President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi of Italy and the Prime Minister, Mr Giuliano Amato, have reacted to the overwhelming defeat of Sunday's electoral reform referendum by calling on parliament to set about drafting new electoral legislation for another referendum.
Both the President and Prime Minister appeared to be responding to the centre-right opposition leader, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, who yesterday called on Mr Amato's government to resign. Although Mr Amato had declared that his government was "neutral" on the referendum, Mr Berlusconi argued that the government had been delegitimised since one of its programme priorities, at its formation last month, was to oversee Sunday's referendum.
Furthermore, Mr Berlusconi had called on supporters of his Forza Italia party to abstain whilst Democratic Left, the largest party in the Amato government coalition, had called for a "Yes" vote in favour of electoral reform. Claiming that the result represented a "third consecutive" success for him, following on triumphs in last summer's European Parliamentary elections and in regional elections last month, Mr Berlusconi said:
"The best thing now would be for a government of technicians who could get all parties around a table, draw up electoral legislation, and then hold an early election. . . The centre-left coalition, however, even if it now knows after yet another electoral disaster that it does not represent the majority of the country, will confirm its habit. . . of holding on to power and wishing to delay election day as long as possible".
A proposal calling for a 100 per cent majority vote system was one of seven issues that failed to attract the necessary 50 per cent plus one quorum on Sunday when less than 33 per cent of the 49,066,417 electorate turned out. The high abstention rate, while not without precedent, since a 1997 referendum on hunting attracted only 30.1 per cent, may have reflected frustration both with politicians and the attempt to use the referendum instrument to resolve complex issues.
"The new element in this vote, or non-vote, is that the electorate, perhaps convinced that its opinion would continue to be largely ignored, has emphatically refused the role of helper to the political power structures," commented the Milan daily Corriere Della Sera. Mr Amato took up the same theme yesterday: "You have to come to the conclusion that. . . the electorate expects parliament to come up with a different system from the present one but not the reform proposed on Sunday".