take Italy into the Third Republic and make it a mature, more stable and efficient democracy", she added.
    Under the current system in Italy, parties engage in government-formation talks after a general election and then the coalition that forms a ruling majority in parliament agrees on a figure to propose to the President of the Republic to become premier.
    That figure is not necessarily one of the politicians given by the parties as their premier candidate during the election campaign.
    The centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD) has slammed the proposed reform as "dangerous", saying that it "weakens parliament and the prerogatives of the President of the Republic", PD Secretary Elly Schlein described it as "a distortion of the Constitution and the parliamentary Republic".
    "We will use every available dialectical tool in parliament to oppose a project that we consider to be dangerous," she continued. (ANSA).