The Italian Constitutional Reform: How Renzi is Putting Liberal Democracy at Risk.
A Critical Liberal Analysis.
by Giulio
Ercolessi
At home, in the EU and abroad the Italian PM
Matteo Renzi was expected to
finally deliver the long overdue reforms necessary to set the Italian
economy
right.
But more than to the much needed economic
reforms, Renzi has been primarily
committed to constitutional and electoral reforms that will grant him
extensive
powers in the short term, but will also pave the way for any possible
future
populist or totalitarian charlatan to take full control of the Italian
political system: including the Constitution, all the guarantees of
individual
freedom and human rights, and all the rules of the democratic game. And
that by
simply winning a single general election and some regional ones.
A crucial referendum will be held in autumn on
the constitutional reform
passed by Parliament.
No doubt, reforming the Italian electoral law
was essential. The previous
one was rushed through Parliament a few weeks before a general election
by an
outgoing Berlusconi majority, whose defeat was obvious in the polls,
only to
make it impossible for the successors to get any majority.
But the new electoral law introduced by the
Renzi government and already in
force prescribes that the list (party or coalition) getting 40% of the
votes in
a general election would get 55% of the seats in the Chamber of
Deputies (and
the number does not include the members elected in the regions where
linguistic
minorities are protected and those representing expatriates –
about 20 more
seats altogether). If no list gets more than 40% of the votes, a runoff
election would take place between the two first and the winner will
likewise
get 55% of the seats: so that a list getting whatever result in the
first
ballot (in theory, even smaller than 15% or less, and whatever the
turnout in
the runoff), would get a percentage of seats in the Chamber that would
allow
them to pass whatever further major modification of the Constitution,
unless a
popular referendum is required and the modification rejected by the
popular
vote.
As far as the reform of the Constitution is
concerned, there is very little
opposition today in Italy to the idea of outgrowing the present perfect
identity of powers of the two Houses of Parliament.
In any case, however scarcely useful the
present system may be considered,
it must also be stressed that today bills introduced by government take
on
average less than 250 days to be passed by both chambers. Government
decrees
are currently converted into law in 42 days on average. But for decades
governmental majorities – right wing and left wing
– have always been quick to
blame the rules and the Constitution for their own lack of political
will or
weak cohesiveness, and that has become common sense, at home and abroad.
That’s probably why the government
was rather successful in lobbying many
international and authoritative media, and in convincing them that the
constitutional reform is a prerequisite for any much needed economic
reform.
Some have even drown a parallel between the upcoming constitutional
referendum
in Italy and the UK “Brexit” referendum. Yet, in
the case of the Italian
referendum, no economic or foreign policy is concerned. What
is at
stake is the Italian constitutional system.
Most of all, and opposite to the government
claim, it is precisely this
constitutional reform that may well pave the way for the most reckless
and
demagogical future populist ventures.
The fact is that the reform passed by
Parliament would make the Senate a
puppet in the hands of the majority in the Chamber – i.e. of
the government.
Yet, this new Senate would retain the same powers it now holds
concerning the
constitutional guarantees.
The Senate will no longer be elected by
citizens, but appointed by
politicians: by their parties, through the regional parliaments. Not
only these
are, in turn, elected with majority electoral systems: hence, no
significant representation
of political minorities in the Senate, either. What most matters is
that this
new Senate will not only deal with matters of regional or local
interest or
concerning the relations between the different levels of government,
but with
extremely delicate constitutional matters too. And given that the
primary goal
of local governments will always be that of getting the largest
possible share
of public resources to spend for patronage purposes, their
representatives will
always subordinate everything to that goal. Knowing the extremely poor
intellectual and ethical standards of the present Italian political
class,
especially at the local and regional level, the governmental majority
will
always get whatever they want from such a
“counterpart”.
Moreover, the regional electoral law
generates majority political
systems with a minimal representation of minorities and opposition, and, almost always since 1975,
whenever there was a significant shift in the general attitude of
electors at
national level, that always also produced a radical alignment of
regional
majorities. Therefore the majority in the new Senate will usually be
even
easier to reach, and will usually be even much higher, than in the new
Chamber
of Deputies (however distorted by the electoral bonus the latter will
be).
Yet, as mentioned, the most delicate
constitutional functions – modifying
the Constitution, electing the President of the Republic, electing one
third of
the judges of the Constitutional Court – will still be
carried out by both
Houses. As a consequence, paradoxically, also further modifying the
Constitution or electing its guardians will perhaps take a little more
time,
but will be easier for the majority than passing ordinary legislation.
So far, the five constitutional judges elected
by Parliament were chosen
with qualified majority by senators and deputies meeting together in a
national
assembly (“Seduta
Comune”). Unilateral and ultra-partisan
appointments of constitutional judges
were rather unlikely, and certainly not the rule. The new Senate will
elect two
judges separately (very unlikely that the majority and the minority
would be
equally represented: hence, the governmental majority would easily get
two),
and the Chamber would elect separately the other three (hence, at best
one out
of five would not be a mere offspring of the majority).
The President of the Republic, rather than a guarantor and guardian of the Constitution, is also likely to become a fiduciary of the government. As the majority required to indict the President will be even lower, with the reform, than that required to elect him/her (the majority of MPs including the appointed senators, versus two thirds of MPs in the first ballot, and down to three fifths of the voting MPs including the appointed senators after the seventh ballot, respectively), a future populist or authoritarian parliamentary majority will hold a strong dissuasive power over the guardian of the Constitution, even after his/her election, to prevent an independent and impartial implementation of the constitutional rules.
The
President appoints another third of the judges of the Constitutional
Court: if
the election of the President becomes a matter of political decision
for the
majority alone, the President – especially a President
elected by a possible
future populist parliamentary majority – will very likely
appoint as
constitutional judges other fiduciaries of that majority. As a
consequence, the
judicial review, carried out by a Constitutional Court for almost two
thirds
directly or indirectly appointed by the parliamentary majority, will
virtually
be abolished, thus suppressing what has been so far, somehow or other,
the main
obstacle to political abuses of constitutional rights and rules.
In fact, probably 9 out of 15 constitutional
judges will become
“representatives” of the majority, the remaining
one of the five elected by
Parliament will probably be chosen by the largest opposition, and the
other
five will continue to be elected, like now, by the highest ranking
magistrates.
In this situation, the largest minority in the
popular vote – very
possibly, sooner or later also a right-wing or left-wing populist or
extremist
political movement, perhaps led by a new charismatic charlatan
(possibly much
more dangerous than already experimented by Italy in the last twenty
years) –
would be very easily able to enforce the most demagogic and reckless
decisions
in economic and foreign policy even without a clear popular mandate;
and would
find no more constitutional checks and balances in the near future to
hold back
any authoritarian move, as it has been the case so far. The very
possible
outcome will be arbitrary government and, in practice, no more rule of
law. For
a simple parliamentary majority, legally dismantling liberal democracy
will
become a real possibility, as it has been in Hungary, or worse.
So far Italy was spared from the worst
consequences of the populist surge
springing up in many other European countries, just due to the novelty
represented by Renzi in the 2014 European elections (he never faced any
general
national election and had bad results in the local ones last spring),
but
Renzi’s honeymoon is now over according to the polls and it
would be totally
reckless to bet that no major danger will arise in the future. But this
is
obviously Renzi’s bet. He and his followers appear not even
to be able to
imagine that the new rules will be in the hands of others than Renzi
and his
party in the next decades. Polls, on the contrary, have been steadily
suggesting
that, already in the next general elections, the winner with the new
rules may
very well be
Beppe Grillo’s “Five
Stars” movement.
And if a relative majority, however small, of
Italian electors becomes fed
up with the present political offer in the future, a new and even worse
populist or authoritarian party would find no legal limits in
restricting
individual freedom, in discriminating against groups of individuals or
in
trampling on human rights in the next decades.
In
order to better evaluate how close the
winner of an ordinary general
election will be to becoming the absolute boss of Parliament and
Constitution,
one has also to take into consideration what has repeatedly happened in
the
last parliamentary terms, since the collapse of the traditional
political
system in the early Nineties and the extinction of political parties
somehow
still linked to well recognizable political cultures. Both the last
Berlusconi
government and the present Renzi government was/is supported in
Parliament by
the decisive vote of a group of MPs that estimated to have no chance to
get
government positions or to be re-elected in the ranks of their original
party,
and therefore shifted allegiance, soon after being elected, in favour
of the
winners: that was the case of IR, the “parliamentary group of
the Responsible
ones” (sic: that was its official denomination) in 2011, and
is today the case
of the ALA group, led by Denis Verdini, the former secretary general of
Berlusconi’s party. ALA was also decisive to help Renzi pass
the present
constitutional reform. In the present parliamentary term, 263 MPs (i.e.
27,68 per cent of the total) did change their political affiliation.
Last but not least, the constitutional reform
was passed by a Parliament
elected thanks to an electoral law (introduced during the Berlusconi
era) that
was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. Although the
Court
also stated that the unconstitutionality of the electoral law upon
which
Parliament was elected “will have no effect on the acts that
the Houses will
adopt before new elections”, it appears abominable that a
parliamentary
majority that know they were elected thanks to an unconstitutional
electoral
law, arrogate the power to transform this way the entire constitutional
system.
Renzi’s new electoral law might be
declared unconstitutional by the
Constitutional Court in the hearing to be held next October (before the
referendum on the constitutional reform), or it might even be that
Renzi
himself decides to modify it before it is ever used, as a consequence
of the
polls that suggest a victory of the Grillo movement (even this is being
discussed at present in Renzi’s party!). Even so, at this
point whatever
constitutional reform that does not lay down at least the basic
principles of
the electoral law would reduce the constitutional guarantees to the
level of
those provided for by the Soviet Constitution of 1936, where all
liberties and
rights were granted, but “within the (ordinary)
law”. In fact, now that the
practice has become usual for whatever Italian parliamentary majority
to change
the electoral law according to the polls – as both Berlusconi
and Renzi have
done when in power – whatever qualified majority required by
the Constitution
would be within the reach of whatever relative electoral majority,
simply by previously
modifying the electoral law – which is in turn, entirely, an
ordinary law.
Of course, no one is thinking that the Renzi
government and majority
actually want to establish an authoritarian regime in Italy today. But,
after
twenty years of intense civic and political bad upbringing during the
Berlusconi era, they themselves – supported by an
embarrassing number of
Italians – appear simply no longer aware of what they are
doing, nor able to
assess the possible and likely consequences. And they have grown
inconsiderate
and arrogant enough to pave the way for any possible future
authoritarian
venture. Totalitarian populism is threatening all European countries.
It is
completely reckless to dismantle the entire system of the
constitutional checks
and balances just to show off how effective and fast a political leader
is in
reforming – in whatever direction – his
country’s institutions. And to divert attention
from the lack of economic reforms.
Whoever criticises Renzi’s (as
yesterday Berlusconi’s) constitutional proposals
is silenced by most of the media and currently accused of being opposed
to
“reforms”, to whatever reform necessary to put the
Italian economy back on its
feet! As a consequence, the real nature of these constitutional and
electoral
“reforms” and the risks involved have not been
fully grasped. Neither inside
nor outside Italy: former ALDE party president Sir Graham Watson’s preface to my book on Renzi’s constitutional
change has been so far one of the
very few exceptions. An Italian speaker, he was one of the few abroad
able to
better assess what is going on.
In political terms, the attitude towards the
constitutional change is today
revealing of political parties and politicians attitude towards
Renzi’s
Democratic Party. Until a few weeks ago, Renzi, who has an even bigger
appetite
for risk than Berlusconi, had strictly linked his personal fate to the
result
of the constitutional referendum, thus diverting the focus from the
actual
contents of the reform and transforming the referendum into a
plebiscite on his
own personality and leadership (that should have sounded extremely
sinister to
whomever had some knowledge of Italian history in the 20th
century).
Facing a significant drop in his popularity and very uncertain polls,
he is now
trying to assume a lower profile in the upcoming referendum campaign.
Yet, all those who think that their future is
bound to lead them into
Renzi’s party, one way or another, are either active or
reluctant supporters of
the constitutional change. (And their number unfortunately includes
some of
those labelling themselves, Berlusconi-wise, as liberals or
“popular liberals”.
As a consequence of the constitutional and electoral reforms, they are
foreseeing a future drastic reduction of the political system to
Renzi’s party
and two more openly populist oppositions – one radically right-wing and the other
either radically leftist or Grillo-like
–, with no serious and responsible alternative, and
Renzi’s party as the only
profitable landing for their political venture).
Many others, who have very vague ideas on the
reform and lack the
considerable intellectual skills that would be necessary to assess its
systemic
consequences, will simply vote according to their general political
preferences. And there is no doubt that some of the worst rascals now
on the
Italian political scene are well represented among those opposing the
government reform (as well as others on the government side): they simply want Renzi to be defeated. But it is
totally
irresponsible to vote on a constitutional reform that will shape for
decades
the future of Italy just on the grounds that one contemns one side more
than
the other in the present day-by-day political situation, rather than on the grounds of its contents. The friends of
Italy
in Europe and abroad should be less short-sighted than Italian politicians and intellectually disadvantaged electors.
Finally, in view of the referendum, the entire national media system has been made even more subservient to the political system and especially to the government than before (if possible, even more subservient than during the Berlusconi era). The Renzi government passed a law disempowering Parliament of the appointments of the managers of the state television, now back in the hands of the government alone, as it used to be until the Seventies. As a consequence, the editors in chief of all the public television newscasts who were even slightly critical of the government were replaced. And, in a country were the ownership of the major newspapers and media has always been meant more as a tool to seek political influence on behalf of vested interests than to make profit, all the major daily papers changed their editors in chief – and all in the same direction. One of the (relatively) most critical towards Renzi was Ferruccio De Bortoli, the editor in chief of the leading independent daily paper, Corriere della Sera, and he was sacked months ago. The most pro-Renzi editor of a major daily paper, Mario Calabresi, formerly at La Stampa, was appointed editor of the major left of the centre paper, La Repubblica. And Maurizio Belpietro, the most critical editor of a major right-wing paper, Libero, was fired, too, and replaced by Vittorio Feltri, who is much less critical of Renzi. The Berlusconi media empire – televisions and daily press – nominally in the opposition, is surprisingly indulgent with Renzi, (Il Foglio in particular is openly sympathetic and supportive) as Berlusconi appears finally worn out, ageing, weakened, more than ever focused on his financial interests, and at moments even disenchanted and fed up with politics.
This
is not what one would expect to happen in
a
civilized Western open society. It may be much worse in the near
future: if Renzi's constitutional reform is approved in the upcoming
referendum, one should not be surprised if Italy follows the path of
Hungary or Poland after the next general elections or later.
September 2016