Rome, September 14 (askanews) – Alessandro Onorato, founder and national coordinator of Progetto Civico Italia, also participated in the demonstration in front of the Senate against the new threshold for collecting signatures. The provision included in the electoral reform raises the minimum number of signatures to 6.000 per constituency for new political parties, that is, those not already represented in Parliament. According to Onorato's calculations, Progetto Civico should collect a total of approximately 400.000 signatures, ten times the number requested by the Brothers of Italy party in 2013.
The movement appealed to the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, denouncing a barrier that would favor the parties already present in Parliament and hinder the entry of new political forces. "What we are asking Giorgia Meloni," says Onorato, "is why, when she got 1,9%, she only had to collect 40.000 signatures, and today we should collect 400.000 signatures, 10 times as many, because with this law at the time she would not have entered Parliament, she would not have become the largest party, she would not have become Prime Minister because in the Senate, among the many things they had to think about, they simply thought of a civic movement of administrators who came together from all over Italy without public funding." "Today here there are people who have arrived from Sicily, Sardinia, the countryside, Emilia Romagna, Trentino, from every part of Italy in 24 hours to say that this law is a disgrace, it is a scam, because it allows those who are in Parliament to remain there and those who are outside never to enter.
For this reason," Onorato states, "we have appealed with great respect to the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who certainly doesn't need us to point out what is happening in the Senate. This law is now unconstitutional." "There are numerous rulings by the Constitutional Court that state that, although the legislature has full autonomy to make the electoral law it deems fairest, it can never artificially create barriers to prevent new political forces from entering where the present and future of Italians are being decided.
I'll add a point of utter hypocrisy. Basically, if someone gets even 0,1%, they'll be considered for electoral purposes in coalitions. It's a shame that to collect 400.000 signatures, which, I recall, must be divided by at least 6000 for each constituency. This means that in Molise, for example, we'd need to collect 5% of those who vote, which would constitute a barrier to entry. Can we leave the barriers to Italian citizens? Can we decide that they decide who enters Parliament and who doesn't? Onorato concludes.
Notizie.it editorial team