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.
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