The Senate Constitutional Affairs Committee has launched the electoral law process by formally taking it up. Clashes with the opposition have already broken out, as opposition parties went on the attack over the limit imposed by the majority on the number of expert hearings on the text. There will be 26 in total — 16 allocated to the opposition (4 per group) — while the centre-left had requested many more, around seventy, to allow for greater examination of the text which, as Democratic Party member Andrea Giorgis emphasised, "has changed significantly in its passage from committee to the floor of Montecitorio," adding that "once again we are witnessing pressure being applied on an important piece of legislation."
By Thursday at noon, the groups must submit their nominees. Tomorrow morning at 9 a.m., a new committee meeting is scheduled to discuss the timetable. The rapporteur for the reform is committee chairman Andrea De Priamo (Brothers of Italy). Minister for Reforms Elisabetta Casellati was present at the committee meeting.
"There is no rush. Today's session was held to plan the work, and a Thursday deadline was set" for groups to indicate their requested hearings. "There was very extensive discussion in the Chamber, which gave rise to the Bignami bis, which is the result of consultation with the opposition and with many constitutional scholars who raised concerns that were then incorporated," Reform Minister Elisabetta Casellati stressed at the end of the Senate Constitutional Affairs Committee meeting that formally took up the electoral law.
"There will be further hearings, and all those held in the Chamber can be acquired. I don't see where this acceleration is, nor any basis for the opposition's complaints," she stated.
On the possibility of concluding before the summer recess, she observed: "We'll see — timelines are determined together." "If anyone had wanted to speed things up," she concluded, "we could have started right away. There is already a ready-made study from the research office. To say that twenty-five hearings are very few doesn't seem right to me, especially after complaints that the majority was giving too much priority to the electoral law given all the problems there are. There are decrees to deal with — we are trying to do everything."
On the matter of preference votes, "the senators will decide, as is right," Casellati commented when asked about the issue at the end of the Senate Constitutional Affairs Committee meeting on the electoral law. "When the deadline for amendments is set," the groups "will decide whether to submit them — Parliament is sovereign," she concluded.
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