Meloni wins electoral law reform – final hurdle follows

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Meloni wins electoral law reform – final hurdle follows

Prime Minister Meloni’s government is emerging stronger from the confidence votes on the controversial electoral law reform. But the law has not yet cleared all the hurdles.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has prevailed in confidence votes on an electoral law reform that is important for its political future. The government also survived the third and final vote of confidence in the draft law on Wednesday with a clear majority. The decisive final vote on the entire controversial reform is still due on Thursday. It is the last parliamentary hurdle. The Senate – the second chamber of Parliament – ​​approved the project in mid-September.

With the reform, Meloni wants to ensure that the winner of a parliamentary election receives a kind of majority bonus if he can get 42 percent of the vote. A new coalition would then get 70 additional seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 35 additional seats in the Senate. This would give a victorious party a majority capable of governing, even if it received less than 50 percent of the vote. A narrow election victory could turn into a very comfortable majority.

The reason for this is that with a more stable majority, changes in government should no longer occur as frequently as before.

The right-wing head of government had made the votes on the reform in the Chamber of Deputies a test for her government and explained that a failure in parliament would have consequences. In doing so, she indicated that the government might not be able to continue to exist in this case – and that there might be early elections as a result. Parliament will be regular in Italy re-elected next year.

The electoral law is called “Stabilicum” or by some also “Melonellum” because – according to criticism – it is tailored to the head of government’s retention of power. The left-wing opposition accuses Meloni of wanting to gain an advantage for herself and her right-wing Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party. Meloni has ruled with the stable coalition of three right-wing and conservative parties for almost four years, longer than any other head of government.

According to the Ansa news agency, on Wednesday 228 MPs approved Article 3 of the bill, 144 were against it and three abstained. That was slightly more support than the two votes of confidence the day before on Articles 1 and 2. Article 3 envisages a reorganization of some constituencies South Tyrol before.

The votes on the individual articles were taken by roll call. However, the opposition is hoping for dissidents from the ranks of the governing parties in the final vote, which is expected to be secret. However, representatives of the government coalition were optimistic that the law would also overcome the final hurdle.