A manifesto-appeal for one proportional electoral reform was launched by the group of intellectuals “Truly reformers“, among which the signatures of personalities of the caliber of Julius Sapelli e Beppe Vacca. With the international and national moonlights going through these times, thinking about arriving at a new electoral reform remains very difficult; However, the disintegration of the fake bipolarity, also highlighted by the troubled events of the re-election of Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale, he is there to demonstrate the urgency of changing the current electoral law and approving one that better represents him the plurality of orientations present in the political system and in society without, however, incurring excessive fragmentation. Hence the proposal of the manifesto-appeal for one electoral reform based on the proportional system with barrier.
Here is the text of the manifesto-appeal for a new electoral reform
“The election of the President of the Republic has laid bare a system that is far from that bipolarity which has been envisioned as a gateway to our political modernity. We are a fragmented country, which if it has to divide along a bipolar fault ends up falling into the trap of the opposition between angels and demons, or builds a deep caesura that prevents the legitimization of both the winner and the loser.
The certainly not simple future that our country will have to face, and it will be enough to have regard to the social and economic context as well as the international scene, requires the construction of a system of representation that favors mutual recognition of the components that form the political system in its complexity and the consequent cohesion of the country, albeit in the right dialectics, engaged in what is identified by many as the second reconstruction.
On the other hand, a reform of the electoral system is made urgent by the fact that the reduction of members of the House (from 630 to 400) and of the Senate (from 315 to 200), not only produces a consistent majority effect, but above all leaves large territories and some small Regions without representation.
For these reasons we believe that a proportional electoral law with a threshold, in addition to correcting the majority effect caused by the reduction in the number of representatives, can score the first step of a process of restructuring the party system.
Once the hopes placed in the transformative capacities of the majority-type system that presuppose cohesions that are not currently available, nor that it is seen how they could be built, will fail, it will be advantageous remove the field of electoral competition from the obligation to artificially create coalitions very inhomogeneous and not very capable of joint government action. After all, at the moment we don't see characters on the scene with the strength to be authentic federators of their field, but rather the first actors fighting each other to occupy the limelight.
A proportional electoral system, for example on the German model adapted to our needs, would allow some results that would free up important energies by removing citizens from the unfortunate choice between slavishly accepting the choices of candidates decided by division among the leaders of the coalition closest to their convictions and taking refuge in abstention.
A very open competition between a limited number of parties (a significant threshold is a necessary requirement) would force them to carefully evaluate the choice of candidates, because the voter would have the possibility to orient himself among a plurality of choices. This may mean that parties less tied to the blackmail of internal political professionalism (including those who pretend not to be) will resort to candidates identified in the training chains of the ruling classes active in the area in order to compete with the others, leading to a virtuous opening that fills the gap between civil society and the oligarchies formed by parthenogenesis. And this will force everyone to descend on that ground if they don't want to be abandoned by a society that has shown a lot of freedom in orienting itself regardless of ancient, now obsolete belongings.
It is not a question of expressing any distrust towards the current political classes, but of recognizing that the channels of circulation between the intermediate social bodies and the inevitable political oligarchies have largely dried up, which thus end up being closed realities rather than venues in which social and political life flows as it was in the historical parties in their best phase, and therefore open to exchange and comparison with the unfolding of history.
A proportional electoral system then favors the negotiation for the formation of the government, which does not necessarily mean an under-the-table agreement, a downward compromise, and can instead be translated into coalition agreements which, as the German example shows, fully identify the objectives and the procedures for achieving them, then avoiding constant tensions and coups in the progress of the work of the executive.
For all the reasons explained, we believe that the opening of a broad confrontation is desirable, free as much as possible of ideologies, demagoguery and tactical cleverness, with which we arrive at giving our country a good electoral law of the proportional type which revitalizes the circuit of political representation and allows for the industrious life of democratic institutions as it was designed with a great spirit of reconstruction by our founding fathers".
Gennaro Acquaviva
Nicholas Antonetti
Luigi Bobba
Charles Borgomeo
Fulvio Cammarano
Marco Camelli
Louis Capogrossi
Piero Craveri
Vito Gamberale
Antonella Marsala
Oreste Massari
Mario Patron
Luciano Pero
Caesar Pinelli
Paolo Pombeni
Mario Ricciardi
Julius Sapelli
Beppe Vacca
