New electoral law could hobble Italian politics

The Italian Parliament is poised to approve a new electoral law today that could make life grim for whoever wins the April 2006 general election.

Centre-left opposition leaders say the system, based on proportional representation (PR), is specifically designed to prevent them from winning a manageable majority in the election.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says the changes will provide more transparency at the ballot box, but even some of his closest allies fear that the law might create political volatility at a time when Italy needs calm.

"I have a bad feeling about this. The obvious risk is that we will lose stability," Marcello Pera, speaker of the Upper House (Senate) and a member of Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, told conservative broadsheet Il Giornale.

The reform will replace the current system, a convoluted mix of "first past the post" and PR which was introduced in 1994 following rampant political corruption scandals and was aimed at ending decades of revolving-door governments.

The mix of voting methods helped create a bi-polar political order in Italy but Mr Berlusconi complained it was too opaque. The new system is straight PR, but guarantees an absolute parliamentary majority to the coalition that secures most votes.

Critics says the reform has two serious flaws. Firstly, the "winner's bonus" will provide the election victor with only a relatively slender parliamentary majority.

Secondly, the law employs a different counting mechanism for the lower and upper chambers raising the very real risk of different victors emerging in the two houses.

"It drags Italy back 12 years, but is worse than the old PR law because it will create ruling coalitions without giving them enough seats to govern effectively," said Augusto Barbera, Professor of Constitutional Rights at Bologna University.

Under the terms of the law, the coalition which wins the most votes will get 340 of the lower house's 630 seats.

That might sound like a healthy majority, but in effect, it could take just 25 defectors to bring down a government.

That poses a potential problem for the 10-party centre-left bloc which is led by former European Commission President Romano Prodi and covers a huge span of views from hardcore communists at one end to market-friendly Roman Catholics at the other.

Mr Berlusconi's centre-right bloc, which is more homogeneous than the centre-left, enjoys a 107-seat majority in the lower house but has nonetheless struggled to win some key votes.

Recent opinion polls have suggested that the centre-left was on course for a similar parliamentary landslide in 2006.

Mr Berlusconi's detractors say he only pushed for electoral reform in a last minute bid to clip Prof. Prodi's victory wings, a charge his supporters deny.

"If you can't govern with 340 parliamentarians then it's your fault, not the law's. The centre-left has irremediable problems and could only govern if it had 100 per cent of seats," said Ferdinando Adornato, a Forza Italia parliamentarian.

"This new law is more transparent than the old one and will truly reflect the desires of the Italian people ... That said, there is a potential problem with the Senate," he said.

Under the terms of the Italian Constitution, the Senate must be elected on a regional basis. So while the lower house vote will be worked out at a national level, the 315 Senate seats will be awarded region-by-region, which could skew the result.

A different majority in the two houses could paralyse government and even force new elections.

Mr Berlusconi won 176 Senate seats in 2001, a majority of 18. The winner next April looks certain to end up with less.

"Of all the laws that this government has passed, the electoral reform is without doubt the worst," said Franco Debenedetti, a respected centre-left Senator.

But despite the chorus of disapproval, many analysts think the PR reform may remain in place for years because it will strengthen the hand of Italy's myriad smaller parties.

These minor groupings, on both the left and the right, will be able to wield great influence over future prime ministers given the small majorities that are likely to emerge in both houses, and won't relinquish that power willingly.

"There is a real risk that the electoral law won't be changed again for a long time, because there will be vested interests involved to maintain it," said Prof. Barbera.