Italy: Clear majority rejects Berlusconi’s constitutional reform

It is the third defeat in a row for the Berlusconi camp. While the latter only narrowly lost April’s parliamentary election, its losses in local elections held in May were substantially higher, and the clear rejection of the constitutional reform has surprised many observers.

The “No” votes clearly outweighed the “Yes,” even in the north, the stronghold of the separatist Lega Nord (Northern League), and a region where the Berlusconi camp won several million votes in the April elections. The two regions of Lombardy and Veneto were something of an exception, but even here, the cities of Milan and Venice rejected the constitutional reform. In Rome, more than two thirds of those who turned out voted against the measure.

The participation by 53 percent of eligible voters far exceeded expectations. A combination of circumstances—voters having gone to the polls three times within the last three months, the oppressive heat and the Italian national team playing a World Cup match—had led many pundits to predict a far smaller turnout. Five years earlier, only 34 percent of those eligible voted in a constitutional reform. Corriere della Sera, the prominent daily newspaper, commented, “It is a happy surprise that predictions of a tired and discouraged public proved untrue.”

Berlusconi’s reform threatened principles that were introduced into the Italian constitution after the collapse of the fascist Mussolini regime in 1943. Berlusconi planned to extend presidential powers to the prime minister, destroying the system of “checks and balances”—the mutual control of the constitutional bodies, head of government, federal president, chamber of deputies, senate and the judiciary—that are supposed to prevent the return of a dictatorial regime. He also planned to increase regionalisation and thus hasten the creeping dissolution of the unitary Italian state created in 1861.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/jul2006/ital-j04.shtml