“On the run-off, Pera makes three false claims about the PD’s position”. Democrat Parrini speaks out

Rome. Marcello Pera, philosopher, former President of the Senate and FdI senator, yesterday vigorously defended his amendment on the run-off in Il Foglio, going so far as to accuse the PD and its senator Dario Parrini – who claims the amendment is unconstitutional – of having forgotten their own past. ‘You in the PD wanted it – the run-off – you’ve wanted it on several occasions,’ says Pera, whilst also condemning what he sees as a repeated tendency to change one’s mind, particularly in the run-up to the 2027 election, hence the epithet ‘Elly Schlein’s hothead’ levelled at his PD colleague. We ring Parrini to ask if he feels like a hothead. “I have nothing to say in response to this sort of insult.” On the rest, however, Parrini counters by accusing Pera of stating not one, but “three falsehoods” or at the very least “gross inaccuracies”. “Firstly: never, in the last 35 years,” says Parrini, “has the centre-left supported a national run-off separately from the abolition of the bicameral system with equal powers, because it is obvious that the existence of a single Chamber granting a vote of confidence to the government is a prerequisite for the feasibility of a national two-round system, and in this sense there is an incompatibility between the Constitution and Pera’s proposal”. Parrini cites various examples: “In particular, the D’Alema Bicameral Commission and the ‘Italicum’ with its associated constitutional reform – two instances in which the proposal for a national run-off election presupposed the abolition of a bicameral system with equal powers. It would be quite another matter to consider the formation of Parliament through a two-round system based on single-member constituencies. That is a system perfectly compatible with the parliamentary form of government and applicable even under a bicameral system with equal powers. But, as Pera is well aware, the national two-round system is to the constituency-based system as an umbrella is to an iron. It is quite a different matter.” Secondly: “During the campaign to abolish the bicameral system with equal powers ahead of the 2016 constitutional referendum, I held around a hundred public meetings in support of the ‘Yes’ vote, including one with Marcello Pera in Lucca. So the fact that he counts me amongst the ‘No’ campaigners in the referendum ten years ago simply amuses me. It is a case of ‘partisan amnesia’.” As for the Constitutional Court’s ruling – the third point to be contested regarding Pera – Parrini says, “In the 2017 ruling – a ruling which Pera has evidently misread – the Constitutional Court did not at all give the green light to a run-off linked to a bicameral system with equal representation. It set out certain specific conditions that had to be met in order to hold the run-off, based on the specific case before it, namely that of an electoral law applicable to a unicameral system. It ruled on a piece of legislation – the Italicum – which, for precisely the reasons mentioned above, was valid only for the Chamber of Deputies, and which made no sense without the approval of the accompanying constitutional reform to abolish the system of equal bicameralism; so much so that it died a political death along with the constitutional reform, following its defeat in the December 2016 referendum. The Court’s ruling followed a few months later.” But what might the Court say about a law providing for a national run-off vote against a backdrop of a bicameral system with equal powers? “I have my own views. But I want to stick to the facts, unlike Pera. And the undeniable fact is that the Constitutional Court has never ruled on this point, nor on the viability of the numerous paradoxical and contradictory outcomes that such provisions are liable to produce.” But there is also another issue that concerns Parrini: “I really cannot believe that a former President of the Senate fails to understand that this is pure Barnum’s Circus, politically speaking: including the run-off in the first draft of the electoral law, then removing it before the Chamber of Deputies’ vote whilst boasting of having done so to address the objections of constitutional experts (as Minister Casellati put it), only to finally bring it back into play in the Senate because, in the meantime, Vannacci had risen in the polls. This is what the centre-right has done. Even children have seen this, and I imagine Senator Pera has too. I ask him whether he finds this Barnum’s Circus acceptable – this way of drafting electoral laws driven by poll-fever, by majority vote and in a shamelessly opportunistic manner, without regard for the country’s long-term interests but only for the very short-term interests of a single party.”