Reforms, the 'Mayor of London' model for electing the premier emerges

Pfirst it will be necessary to finish hearing all the personalities, above all constitutionalists, called to give their opinion before the Constitutional Affairs Commission of the Chamber of Deputies on the Italian premierate put in place by the government. A long list that, considering that the Casellati bill travels in alternate weeks with the Nordio reform on the separation of magistrates' careers, will take at least the whole month of September. After that it will move on, still in committee, to the general discussion and the amendment phase. And certainly, as the azure president of the first committee Nazario Pagano has anticipated in time (see the interview with Sole 24 Ore of 6 July), there will be some changes to the text. In the meantime, in the Chamber of Montecitorio, from 10 September, the deputies will be engaged in the discussion and approval of the Security Bill, already in the crosshairs of the oppositions. And finally it will be the turn of the budget law, which will begin its journey in the Chamber this year.

In short, the premierate will not be in the Chamber before the end of the budget session. A long pause for reflection that will take the whole autumn, in short, which Pagano himself considers 'useful to clarify what changes will be necessary to make to the constitutional reform' and above all 'to fine-tune the system for electing the premier'. In fact, the stumbling block in the majority is precisely on the future electoral law, without which the premierate itself would not be applicable by virtue of the transitional rule strongly desired by Minister Roberto Calderoli and therefore by the League ("the present constitutional law applies from the first termination of the Chambers following the date of entry into force of the rules for the election of the prime minister"). The political point is the League's (but also part of Fratelli d'Italia's) allergy to the 'classic' ballot, i.e. if no one reaches 50% of the votes. And so, if the text of the reform fixes 'a prize on a national basis that guarantees a majority of seats in each of the Chambers to the lists and candidates linked to the Prime Minister', nothing is said about the threshold necessary to trigger the prize (and consequently what happens if no one reaches this threshold).

Elisabetta Casellati, the blue Minister for Reforms, believes that the threshold below which the national runoff between the top two finishers is triggered could be set at 40%, as is the case in the municipal elections in Sicily. But Calderoli prefers a single-round system, like the one in force for the election of regional presidents, even if this solution could expose itself to rejection by the Constitutional Court (which in the past has already set 15% as the maximum ceiling for the prize). Among the other hypotheses being studied there is also a re-edition of the old Mattarellum, i.e. 75% uninominal constituencies and 25% proportional, with the addition of a variable prize to reach 50% to be subtracted from the proportional part. Not only that. In the last few days there has been a further suggestion: the English alternative vote (ranked choise voting), used for example in Australia and to elect the mayor of London. The voter is called only once to the polls to cast his vote and also to put the candidates in order of preference: if, when the polls are closed, a candidate turns out to be the favourite of more than 50% of the voters, he is declared elected; if not, the candidate who came last is eliminated and the second preferences expressed by the person who indicated him first are assigned to the others (the process continues until one of the candidates exceeds 50%).

It is clear that the majority's intention is to avoid the recompacting at the ballot of a centre-left that is often in disarray in the first round. But in the case of a single round there is no mathematical guarantee of a certain majority, so the word 'guarantee' in the Casellati bill would have to be changed to 'favour'. And this is one of the possible changes that will be introduced by the Chamber if the League is not convinced to accept the ballot, albeit below 40%. The other possible change, by Pagano's own admission, should concern the vote of Italians abroad. Now the five million Italians who do not live in Italy elect eight deputies and four senators in the foreign constituency, but in the case of the direct election of the premier, one vote is worth one and the effect could be that of a real reversal: the 'weighting' of their vote also for the direct election of the premier should be provided for in the Constitution, as both the Fratelli d'Italia senator Marcello Pera and the bipartisan constitutionalists of LibetàEguale and Magna Carta have been arguing for weeks.