La Constitutional Court ha rejected the proposed refendum for the abolition of the electoral law in force today, the so-called "Porcellum“. After a council chamber that lasted more than a day and a half, neither of the two referendum questions passed the exam of the Consulta.
“The Constitutional Court – reads the press release – declared inadmissible the two requests for an abrogative referendum concerning the law of 21 December 2005, n. 270 (Amendments to the rules for the election of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic). The sentence will be filed within the terms of the law.
The reaction was furious Antonio Di Pietro, promoter of the referendum together with Arturo Parisi: “Italy is slowly but surely moving towards a dangerous anti-democratic drift – said the IDV leader -, now only castor oil is missing. That of the Court is not a legal choice, but a political one, to please the head of state, the political forces and the transversal and inciucist majority who support Monti, a vulgarity that risks turning us into a regime”.
Soon it arrived the reaction of the Quirinale: "Speaking of today's sentence of the Constitutional Court as a choice adopted to please the Head of State - reads a note from Colle - is a vulgar and completely gratuitous insinuation, which only denotes institutional impropriety".
All 15 judges who make up the Consulta were present in today's session. The first question subjected to their evaluation asked for the total repeal of the law conceived by former minister Roberto Calderoli (and which he himself defined as "filth"), which through the expedient of blocked lists does not allow citizens to express any preference on the names of parliamentarians to be elected.
The second question instead, he asked to cancel one by one the changes made to the previous electoral law (the "Mattarellum"), which in the intentions of the committee promoting the referendum should have come back into force immediately once the Calderoli law was abolished.
This was not the case, but for days the exponents of Pd, Pdl and Third Pole have continued to repeat that the electoral law will still be modified in Parliament. While waiting for an agreement to be reached, the signatures of one million two hundred thousand Italians will remain closed in boxes.
