Home » The referendums on euthanasia and cannabis and the absence of parliament – Alessandro Calvi

The referendums on euthanasia and cannabis and the absence of parliament – Alessandro Calvi

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The collection of signatures for referendums on euthanasia and cannabis is seeing extraordinary success. Thus the two questions ended up at the center of the public debate. And that’s what one would expect, given their divisive nature. Yet, more than merit, the discussion is above all about the new tools with which it is possible to collect subscriptions from July.

The fact is that the large number of signatures that the promoters have already collected – the one on cannabis had already reached the necessary 500 thousand in the first seven days while the one on euthanasia has exceeded one million – is also due to the possibility of joining online and no longer. , as in the past, only by physically going to the collection points.

It was possible thanks to a rule initially designed for people with disabilities and then extended to the entire electoral body with an amendment presented by the deputy and president of + Europa Riccardo Magi to the law converting the Simplifications decree and which allows the signing of referendums with a qualified electronic signature, for example with the public digital identity system (Spid).

Balance
Constitutionalists and the political world immediately questioned the possibility of altering the balance between representative and participatory democracy, as it is today constructed by the constitution.

In the press, the former president of the constitutional court Gustavo Zagrebelsky recalled that the collection of signatures has always been a “moment of discussion and participation” and that it was part “of the preliminary debate on the merits of the referendum proposal”. In short, the risk, as others have also observed, is to move towards a less conscious democracy. Furthermore, as Andrea Fabozzi wrote in the Manifesto, with the online signature “even the most demagogic and even illegitimate proposal could cross the upward current of the network”. Finally, according to many, any excess of direct democracy, beyond the quality of the proposals, would in itself be capable of undermining the legitimacy of parliament.

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On the other hand, the expansion of participation that technological progress allows “is always desirable if we want to be good democrats”, observed the former judge of the constitutional court Sabino Cassese in an interview with Mattino, especially since on the correct application of the new rules, Cassese points out, “the court of cassation will rule before the control of the constitutional court. So there is the certainty that the rules are respected ”. And the same can be said in general for the entire referendum mechanism.

All this has opened a discussion on the possibility of changing the rules that currently regulate the referendum institution, also considering that those rules were established in an Italy very different from the current one. The deputy of the Democratic Party Stefano Ceccanti proposed to raise the number of signatures necessary to propose a question from 500 thousand to 800 thousand, and to lower the quorum of voters necessary for the referendum to be valid. In addition, there are plans to insert a constitutional check by the constitutional court after the first hundred thousand signatures. And there are those who, like the magistrate Nello Rossi, also propose a maximum threshold in the collection of signatures to “avert the risk that representative democracy will evolve, thanks to an excessive and improper use of direct democracy institutions, into an undesirable plebiscitary democracy “.

In the end, for many, the theme is also that of populism. However, the link between populism, the de-legitimization of the chambers and the referendum does not exhaust reality. If anything, it would also be useful to reflect on the reasons that have eroded the ground under the feet of parliament and political forces. And not from today.

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In fact, this has been happening for at least three decades: since, with the transition to the so-called second republic, the old popular parties have been replaced by charismatic organizations increasingly similar to electoral committees. In this context, ideas have been replaced by the figure of the leader, so much so that it has become normal practice to give parties the name of their boss. Once the political struggle was restructured on this basis, the existence of an enemy, rather than an adversary, became essential. And against that enemy – more than on their own ideas – the parties have ended up building the rest of their political identity. At this point there is little room for new ideas and, having lost political capacity, the parties have become completely unable to intercept the requests coming from society. Of all this, the history of rights laws is quite indicative. But that’s not all yet.

In the same years, the institutions were hit by a phenomenon that, in fact, transformed the old parliamentary republic into a de facto presidential republic, with a loss of centrality of the chambers and an imbalance between the traditional powers of the state. The executive and judicial powers, in fact, have increasingly occupied the land traditionally reserved for the legislative power. Also in this case, the history of rights and in particular the so-called judicial path to rights, constitutes an exemplary story. On the other hand, if the parliament had approved a law on euthanasia, as the constitutional court had also asked, today that referendum would have no reason to exist.

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It is in this that the origin of the delegitimization of politics and parliament should be sought, before worrying about an innovation such as the use of the digital signature to propose a referendum. Of course, this innovation introduces some critical issues in the system that constitutionalists and political forces have emphasized and which must be remedied. But it seems at least equally urgent to start filling politics with ideas again, something which, however, few seem to worry about.

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