"It is a huge crossroads between Italy that says yes and one that only knows how to say no". With these words, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, speaking from Florence, from the Niccolini theater, initiated the launch of the committees for the yes to constitutional referendum next autumn, the testing ground for your government's policy.
A decisive turning point for the premier, who says he is ready to go home if the no wins: “Scrapping doesn't apply only when you wanted us…. If I can't, I go home." "THE committees for the yes - continued the premier - there will be 10.000 throughout Italy, from ten to fifty people per committee. Until October we need a gigantic door-to-door campaign to ask if we want to bring Italy back to two years ago or head held high towards the future”.
The biggest game, according to Renzi, is philosophical rather than practical: "it is not that of the October referendum, but that of returning to aItaly that says yes“. The premier then returned to the sender the criticisms on the reform of the Constitution and above all on the abolition of the Senate: "To those who attack us accusing us of betraying the principles established by the founding fathers, I reply that instead we are correcting a point on which at the time the forces policies failed to agree and made a transitional rule saying 'this is not good'. Equal bicameralism is not what those who wrote the Constitution wanted”.
Another novelty of the referendum is the swerve in direction centralist with respect to the Reform of Title V of 2001, on which Renzi clarified: “On that occasion Prodi's centre-left was pressed by the League, so it challenged the flag of federalism. In many respects it was useful, in others a little less so, for example when you have Regions with even greater power than that envisaged by the constituent".
The government's reform effort, however, does not end with the referendum: on 11 and 12 May, as the premier recalled, the Chamber will vote on the Civil unions and “a nose will need trust”.
Outside the Niccolini Theater, however, the prime minister was contested by the bondholders of Banca Etruria. “As always there are controversies, the question of the banks – Renzi's answer – is very simple: we know that the Government has solved the problem of account holders who otherwise would have blown up due to the responsibility of others. The Government has also taken care to lend a hand to subordinated bondholders, thanks to the work of the EU: it is not their right, it is our attempt to help people who have found themselves in difficulty but who have nevertheless made investments, who they weren't traditional current account investments, it's not that they took 0,5 or 1%, they had significant returns. However, we have put the money to help them too”. Furthermore, we have eliminated - he continued - the atrocious and absurd mechanism of cooperative banks, we have given guarantees to cooperative credit banks".
