In the open discussion on the constitutional referendum of 20-21 September, after the interventions of the director and president of FIRSTonline, Franco Locatelli ed Ernesto Auci, and after taking a position in favor of the NO of Bruno Tabacci e Innocent Cipolletta, we now host in summary those of Pietro Di Muccio de Quattro (former director of the Senate, former FI parliamentarian and teacher) and of the constitutionalist Andrea Pisaneschi, also opposed to the sharp reduction in the number of parliamentarians as proposed by the law approved in Parliament and now subjected to the test of the vote.
PIETRO DI MUCCIO DE QUATTRO AND THE AMPUTATED PARLIAMENT
“There are many and fundamental reasons why it is necessary to vote NO in the referendum on the reduction of a third of the parliamentarians, adopted under two pretexts: to improve the efficiency of Parliament and to reduce its cost.
Many naive people, even newspaper editors, have gone so far as to argue that the elimination of a third of the parliamentarians should even be considered indispensable to bring the Chambers closer to the productivity standards worthy of an ideal Parliament. This pseudo-argument is simply false in fact and in law. Our Parliament is perhaps the most prolific in the whole world. It produces an impressive amount of laws, laws, provision laws and even ad personam laws. The deluge of legislation is constantly deprecated by those, but not only those, who today call for a smaller Parliament so that it can speed up work and pass even more laws even faster. The unwary are convinced, wrongly, that Parliament is all the better the more efficient it is in passing laws. But they are very wrong not only because the current Parliament unfortunately succeeds very well in it, but also because Parliament is neither nor should it be an assembly line whose efficiency must be based on a sort of normative Taylorism.
The "amputee Parliament" (that's what I like to call it and I encourage you to call it!) would concentrate the legislative and supervisory powers in a considerably smaller number of hands. If popular sovereignty, exercised in representative form, converged on such a restricted body, this paradox would occur: specific parliamentary functions would encounter greater difficulties in their ordinary performance while harmful and dangerous ways of exercising them would be encouraged. Example, the legislative/deliberative headquarters of the commissions, which would become the nest where to hatch snake eggs. In short, in short, the "amputated Parliament" would increase the defects of the current parliamentarianism while it would diminish its merits. A self-defeating result, as regrettable as it is indisputable, which the well-intentioned "amputees" must not have evaluated".
ANDREA PISANESCHI: CHANGE BECAUSE NOTHING CHANGES
Is it right to modify the Constitution, in a qualifying part of the form of government, such as representative institutions, with the full awareness that this change will have no effect on the functioning of the state? And what then is the reason for this change?
These questions find an answer in some retro-thoughts of the reform, which act as a glue to the same and which are, yes, very little shared.
Il first retrospective is that this could be the first step. Others will follow (but it is absolutely not known in which direction). In other words, there is the idea that constitutional changes can be made piecemeal, without a clear vision of the whole, of where we want to go, on the basis of which values and through which legal institutions.
Now, everyone knows that constitutions have a legal content but they are also symbols of identity and instruments of unity and social cohesion. It is certain that they can be modified when the evolution of history, of social phenomena, of international relations make it necessary on the one hand, and when in the country, on the other hand, there is a humus cultural that allows to bring together new and more advanced values in a new constitutional text. For this reason, however, and on the contrary, the change of the Constitution requires a vision and an overall institutional project. If it is ascertained that the increasingly used technique of amending ordinary laws "in small pieces" is progressively destroying the rule of law, precisely due to the lack of an overall design, all the more reason such a practice should not be validated for the Constitution , whose historical and juridical function is precisely that of ensuring and stabilizing the existence of an overall design.
Secondly, if a cultural background and vision is needed to amend a constitution, what is the cultural background and vision of this reform? Here the retrospective is evident: the reform falls solely and exclusively on a conflictual vision between the "people" and the "caste" between politics and the claim that politics can be done through anti-politics, between representation as a traditional mechanism of channeling and mediation of interests and "new" direct mechanisms that bypass the classic institutions of parliamentary democracy.
Thirdly, the reform reinforces a further conviction, which has recently been consolidating in a dangerous way in the country. The idea that a complex vision of things is a tool used by the "caste" and the "powers that be" as a tool for social exclusion and decision-making ; that problems are in reality always simple, and popular legitimacy is sufficient to allow those who have obtained this legitimacy to take decisions.
This vision is evident in the prospect of the reform. In the world of social, Twitter, The slogan of two lines, what could be simpler than a linear cut of the parliamentarians? Everyone understands this and in the first instance it is also difficult to be against precisely because of the banality of the proposal. There is no mention of the – complex – problems of an equal bicameralism in a regional state, of choices on the role of the government with respect to Parliament, of delicate balancing of powers. A simple objective is achieved – as mentioned essentially irrelevant – but it is used to validate the idea that things can be done in a trenchant, without dwelling too much on the "surrounding" issues. It is the same methodology followed for the issue of motorway concessions, for Ilva, for Alitalia, for the Mes.
To validate, with the surplus of legitimacy deriving from direct popular vote, that this is the correct method to deal with complex issues, even of a constitutional nature, is more harmful than the effects that the reform can produce.
