Renzi wins green light for electoral reform

Italy's parliament handed Matteo Renzi a hard-fought green light from parliament for a transformation of electoral rules, marking a big victory for the prime minister on legislation that is designed to ease political gridlock in the eurozone's third-largest economy.

The lower chamber of the Italian parliament voted by 334 to 61 to approve the measure late on Monday, allowing it to clear its final legislative hurdle.

The new law, called the "Italicum", would assign extra seats to the winning party in future elections. Supporters say it would reduce the chances of hung parliaments, as was the case after the 2013 poll, and diminish the frequency of government collapses - long a feature of Italian politics.

But critics among opposition parties and even within Mr Renzi's ruling centre-left Democratic party argue that it concentrates too much power in the hands of the executive branch and mounted a fierce fight to stop it from passing into law.

Speaking before the vote at Italy's main stock exchange in Milan, Mr Renzi said the law would deliver "great clarity" in that whichever party wins an election can now govern for five years. "With this system our country will finally be a point of reference for political stability", Mr Renzi said.

Since gaining office in February 2014 Mr Renzi has sought to shake up the economic and political system with ambitious reform. Changing the electoral rules has been a pillar of that agenda from the start.

But the reform has also been controversial. Although the law will take effect only in July 2016, its opponents view it as an attempt by Mr Renzi to consolidate his power. Mr Renzi's Democratic party comfortably leads opinion polls over a highly fragmented opposition led by the populist Five Star Movement. Criticism has also been voiced of Mr Renzi for the way he went about seeking the changes. After initially negotiating the terms with Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister and leader of the centre-right Forza Italia, Mr Renzi pushed it through in the final stages with support from his own party alone - and even there, he suffered some defections. Many lawmakers walked out of the parliament and did not participate in Monday's vote.

"This is a Pyrrhic victory [for Mr Renzi]," said Renato Brunetta, Forza Italia's leader in the lower chamber. "It's a very ugly day for our country's democracy", he added, saying it jeopardised Mr Renzi's other reform plans, including constitutional changes that would essentially abolish the Senate. "The dissent was quite widespread," said Pier Luigi Bersani, the former Democratic party secretary. Meanwhile, lawmakers from the Five Star Movement also urged Sergio Mattarella, the Italian president, not to sign the law, but such a turn of events is unlikely.

Last year, some European officials looked at Mr Renzi's political reform plans with suspicion, arguing that he should have been focusing more attention on urgently needed economic reform in a country weighed down by structural deficiencies. But Mr Renzi and his aides have always argued that streamlining the political system would make it easier to pass economic reform.

And his aides were celebrating on Monday night. "They told us, 'You'll never make it'. But they were wrong, we did! Courage Italy!" tweeted Maria Elena Boschi, the minister for reforms and one of Mr Renzi's closest advisers.

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