Italian Prime Minister George Meloni has put forward proposals for constitutional reforms that are ominously reminiscent of another constitutional change made a century ago by Benito Mussolini.
Passed in November 1923, Mussolini's infamous "Acerbo" law established that the party that won the largest percentage of the vote, even if it was only 25 percent, received two-thirds of the seats in parliament. After his party won the next elections, although intimidation and violence were more important than manipulating the electoral law, the road to dictatorship was paved, he recalls. Politico.
Meloni's current proposal is reminiscent of the infamous "Acerbo" law, as the Italian leader wants to automatically award 55 percent of the seats in parliament to the party with the highest percentage of votes. In other words, as long as one party gets more votes, it will be rewarded with full control of the parliament.
If this sounds strange, that's because it is. For example, if Poland used this electoral system in its most recent elections, the outgoing Law and Justice party would still control the Polish parliament, despite only receiving 35 percent of the national vote to the opposition's 52 percent.
So, as strange as this may be, the calculation of the Italian Prime Minister is not difficult to understand.
Her party, the Brothers of Italy, may have a commanding lead in pre-election polls, but it is far from an overwhelming majority.
In essence, this proposal would treat the whole of Italy as a single constituency in first-past-the-post elections, where the party that wins a relative majority, however small, gains secure control of parliament. That would be an extreme form in a political winner-takes-all system, with huge disproportion.
Absolute majority rule
And that's not all. The proposal also requires each party to nominate a candidate for prime minister before the election, and the winning party's candidate would automatically become prime minister, considered directly elected by the people, according to Politico.
The prime minister would rule absolutely.
The text assesses that Meloni's proposal combines the ideas of a presidential and a parliamentary system of government, in a way that enables a massive concentration of power.
In a presidential system, the president is strong because he is directly elected, providing a strong counterbalance to the legislative branch of government.
In a parliamentary system, the executive and the legislature are less separated. The head of the executive branch (prime minister or chancellor) represents the majority in the legislature. However, they also depend on that majority, providing some balance between these two branches of government, reminds Politiko.
Meloni's plan would thus combine the legitimacy and power of direct presidential elections, with the weak separation of powers in a parliamentary system. She would command the executive as a directly elected prime minister, as well as the parliament through her 55 percent representation.
It is also very troubling that Meloni and her party tried to do this in secret.
An argument about the stable government that Italy needs
The government's press release announcing the plan called it a "minimalist" approach — and it's far from that, Politika's analysis finds.
And how does Meloni justify this plan? Her main argument is that Italy needs more stable governments — a legitimate concern. Over the past three decades, Italian governments have lasted just two years on average.
The text states that the idea of bonus seats for the winning party has been part of constitutional discussions in Italy for a long time, and states that it was not only Mussolini's idea.
Italian commentators have made many good suggestions about how to adjust the system to make governments more stable — but enthronement of an artificially created majority headed by a directly elected prime minister is certainly not one of them. The Italian legal community is also highly critical of the plan, Politico points out.
It should also come as no surprise that there is no comparable example of such a system. Very few countries have majority bonuses — those that do have much smaller bonuses — and no country has a directly elected prime minister.
Meanwhile, for the European Union, the proposal could not be less welcome. So far, the European right has accepted Meloni, who is not anti-EU and remains supportive of Ukrainian self-defense against the Russian war.
The first obstacle has been overcome
Be that as it may, the Italian Senate adopted Đorđe Meloni's constitutional reform proposal with 109 votes for and 77 against. Voting will follow in the House of Representatives.
However, the Constitution can only be changed if it receives a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament. Since that will not happen, it remains for the citizens of Italy to decide on it in a referendum.
For the first time, the three largest opposition parties jointly organized a protest against the constitutional reforms being pushed by Giorgio Meloni. About 2000 people gathered in Rome.
Source: Politiko
