Il colpo di stato della Corte costituzionale

Published: June 24 2008 03:00 in the Financial Times.

From Mr Marco Perduca.

Sir, I am afraid I will have to disagree with Eugenio Scalfari's analysis of the Italian regime ("Italy's 'authoritarian' PM under fire", June 21). Instead of running the risk of becoming a country under the authoritarian rule of a media tycoon, Italy has been the victim of a sophisticated and protracted coup d'état since the late 1970s, with the Constitutional Court acting as a major political player blocking scores of referendums that would have reformed oligarchic laws spanning from the criminal code to public financing of political parties to the relationship with the Vatican. That massive negation of popular referendums has been the beginning of the erosion of civil and political rights that has made Italy the non-democracy that it is today. What is most interesting is that neither Mr Scalfari nor Silvio Berlusconi, nor the majority of politicians and analysts for that matter, take those events into consideration when accusing the other party of behaving anti-democratically.

Marco Perduca,
Senator, Radicals/Democratic Party,
00186 Rome, Italy