Dissenting Senators from the Democratic Party (PD) of Premier Matteo Renzi announced Thursday they will not vote for the government's mega-amendment to its own 'Italicum' electoral reform bill.
The bill is intended to replace Italy's current, dysfunctional electoral law - nicknamed 'the pigsty' - and produce a clear winner at the next general election. The Italicum is the result of a deal between Renzi and ex center-right premier Silvio Berlusconi, a fact which has produced growing discomfort within the ranks of both leaders' parties since it was first announced early in 2013.
On Thursday - as rebelling PD Senators withdrew their own sub-amendments and announced they will decline to back their own party line and the government - dissenters from within Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party also raised critical voices.
"We are in Forza Italia but against the 'forza Renzi' line," said prominent MP Raffaele Fitto, a one-time confidant of Berlusconi who now leads a rebel minority within FI that is not happy with the fact that the media mogul has sealed a pact on electoral law reform with centre-left Premier Matteo Renzi.
"I think Berlusconi is being weakened not by us but by the choices being made as we speak," Fitto told reporters at a news briefing in the Lower House.
On the PD side, rebel House MP Stefano Fassina said Thursday "it is no secret" the premier led a dramatic internal revolt that saw 101 PD lawmakers sink the party's official candidate to become Italian president, Romano Prodi, in a secret 2013 vote.
His comments came as the nation's 1,009 'grand electors' - MPs from both housed plus representatives of the country's 20 regions - prepare to elect a new president of the Republic in secret votes, starting on January 29. "We are serious people, unlike those who...led 101 'snipers' two years ago," Fassina told Rome's Radio Città Futura. "I believe people will behave differently on the Italicum (electoral bill) in the Senate," added Fassina, a junior economy minister during the preceding, short-lived administration of fellow PD member Enrico Letta. "There is a part of the PD that won't vote for it".
Renzi loyalist and Friuli Venezia Giulia Governor Debora Serracchiani later replied that Fassina's accusation was "not fit to comment on".
The Italicum, which has cleared the Lower House, would replace the system that contributed to the inconclusive outcome to the 2013 general election, and was subsequently declared unconstitutional.
It would among other provisions award bonus seats to the party that garners at least 40% of the vote to ensure it has a working majority in parliament. There will be a run-off vote for a package of bonus seats worth 15% if no single coalition reaches the 40% threshold in the first round of voting.
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