Electoral law: FdI’s amendment on preferential votes rejected. Meloni fumes: ‘The quagmire has won; we need to reflect’

The majority fails the secret ballot on preferences and fixed-position list leaders. The FdI amendment is rejected by a single vote (187 in favour, 188 against), scuppered by around thirty rebels. The opposition is jubilant, calling for a government crisis and an early election. But the centre-right intends to put this defeat behind it and press ahead with the bill’s approval.

The debate on the motion continues in the Chamber until midnight. The centre-left’s request to suspend proceedings following the rejection of the preferential votes is rejected. In a late-night development, opposition MPs ‘occupy’ the Chamber and call for proceedings to be suspended over the video footage showing Vannacciani’s supporters filming their secret votes to avoid accusations of being mavericks. They also point the finger at the Futuro Nazionale MP, Domenico Furgiuele, who is alleged to have uttered Hitler’s name in the Chamber. But that is not all. During the night-time sitting, the opposition parties (M5S, AVS, PD, IV and Più Europa) also announced, in protest, the withdrawal of all amendments except for the one concerning students living away from home and those relating to digital signatures and the rules for standing for election.

Meloni, who ‘stood her ground’ on the amendment – going so far as to challenge the opposition by calling for a roll-call vote rather than a secret ballot – made no secret of her anger and disappointment that evening (“We gave it a go. The quagmire has won again”) and admitted that “the majority fell short by several votes” and that “we need to reflect on this”.

FdI leader Antonio Tajani describes it as a ‘hiccup’. And he assures us: ‘We’re moving forward’. ‘Let’s get this measure through and then we’ll take stock of the situation,’ adds Galeazzo Bignami, FdI’s parliamentary group leader in the Chamber of Deputies. The majority’s objective therefore remains to approve the ‘Stabilicum’ (a proportional system with a majority bonus of 55–57 per cent for the party that exceeds 42 per cent of the vote by the widest margin, and a requirement to nominate a candidate for Prime Minister), which has been under consideration in the Chamber of Deputies since yesterday. Closed lists remain in place. And goodbye to preferential voting. In any case, as Ignazio La Russa points out, there may be a second round in the Senate, where no ‘secret ballot’ is envisaged on this point and there will be a ‘real possibility of amending – even in a targeted manner – what was voted on in the Chamber of Deputies’.

Late in the evening in the Chamber of Deputies, the worst-case scenario for the Prime Minister thus came to pass. On a day that saw a full house – a sight rarely witnessed in the Chamber – with ministers who are also MPs rushing to their seats after the Council of Ministers meeting to take part in a vote that ended in a way the centre-right had not anticipated. All the more so as the rapporteurs and the government gave their approval to Meloni’s amendment on preferential votes, after initially intending to leave the matter to the Chamber.