by Simona Gallo
Photo sourced from Washington Post
On 25 September 2022, Italian citizens voted for their new government in the general election. The party of Giorgia Meloni “Fratelli D’Italia”, Italian for “Italian Brothers”, won with a majority, by 26,24%. This implies that Italian Brothers will have the greatest number of seats, 199 in the Chamber and 66 in the Senate respectively. The result of the election makes Giorgia Meloni the first Italian female premier, and it will be her duty to build the government that will face one of the most dramatic and unstable Italian economic realities to date. It would all seem very straightforward from here, yet, there is a dark reality behind the Italian voting system. In every election, young voters are disenfranchised, and in this year’s election Italy has hit the highest rate of abstention on-record.
Only 64% of Italian citizens voted, the lowest percentage voter turnout compared to the data from the last ten years. If we look closer, we can see that the majority of those who abstained were young people: 36% of young adults under 30 did not vote. The reasons behind such dramatic abstention are two-fold.
Firstly, the Italian system does not allow people to vote outside their city of legal residence. For instance, students who have legal residence in Rome can vote only in Rome, so if they are currently studying in Milan, their only option is to take a plane or a train (at their expense) to go back to Rome to vote and return the same day (fortunately elections are held on Sundays!).
Do not make the mistake of thinking this problem affects just students, all workers employed or living in different cities suffer the same problem. Even Italian President Sergio Mattarella had to fly back to Sicily to vote – no one is spared! Of course, people with financial stability who can meet these high expenses still have a chance to vote. On the other hand, such a voting structure entirely impedes people with a lower income from exercising their constitutional right. Namely, Article 48 in the Italian constitution states clearly that the right to vote is a core democratic principle, and it is the government’s responsibility to make it happen. In reality, approximately 5 million citizens with the right to vote had no choice but to abstain.Of all European countries (except for Malta and Cyprus), Italy is the only country that has not updated its electoral system. As one would expect, ignoring a third of the population has significant consequences. Indeed, the second reason behind such colossal abstention is that young people do not feel considered as part of the political decision making process. Today, the younger generations have different visions and hopes for their future, some of which have been entirely dismissed by most parties, led by older generations. Indeed, during political campaigns, a majority of Millennials and Gen Z reported to have been unsatisfied by the quality of discussion on topics they consider essential. For instance, the environment, technological innovations, career opportunities and social justice were given minimal consideration.
New generations are waiting for significant changes in the political mentality. Shutting down new ideas and modern perspectives always leads to stagnation. Italy should aim for modernisation. In order to achieve this, politicians should close their TikTok accounts and truly listen to the voice of younger citizens. In fact, from the EU Youth Policy Strategy data, we know for a fact that young people do care about politics. In Italy, young adults (15-35 years old) have one of the highest percentages of “political interest” in social activities and innovative creations. As a matter of fact, the political passion of the young Italians created the committee “o Voto da fuori sede”, which means “I vote out of my city”, with the aim to change this unfair electoral system. And guess what? One of the first letters from this committee was addressed precisely to Giorgia Meloni, who at the time was the Minister of Youth in Silvio Berlusconi’s fourth government. Since 2010, “I vote out of my city” has always been ignored.
However, on several occasions during Giorgia Meloni’s campaign, she affirmed that now politicians must take responsibility and better represent all Italian citizens, including the minorities. In her 2022 political manifesto, she promises to create “more space for the new generation” (n.7) and to defend everyone’s “freedom, dignity and choice” (n.12). We can expect that after 12 years she will make amends with young people by keeping her promises.
Unfortunately, the incoherences in her party’s ideology raises many doubts. In my opinion, the first ministers nominated by Giorgia Meloni could seriously threaten the ‘fair representation’ of citizens within political institutions. In fact, the new speaker of the Senate Ignazio La Russa and the speaker of the Chamber Lorenzo Fontana are historically right-wing extremists, who during all their careers have fought to reject LGBTQ+ community integration, abolish abortion and many other horrific policies.
Italian citizens can only hope that somehow this government will be effective. It is likely that Giorgia Meloni’s victory would have happened in any case. However, from now on, when we talk about young people being withdrawn from politics, we should really ask ourselves, are young people the disinterested ones or is it politics that is excluding them? Nevertheless, young people will not stop fighting to shape the world according to their ideology, after all, we are the future!
