400 MILLION EUROS WASTED AWAY
Actors and Spectators by Anna Fermo | The referendum on work and citizenship failed as expected in its entirety. The five questions? Four on work and one on citizenship resoundingly rejected, probably because they were considered completely useless, or rather, useful only to guarantee yet another superfluous expense paid by each of us citizens for a total amount of 400 million euros thrown away!
The quorum seemed very far away from the start. Already on Sunday afternoon the trend was evident and the turnout at 11 pm was just around 22%. Giorgia Meloni for her part did what she said: she went to the polling station, but did not collect the ballots, a symbolic gesture to demonstrate the government's position against the referendum questions, but above all against the instrumentalization of the opposition.
No attack on democracy, rather a legitimate behavior, consistent with the positions of a government majority not interested in this referendum call. Elections are one thing and referendums are another! The left led by "Landini & Schlein", promoter of the referendum, in the end reached just 30% and has nothing to claim, rather it should prepare to justify the flop without blaming the media and abstention as much as Giorgia Meloni.
Face it: yet another attempt at political mobilization has failed. Even “Il Manifesto”, a newspaper that has always been recognized as being left-wing, didn't mince its words: “Referendum propaganda, the bullshit of the Democratic Party”, so it didn't take a gypsy to predict the outcome. It should also be remembered that in Italy, abrogative referendums have not been passed for some time. The last one that passed the quorum dates back to 2011 (water, nuclear and legitimate impediment) and, with the current law, referendums have effectively become only tools of political propaganda. Another reason to understand the uselessness of this last appointment, so, since the PD itself still said yesterday "if 12 million Italians go to vote by 3 pm today, the referendum will still have been a success because it photographs an alternative political majority that can send Meloni home", I wonder now if it will ever have the courage to admit the photo-finish, or a "picture" that establishes that at the moment, there is no alternative to Meloni, especially in an opposition like the one led by "Schlein&Landini&Conte&Fratoianni"! And in any case, the serious thing is the admission: having used the referendum only as an electoral survey, having claimed to use citizens and their money only to count themselves politically and certainly not to resolve any problems of workers and immigrants arising from certain laws that were all born on the left.
Direct democracy, which is a serious thing, deserves much more than opportunistic politicians and trade unionists like these.
Giovanbattista Fazzolari, Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council with responsibility for the Implementation of the Government Program and right-hand man of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni commented: «The opposition wanted to transform the 5 referendums into a referendum on the Meloni government. The response appears very clear: the government comes out of it further strengthened and the left further weakened».
Forza Italia leader Antonio Tajani has no doubts: "It was a defeat for the left and the opposition that wanted to try to attack the government using the crowbar of the referendums. The thing - he adds - went badly, the government was strengthened, the opposition was weakened. Maybe we need to change the law on referendums, we probably need more signatures, also because we spent a lot of money for example to transport hundreds of thousands, millions of ballots for Italians abroad that came back blank".
Matteo Salvini, deputy prime minister and leader of the League, talks about a "huge defeat for a left that no longer has ideas and credibility and that cannot even mobilize its own voters." "In two and a half years of governing the country, we have achieved a record number of Italians at work, unemployment at its lowest, growth in permanent jobs and a decline in precarious employment: let's leave the chatter to the left... and Italians, with their vote (and non-vote) yesterday and today, have understood this very well." "Accelerated citizenship? - concludes the League member - Wrong idea and rejected that too, if anything, we need more controls and more common sense. And on illegal immigration, continue to reduce landings and increase expulsions. Italians have chosen, long live democracy."
The result of the referendum turnout was truly a hard blow for the left and CGIL, a devastating defeat for Schlein as well as for Landini, Conte and fellow greens now also for the bile, who probably, continuing to blame Meloni, still do not have clear that the Italians have expressed themselves and that in a democracy the choice of the voters must always be respected. On the other hand, how could the outcome of a referendum experienced from the beginning as an exclusively ideological battle end?
There is not even the meager consolation that the total number of voters exceeded that of the Center-right in the 2022 political elections, given that the voters who voted NO must be subtracted from these and if only the YES votes are counted, Schlein 2025 loses against Meloni 2022. What a blow! The clear defeat of Schlein's policy of flattening out on the CGIL and on the left-left of AVS and M5S also confirms another fact, that of voter turnout, lower than the sum that the PD, the 5-Star Movement and the Green Left Alliance together have in the polls. And to this element must be added that a very small part of the Center-right that had invited people to vote NO and Azione and Italia Viva as well as PIùEuropa who certainly had not said to abstain and in fact their leaders went to the polls. Now, with this clear knockout, the internal game within the PD can only open up. In fact, the reformist and moderate minority that called for voting two or three NOs will surely ask the secretariat to account for this strategy of crushing the left that led to these terrible results. I therefore do not believe that it will be of much use to the secretary and her loyalists to accuse the internal minority of not having done enough to bring voters to the polls.
Not even the exploitation of Saturday's demonstration for peace was of any use to her.
To "stop the massacre of the Palestinian people", Elly Schlein, Giuseppe Conte, Nicola Fratoianni and Angelo Bonelli, in Piazza San Giovanni in Rome, called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and a more decisive commitment from Europe for peace, blaming Meloni, but above all creating divisions within the center-left itself. "The platform is that of the unitary motion, presented and voted in Parliament" by Pd, M5S and Avs, Elly Schlein had clarified, excluding any possibility of integrating the requests put forward by Renzi and Calenda and, faced with the rejection, these two, who had been in disagreement for some time, decided not to participate in the demonstration and to organize an autonomous event in contrast with the referendums.
The face to face between Landini and Renzi on the other hand, only last week, had already demonstrated the total "ignorance" of the CGIL secretary on the same questions proposed. It seemed like a snapshot of a left that gets lost in punctilious divisions rather than seeking a "common platform" to address the many crises in progress and the risks that really threaten our society. The majority, the government and especially Prime Minister Meloni thank: with this evident popular and electoral defeat of the left-left, the executive, comes out strengthened and renewed in the pride of being supported by the majority of Italian citizens.
And then, we cannot fail to underline that this referendum flop also represents the tombstone on the political ambitions of Landini who, as also pointed out by many moderate Democrats, has thrown away a lot of workers' money for the electoral campaign. The CGIL has about 4.5 million members, but - evidently -, data in hand, not all are center-left voters and not all went to the polls for the referendums against the Jobs Act. Therefore, many are now betting that Landini will have internal leadership problems on the part of the leaders of his own union. Today more than ever, the credibility of a union is measured by its ability to obtain protections and guarantees for workers without turning into a transmission belt for parties or ideologies. It goes without saying that while the Cisl and the UIL, for example, maintain their autonomy and dialogue with each executive, the CGIL of Maurizio Landini has strongly integrated itself into the strategies of the left, crushing itself into a personalistic and ideological vision that, with today's result, attests to its total distancing from the real needs of workers as well as its political ambitions.
The need for a pragmatic and reformist trade unionism returns to the center, capable of honoring its role in the awareness that the defense of work cannot and must never be bent to political logic. Any trade union, to be effective, must remain above any suspicion of instrumentalization, maintaining its independence and aiming for concrete results. Right now, the challenge to face is probably that of a trade unionism that knows how to put work first, without falling into the trap of those who want to reduce social confrontation to a permanent political clash.
Il Dispari
