Thursday, September 15, 2005

New Italian Electoral Law: Berlusconi's dirty (little) secret

As said many times before, Berlusconi is dying politically. This is good. But the problem is that he wants to drug Italy to hell with him. His latest invention is an electoral law that would allow him to win the elections despite popular defeat. At the moment the opposition weighs 52%, and Berlusconi's coalition 44%. The electoral reform proposes to exclude from paliamentary posts small parties. As a matter of fact, the opposition features a good number of small parties that would not be eligible to seats in Parliament. As a consequence, Berlusconi calculated that the opposition would lose something like 10%, therefore letting Berlusconi win. The electoral law includes a majority prize that goes to the winner. Theoretically, Berlusconi could still make it this way: to call this dirty would be an euphemism.

Giovanni Sartori, an eminent political scientist, and world expert on electoral reforms (he's italian after all), condemns the reform here, on the Corriere della Sera.

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