Melonellum 2.0 ready, oppositions on the barricades

Said and done. The Melonellum 2.0 was deposited as the new basic text, at the end of the general debate, in the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Deputies chaired by Nazario Pagano. And shortly before, the Capigruppo calendared the electoral reform that overcomes the uninominal constituencies of the Rosatellum, and with them the risk of a 'tie' in next year's political elections, for 26 June.

An 'unacceptable forcing' for the opposition parties, who return to sender the majority's vulgate about changes made to accommodate their remarks. "It is ridiculous to claim that the majority's new text takes into account the observations of the opposition. It does not. The oppositions have never been involved in any real confrontation,' say the group leaders of the PD, M5s, Avs, Italia Viva and Più Europa in a note. They also call for new hearings ('experts will have to express themselves again on the new parts') and a parliamentary examination without procedural bottlenecks.

The changes introduced are those already anticipated in detail in recent days by Il Sole 24 Ore. The first point: the threshold to trigger the majority prize of 70 deputies and 35 senators raised from 40 to 42%, the ballots if no one reaches this threshold, and the rule of coordination between the two chambers (the prizes are only triggered if 42% is exceeded in both branches of parliament and if the winner is the same). "With the exception of the seats assigned to the Foreign constituency and those assigned pursuant to Article 2 (Trentino Alto Adige and Val d'Aosta, ed.)," reads Article 1 of the new text, "the seats are distributed among the lists and the coalitions of lists by the proportional method with the possible attribution of a governability prize equal to seventy seats in total in the Chamber (35 in the Senate, ed, ed.) to be assigned to lists presented at the constituency level in favour of the coalition or single list that has obtained the highest number of valid votes at the national level in both Chambers and that has obtained at least 42 per cent of valid votes in each of them'.

Point two: the maximum ceiling to be reached with the majority prize is lowered from 230 to 220 in the Chamber, exactly the 'constitutional' threshold of 55%, so as not to touch the guarantee ceiling for the election of the judges of the Consulta and the Csm and not to give the majority complete autonomy for the election of the President of the Republic; while in the Senate the ceiling remains a little higher, 113 (just under 57%), to take into account the presence of life senators. However, as the constitutionalist and former PD parliamentarian Stefano Ceccanti points out, 'the direction is right, but it is not an effective ceiling because it does not include not only those elected abroad, which is right, but also those elected in Trentino Alto Adige and Val d'Aosta, with whom we still go above the 55% admitted by the Constitutional Court'. Not only that. The exclusion of the Trentino and Valle d'Aosta voters means that those voters 'do not weigh on the overall result of the prize, denying the principle of the equal vote...'. A possible point that could be looked at by the Constitutional Court, therefore, in the event of a prior appeal.

Instead, the much-criticised blocked lists remain (6 names in the Chamber with a few exceptions, more often 4 or 5 in the Senate), in addition to the names of those elected with the list linked to the prize (from 1 to 5). Too many names blocked on the ballot, in short, for the oppositions. But a bit too many also for some constitutionalists, who warn of the risk of a Consulta ruling on the point (the constitutional judges could, for example, introduce a preference option).