Renzi prepares for final push on Italy's electoral reform law

Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, is close to clinching lawmakers' approval for a transformation of the country's electoral law as a bruising political battle reaches its climax with a final, high-stakes vote this week.

As early as Monday, the lower house of the Italian parliament is expected to deliver its conclusive verdict - by secret ballot - on new legislation that would grant extra seats to the victorious party in future elections, and therefore make the country easier to govern.

Barring any last-minute ambushes, the measure is likely to pass. But to get to this point, Mr Renzi has had to stare down critics of the legislation among opposition parties and even within his own ruling centre-left Democratic party, who believe it represents a cynical effort by the former mayor of Florence to consolidate his power.

Most controversially, Mr Renzi has had to tie a confidence vote to the fate of the electoral law, and threatened to resign should it fail, significantly raising the stakes.

"This is likely to go down as another victorious battle for Renzi, but he has had to spend quite a lot of political capital on it," says Vincenzo Scarpetta, a policy analyst at the Open Europe think-tank in London.

Overhauling Italy's electoral law has been a cornerstone of Mr Renzi's platform since he rose to power in February 2014. It is one of two main political reforms that he has sought in order to streamline the country's notoriously gridlocked political system, along with the de facto abolition of the Italian senate.

In just the past decade, Italy has had five prime ministers, including Mr Renzi, when the natural term of Italian governments should be five years.

Mr Renzi and his allies have made the case that bringing more political stability to the country could also help lift its economic prospects, reducing uncertainty for domestic and international investors. But this has not been an easy sell.

Dissidents within the Democratic party have attacked the plan as concentrating too much power in the hands of the executive branch, challenging Mr Renzi at every turn and requesting changes.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Giuseppe Civati, one of the main rebels from Mr Renzi's party, said the new law amounted to "absolute premiership" or "genetically modified presidentialism".

"As long as Renzi is in power, that could almost fly, but we cannot take it for granted," says Mr Civati.

"What if Beppe Grillo wins? What if Matteo Salvini wins?," he says, referring to the populist leaders of the Five Star Movement and the Northern League.

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But so far, the vast majority of lawmakers in Mr Renzi's party are still likely to go along. "[We] are remaining faithful to the idea that Italy needs a different electoral law," said Lia Quartapelle, a Democratic party lawmaker and supporter of Mr Renzi.

"The government decided to close the game with a confidence vote because at some point decisions must be made," she said.

Meanwhile, opposition leaders from the right and the left have thrown everything they could at Mr Renzi in an effort to stymie passage of the bill - or at least damage him politically in the process.

Lawmakers of the Left, Ecology and Liberty party last week wore black armbands to parliament and threw chrysanthemums across the chamber in protest at the bill, as one of their leaders decried the "rape of parliamentary democracy".

On the right, a senior member of Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right Forza Italia party, which once supported Mr Renzi's electoral reform effort but has since turned away from it, called it a "fascist deviation".

Leading figures in the Italian media have also been critical of Mr Renzi. On his last day as editor of Corriere della Sera, the moderate Milan newspaper close to Italian business circles, Ferruccio de Bortoli launched a scathing attack on the prime minister, calling him a "young caudillo" who committed "errors borne out of arrogance" and urging Sergio Mattarella, Italy's president, not to sign the electoral law.

Meanwhile, Ezio Mauro, editor of the centre-left daily La Repubblica, called Mr Renzi's manoeuvrings on the electoral law "a show of weakness, disguised as a show of strength".

And yet for all the drama, Mr Renzi is likely to survive - if a bit beaten up.

"Renzi is playing the bad cop but everyone agrees these reforms are necessary," says Francesco Galietti, the founder and chief executive of Rome-based consultancy Policy Sonar. "And he never misses a chance to remind everyone who's in charge."

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