Electoral law, decisive hours: today confidence on 2 articles, final vote in the House on Thursday

Today and tomorrow in Montecitorio there will be a vote of confidence on the first three articles of the text, which have been modified - together with article 8 - in the Senate: at 12 noon the declarations of confidence on article 1 began, from 2pm the roll call will be called. The final vote on the reform will be held by secret ballot on Thursday 8 October, at 12.30pm. A mechanism that unleashed the anger of the opposition, who spoke of a "slap in the face of Parliament", "forcing" and "lack of discussion".

The electoral law reaches the final rush: today and tomorrow in the Chamber there will be a vote of confidence on the first three articles of the text, which have been modified - together with article 8 - in the Senate. The final vote on the reform will be held by secret ballot on Thursday 8 October, at 12.30pm. In Montecitorio, therefore, these are decisive days and Giorgia Meloni's government has tried to limit the risks of something going wrong to a minimum: the secret ballot - already requested by the Pd, M5s and Avs - is only foreseen on the final green light for the text. A mechanism that unleashed the anger of the opposition, who spoke of a "slap in the face of Parliament", "forcing" and "lack of discussion".

The passages in the Chamber

Yesterday the Minister for Relations with Parliament, Luca Ciriani, asked for confidence on three of the four articles modified by the Senate: they must therefore be revoted. The first two modifications concern the heart of the reform with the articles in which, among other things, the preference mechanism was inserted, the third a territorial redefinition of the constituencies of Merano, Bressanone and Bolzano. This is a point on which the opposition did not make any amendments but which could have been subjected to a secret ballot and therefore, to "avoid trouble", the centre-right has armored itself on that too.

What's happening today

Today, therefore, there are the first two calls, on Wednesday the third and then the vote (without confidence) on article 8, on which it is not possible to request a secret vote and therefore no confidence has been given. Thursday is the decisive day: final vote on the text by secret ballot. As per the rules of the Chamber, the confidence vote is taken with a roll call of the deputies after 24 hours: today, therefore, the deputies vote the first confidence vote on article 1. There is no final vote on the article, but only a final vote on the measure. Therefore, at 12 pm, the declarations of vote on the confidence placed by the government in article 1 began. A roll-call call is scheduled for 2 pm. Once the vote of confidence on article 1 is over, which should last about an hour and a quarter, the declarations of vote on the confidence placed on article 2 will be held around 3.30 pm, followed by the call of deputies.

What happens tomorrow and Thursday

Tomorrow, from 9am, the declarations of vote on the third confidence vote placed by the government on Monday will begin and then, not before 10.50am, there will be a roll call from the deputies. This will be followed by the declarations of vote by 1.30pm and then the vote on article 8. At the end, and after the question time, the examination of the agendas will take place from 4.15pm until 8pm and possibly continue through the night. Then on Thursday 8 October there is the final secret vote: from 10.30 the speeches with declarations of the final vote and then secret ballot voting at 12.30.