“Vote halved in referendum, wrong Parliament”

“This spring’s referendum vote will be halved. Four of the six questions on justice have been accepted, with the most popular, most controversial ones on the liberalization of cannabis and euthanasia being omitted. The bitterness of those who had collected the signatures, and the objections that the Constitutional Court has found itself opposing are also understandable. As often happens, it is the conflict between two reasons that is always difficult to resolve. And here we are right in the middle of such a conflict. of these two opposite reasons, however, there is a wrong to be pointed out, which consists in the delay with which the legislator has moved on these inaccessible terrains. and complicated. For years the referendum has acted a bit as the second engine of the Republic. In fact, when the legislative process gets stuck, it often happens that the signatures of the citizens induce politics to take the bull by the horns and, so to speak, to decide to have to decide. This was the case with the electoral law, earthquake in the nineties by pro-majority consultations promoted by Mario Segni, and rewritten in his own hand by the future head of state who gave it his name. The Mattarellum, in fact. Before, there were the referendums on divorce and abortion, won with a certain breadth of consensus from the secular front. And before that, the fundamental question about institutions, won by the Republic over the monarchy. Distant memories, to some extent epic. In recent times, however, there has been a collection of questions on the most diverse topics – from nuclear power to heterologous fertilization, from the fate of the ministry of agriculture to the civil liability of magistrates – which have helped to cancel some pieces of legislation and rewrite them (perhaps a some slyly) many others, but now we are in a rather different context from the past. And the difference is that in the meantime our representative democracy has been losing blows after blows. Parliament struggles to legislate, and almost always does so on the exclusive impulse of the government, approving the decrees without too much imagination. Decision times are almost always quite long, and the law of referral is most often in force on the most controversial issues. See precisely the very delicate question of the end of life that drags on from one legislature to another without ever being able to put a firm point on it. political participation, especially among young people. But now it threatens to return to disperse without in the meantime much more than the words and appeals of circumstance that can be heard resounding on the parliamentary front. With the risk of once again adding disappointment to disappointment. It will be said that sometimes the referendum has been somewhat abused, going beyond the letter of the constitutional law which only provides for abrogative consultations. It’s true. As it is true that the reasons given by the Court on the point of law sound well founded. In short, we are not faced with a hedgehog closure of the old order that tries as it can to escape the siege of new rights and new peoples, but it remains as a sense of bitterness in realizing that once again the problems remain there. , in the background, unresolved, consumed, ground by a political gear that crushes them endlessly without ever being able to extract a new lymph for our tired democracy. Knowing, however, that when this spring we vote on the merits it is possible, even probable, that the next day we will all find ourselves complaining about the quorum not reached and the umpteenth desertion of the voters from the polls. Always hoping to make mistakes, of course “.