VOTE MAY FORCE CHANGE IN ITALY'S POLITICAL SYSTEM

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 18, 1993                   TAG: 9304180025
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: ROME                                LENGTH: Medium
VOTE MAY FORCE CHANGE IN ITALY'S POLITICAL SYSTEM
Italians vote in a series of referendums today and Monday that ostensibly chart the nation's future but also provide a chance to pass a verdict on its past.
The eight proposals - the most important of which would begin changing the entire electoral system - offer the country's 47.5 million voters their first occasion to judge the way they are led since a year of ever-widening scandal has shown many of their leaders to be implicated in corruption even beyond cynical expectation and has linked some of them to the Mafia.
But as the vote neared with much anticipation and talk of a national watershed, the feeling deepened that the ballot, far from marking a clear passage from old to new, could well delineate only the start of a long and confused process toward change.
"The risk is that people think the revolution is already over," said Mario Segni, a former Christian Democrat legislator who has led the drive for the referendum on electoral change and thus stands to gain most from a big "yes" vote. "In reality, institutional renewal has not happened yet, and the revolution is still to be done."
Moreover, some politicians fear, the urge for renewal might simply backfire, sharpening divisions rather than healing them.
Alfredo Galasso, a legislator from the small anti-Mafia Rete party, said there was a "real danger" that the process of change could deepen political divisions between a north dominated by the separatist-minded Northern League, a center under former Communists, and the south left in the hands of the Christian Democrats, whose leaders are accused of complicity - which they have denied - with organized crime from Naples to Palermo.
Of the eight referendums, the most significant calls for a dilution of pure proportional representation in elections to the Senate - a system that has permitted the flowering of myriad small parties, and thus the fickleness of the 51 shaky coalitions that have governed Italy since the end of World War II.
Under this system, parties are allotted seats based on the percentage of the vote they draw nationwide.
The method, set out in the post-war Constitution, was intended to prevent a resurgence of Fascism after the demise of Mussolini by making it virtually impossible for any single party to have a monopoly on power.
In fact, it led to a system, known to Italians as "partitocracy," that gave far more power and patronage to the big political parties, particularly the dominant Christian Democrats, than it did to Parliament or the government.
The idea now is to replace that system, also used in the lower house, with the same voting method as in other parts of Europe, so that 238 of the 315 senators would be elected on the basis of a constituency's seat going to the candidate in that district who drew the most votes.
The rest of the seats would be assigned to political parties according to their share of the poll. A big vote in favor of the change would create huge pressure for the lower house to legislate a similar voting method for itself.
But that, in turn, could produce a political system without Italy's hallmark splinter groups and kingmakers, from neo-Fascists to environmentalists to diehard Communists, while benefiting bigger parties to the exclusion of others in their electoral power bases - the Northern League in the wealthy north, the Christian Democrats in the economically backward south.
Not surprisingly, many politicians are approaching the balloting with trepidation. Small parties like La Rete and Communist Refounding are actively canvassing for a "no" vote to avoid extinction.
The referendums resulted from drives by environmental, tourism and other interest groups and individuals like the reform-minded Segni to gather the 500,000 signatures needed to force the votes.
The buildup has been under way for two years, a period in which the advocates of the various referendums have fought legal battles up to the Supreme Court to overcome official opposition.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB