Italian Senate approves electoral law; likely to produce hung-parliament

President Sergio Mattarella had called on parliament to draw up a new law to harmonise the existing voting rules that risked throwing up different results in the two houses. (Reuters/File)

Italy’s upper house Senate approved on Thursday a new electoral system that is expected to handicap the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement at a forthcoming national election and favour mainstream political blocs. The bill has already been approved by the lower house thanks to a battery of confidence motions that swept aside all opposition and now only needs a green light from the head of state to become law. This is expected in the coming days.

The voting system, a mix of proportional representation and first-past-the-post, should benefit parties that form pre-election coalitions — something the 5-Star has always ruled out. With opinion polls pointing to a three-way split between the centre-left, centre-right and 5-Star, analysts say the new electoral law will not produce a clear-cut winner at the next election, which is due by May 2018.

Italy has had 64 governments since the end of World War Two, including five in the past seven years, and a renewed bout of political instability in the euro zone’s third largest economy could hurt global financial markets. To prevent a financial backlash, analysts say some form of grand coalition between the more moderate parties on the left and right is likely to emerge from any ballot-box stalemate.

“You are all the same. You don’t have any ideas or any policies, just the same mission: to keep hold of your seats and continue to squeeze the country dry,” the 5-Star Senate leader Giovanni Endrissi told the upper chamber on Thursday.

MEDIATION

President Sergio Mattarella had called on parliament to draw up a new law to harmonise the existing voting rules that risked throwing up different results in the two houses. All previous attempts at reform fell foul of political infighting but, unexpectedly, the ruling Democratic Party of former prime minister Matteo Renzi struck a deal with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party over a revised voting system. The rightist Northern League also backed the initiative.

The bill was approved by the Senate by 214 votes to 61. “This law is the fruit of delicate mediation between coalition and opposition parties, which are very different parties with very different interests,” said Luigi Zanda, Senate leader of the Democratic Party (PD).

This will be Italy’s third electoral law since 1993 and gives political leaders the power to pack electoral lists with supporters, potentially stifling internal party debate. The first-past-the-post element will benefit parties that have a strong local base, notably the Northern League, which looks set to win a large majority of seats in the wealthy north.

Approval of the electoral law leaves parliament with one final task to complete before the houses can be dissolved — the reading of the 2018 budget. Small leftist groups, angered by the electoral law which could crimp their numbers in the next legislature, have said they will no longer support Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, meaning he could struggle to win backing for the budget. “The country has total need of the budget … I dread to think what would happen to workers, families, citizens if it is not approved,” the PD’s Zanda told the Senate.