Matteo Renzi and Silvio Berlusconi will meet face to face tonight, after long days pervaded by a subtle tension and polemics at a distance. The subject of the discussion is the electoral law, or the Italicum, in its new version, the one issued by the majority meeting on Monday evening.
The tug of war between the Premier and the leader of Forza Italia, therefore, will reach its climax around 18 pm this evening and, in Renzi's intentions, it will be the last meeting before the necessary acceleration of the electoral law process which, always in the intentions of the premier, it should be concluded in the Senate by 31 December.
At the moment, however, the two sides appear rather distant, firm in their positions. On the one hand, Renzi, who supports the need to make the electoral law ("We've been waiting for it for twenty years"), giving a window to Berlusconi and his followers: "The rules of the game are made together but that doesn't mean that if I agree they don't. I want to do them first and then together”. The reforms, according to the Premier, would then be "the only act of respect" towards Giorgio Napolitano.
It's time for the final acceleration, then. But Silvio Berlusconi may not agree. At yesterday's summit at Palazzo Grazioli, with the leaders of the party present, the leader of Forza Italia drew the line: no to diktat, but yes to the confrontation on governance. Berlusconi came out of the meeting with the mandate to negotiate with Renzi, especially as regards the Italicum, already at the heart of the Pact of the Nazarene.
Two, it seems, the issues on the table: the majority bonus to the single list (and no longer to the coalition) and the lowering of the threshold to 3%. A threshold that Forza Italia would like to raise to 4%. At stake, for Berlusconi and him, is above all the political centrality within the Italian right.
