Italians headed to the polls yesterday — to the alarm of virus experts — for a referendum and regional elections that could weaken the government and radically reshape the political landscape.
Just a week after a Herculean effort by schools to reopen in line with last-minute COVID-19 rules, classrooms across the country were shut to pupils and transformed into ballot stations for the two-day vote.
A triumph for the far-right in the fiercely fought campaign would sound alarm bells in Brussels.
Photo: Reuters
It was the first test for Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s center-left coalition government since it imposed an economically crippling nationwide lockdown to fight COVID-19, which has killed 35,692 people in the country.
The referendum, on reducing the number of members of parliament — from 630 to 400 in the lower house and 315 to 200 in the upper house — was expected to pass, although there has been a late uptick in the number of prominent “no” declarations.
The cost-cutting reform is the brainchild of the cogoverning Five Star Movement, but while its coalition partner the Democratic Party (PD) and parties on the right were theoretically in favor, their support has been lackluster at best.
The regional battle was for governance of Campania, Liguria, Marche, Puglia, Tuscany, Valle d’Aosta and Veneto.
The right-wing coalition was expected to easily retake Veneto and Liguria, and it could also snatch Marche and Puglia from the left.
However, all eyes were on Tuscany, a historic left-wing stronghold that might fall to Matteo Salvini’s far-right League.
“If the left performs particularly poorly ... Brussels will grow concerned,” Berenberg economist Florian Hense told reporters.
It would worry whether the national recovery plan Italy has to present to obtain grants or loans to aid its ailing economy after the COVID-19 lockdown “will be ambitious enough, given the limited political capital of the coalition in Rome,” he said.
“And whether, whatever plan Italy comes up with, it will actually implement it given the uncertain future of the current coalition,” he added.
The poll went ahead despite warnings against opening polling stations while COVID-19 case numbers are on the rise.
While Italy has fewer new cases than the UK, France or Spain, it is still recording more than 1,500 daily.
“The country is in a state of emergency; it is utterly contradictory to be massing people together at polling stations, particularly in light of the trend in Europe,” Massimo Galli, infectious diseases chief at Milan’s Sacco hospital, told reporters.
He has said that holding the elections now would be “madness.”
However, some precautions have been taken, with elderly and pregnant voters getting fast-track lanes to vote.
With older people potentially put off voting by the health risks, the left has been organizing special transport.
One in three of voters for the PD and League are over 65 years old, the Corriere della Sera daily has reported.
Nearly 2,000 voters in isolation due to the coronavirus have also registered to have their votes collected, including former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
However, fear of catching the virus from voters obliged to pull down their masks to allow them to be identified has seen a flurry of last-minute desertions by polling station volunteers.
Milan was on Saturday forced to call urgently for 100 fresh pairs of hands.
Conte has clinched a behind-doors deal with PD leader Nicola Zingaretti to fight to save each other’s political skins should the left perform disastrously, the Repubblica has reported.
That might not be enough.
“These elections are not going to topple the government,” political commentator Barbara Fiammeri for the Sole 24 Ore daily told reporters.
“But there could well be a crisis, whether it be Conte’s fall, the forming of new coalition, or even a national unity government,” she said.
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