In the referendum we voted for the wrong questions
The flop of Sunday 12 June on the five referendum questions on justice, with 20.8% of those entitled to vote, the lowest figure in the history of the republic, was announced. And not because little has been said about them but because they are questions whose answer must be identified by Parliament, within the reform of the Minister of Justice, Marta Cartabia, who is already halfway through the ford and which addresses all the points on which they were called to vote, from the election of the CSM to the separation of careers up to a different logic of penalties and the duration of the trials. Of course, that reform must now be completed by the autumn, because the time of the Draghi government is increasingly thin. Should he succumb, perhaps we will eat our hands for at least three of those questions.
So the Italians were called to vote (and only one in five answered) for a referendum that yes, at least in three cases they touch open wounds of our institutional structure, let's think about the destruction of the CSM or the abuse of precautionary measures, but which they perceived as distant and above all exploited by a political party. Indeed, from a (was) political leader, that Matteo Salvini who continues to collect defeats and strategic-political humiliations, moving dangerously towards the Kremlin. It is not clear when he will take note that the Papeete season is over, that the bulldozers have returned to the warehouses and that perhaps it is time to respond to the coldness of his own constituents with a conspicuous step back.
There were however, as we analyzed months ago, other questions for which the mobilization campaign had been long, heartfelt, participatory. It had triggered important debates, always in an asphyxiating intertwining between public opinion that pushes the Constitutional Court that pushes Parliament to legislate. Two questions on which we deserved to vote but we couldn't. In the first case due to the Constitutional Court, in the second of the promoters. Without considering that on hunting, which perhaps with today's sensitivity could have had different results compared to the attempts of 1990 and 1997.
The Constitutional Court rejected the referendum on euthanasia Disappointment of the committees promoting the campaign for popular consultation. Cappato: "We will go on" What we would have liked to vote on This is active euthanasia and the liberalization of cannabis. For the first 1.2 million subscriptions had been collected, for the second 630 thousand at the speed of light. The Constitutional Court explained to us, in a more spirited and ideological way than usual, that the first question "was not about euthanasia, but about the murder of the consenting person" (words of President Giuliano Amato). Basically, the former Prime Minister said, "the murder of the consenting party would have been lawful in cases far more numerous and different from those of euthanasia". In short, the question would have been misspelled. A reading sent back to the sender by the promoters. But according to Amato it would open "to criminal impunity for anyone who kills someone else with their consent, whether he suffers or does not suffer. The issue of euthanasia needs to be tailored to the people to whom it applies, that is, to those who suffer. We could not do it on the basis of the referendum question, with other instruments Parliament can do it ”.
Little to blame the Consulta: the questions must be written well and the runaway referendum campaign has probably deprived us of a vote that, in other words, we could have expressed. However, the Court did not consider the existence of other rules sufficient that would have constituted a perimeter to that feared abuse: the law on informed consent and living wills and above all the requirements introduced by the ruling of the same Council on the Cappato / Dj Fabo case. (issue 242 of 2019). Perhaps it could be done, you could vote without fear that the Italians would become diabolical assassins overnight in search of extorted consents to kill the neighbors. cannabis, where the mess was evident even at a superficial reading of the question that would have ended up involving in the decriminalization, certainly partial and linked to cultivation, all the narcotic substances of table I linked to article 14 of the Consolidated Law on Narcotic Drugs. It also contained a rather slippery passage (to be verified) on the penalties related to driving.
