Roundup: Italy's parliament approves electoral reform bill

The Italian Lower House on Monday definitively approved a new electoral law, which was seen as a keystone of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's reform agenda.

The new legislation will grant 55 percent of seats in parliament to the winning party in future elections, thus making it easier to produce a stable political majority.

"We have kept our commitment, the promise has been fulfilled," Renzi wrote on his twitter account, soon after the vote.

The final approval from the Lower House came through a secret ballot after a daylong tense debate, and the bill was passed with 334 votes in favor, and 61 votes against.

Major opposition forces left the assembly and did not take part in the voting, including Silvio Berlusconi's center-right Forza Italia (FI) party, anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), and the Northern League party.

Last week, Renzi decided to impose three separate confidence votes on the bill to prevent further amendments on the text, which the Parliament had been discussing since March 2014.

In case of a negative response, the government would have been forced to step down.

Renzi's cabinet passed all the three confidence votes. However, the move sparked a furious reaction from opposition lawmakers, who accused the prime minister of trying to consolidate his power through the new legislation.

Opposition parties labelled the new electoral system as undemocratic, because it would concentrate too much power in the winning party and its leader.

A fierce opposition to the reform also came from within the center-left Democratic Party (PD) to which Renzi belongs, and some 40 lawmakers of the PD voted against the bill on Monday, according to local media.

Among those who voiced their opposition to the reform were also prominent PD members, such as former prime minister Enrico Letta and former party secretary Pierluigi Bersani.

Renzi's cabinet insisted the electoral reform was a priority in order to give stable governments, and a more incisive political action, to the country.

"This electoral law, which I hope the parliament will pass this evening, brings great clarity: for five years, it will be clear who has won and who rules," he declared before the final vote, adding that political stability was a necessary precondition for the country's further economic development.

The new electoral law will now come into force in 2016. Under the new rules, the party that wins the most votes in a ballot will be given a premium of 340 seats out of 630 in the Lower House, as long as it reaches more than 40 percent of the ballot.

In case no party attains such a percentage in the first round, a run-off between the two most-voted parties or lists would follow and the winner would receive the premium.

The threshold to enter parliament is set at 3 percent. Leading candidates for each list will be appointed by parties' leaderships, but voters will still be able to choose the others among a plurality of names.

In a separate constitutional reform bill, the Italian parliament is also discussing demoting the Senate into a non-elected assembly and stripping it off its current equal legislative status with the Lower House.

According to the cabinet, the demotion of the Senate and the new electoral law together would help streamlining legislative proceedings, and make Italy's huge political machine more functional.

The electoral reform was seen as a priority given that the country has long been plagued by political instability.

Plus, the old electoral system had been declared partially unconstitutional by Italy's Highest Court in 2013, and it had been widely blamed for producing unclear majorities, which often resulted in unstable and short-living cabinets. Endit