(Finance) – There will also be the outline of the constitutional bill ondirect election of the Prime Minister among the measures that the Council will have to launch tomorrow. The confirmation comes from the convocation of the meeting of ministers. Among the main ones novelty foreseen for the reform of the premiership there is also the possibility of changing the president-electprovided that the new prime minister is a parliamentarian elected in the ranks of the coalition that won the elections and carry forward the plan. However, the change of leadership will only be possible once during the legislature.
A solution, that of only one change at Palazzo Chigi in the five years of the legislature, identified to prevent the majority parties from starting a continuous series of maneuvers to replace the prime minister. The intent of the reform – Palazzo Chigi explained – is not so much to strengthen the powers of the prime minister, which in fact remain formally unchanged, but rather to guarantee the stability of governments and avoid the continuous changes of prime minister that we have witnessed in recent years.
This solution, however, would not be without risks. The head of the stable executive could in fact become the substitute and not the directly elected one: in this case only the second prime minister would in fact have the full power to dissolve the Chambers which the text does not attribute to the elected prime minister, triggering a race not for the presidency but at the “vice-presidency”.
The mechanism of the so-called “constructive trust”: the law in fact allowed the elected prime minister to be replaced in the event of termination of office only if voted by the same initial majority. Perplexities about this solution would also have come from the Quirinale. In fact, the doubts concerned the possibility that the initial majority constraint would provide each party with the majority dissolution power of the Chambers or at least a strong one power of blackmail towards the elected prime minister.
For this reason it was decided to turn to the formula that allows the elected prime minister to continue his government activity even if the support of a majority party were to disappear: in this case he would in fact have the possibility of returning to the Chambers to expand the initial majority with the constraint, however, of carrying forward the government program with which the elections were won. From the legislator’s point of view, in fact, the constraint of the program instead of the constraint of the majority itself gives greater flexibility to the system and avoids the prime minister from governing under blackmail from the minor partners but it is still an important political constraint.