by Eric J. Lyman
ROME, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Italy's mainstream political parties appear ready to back an electoral reform plan that will make it easier for like-minded parties to join forces while making it less likely that the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement would be able to gain the parliamentary support it would need to gain the premiership.
Before the end of the week, the lower house of Italy's parliament is expected to vote on a proposal that would award a third of the seats selected in next year's parliamentary vote to coalitions formed before the vote.
That step means parties could link up and jointly select a single candidate for a specific parliamentary seat. It would exclude the Five-Star Movement, founded by comedian-turned-activist Beppe Grillo, from being competitive in most of those races, since the party has always rejected political alliances.
"The change would allow two or three parties to decide on a single candidate for each district and make it more likely that candidate would win that seat," Roberto D'Alimonte, a political scientist on Italian political system at Rome's LUISS University, told Xinhua. "That would put the candidate from the Five-Star Movement at a big disadvantage."
The other two-thirds of the seats would be awarded on a proportional basis, as is the case for the full parliament today. That means the Five-Star Movement, which pollsters say is supported by 25 to 30 percent of Italian voters, would earn a share of the remaining seats roughly in proportion to its vote total.
The center-left Democratic Party is running about even with the Five-Star Movement in most national polls, with the center-right Forza Italia party and the separatist Northern League both earning between 10 and 15 percent of support. Other parties are all in single digits in terms of support, pollster say.
After the votes are tallied, parties will still be able to form alliances or coalitions in order to govern.
"I'm not sure the Five-Star Movement is excluded from winning with this new reform," Daniela Giannetti, a political scientist at the University of Bologna, said in an interview. "No matter what party comes out ahead, the next government will almost surely be a coalition government."
Newly elected Five Star Movement chairman Luigi Di Maio has said that his party would accept the support of other parties in order to lead a coalition government, but that it would be unwilling to trade ministerial seats for that support.
Assuming the reform measure passes the lower house of parliament -- analysts say passage is likely, given that it has support from all the major parties except the Five-Star Movement-- then it will move to the Senate for its approval. If it passes both houses, it will be in effect for the national vote scheduled to take place in the first half of 2018.
"We can't make any specific analysis until we see the final reform as it is approved by both houses," Giannetti said.
Whatever happens, D'Alimonte said the next Italian government will be plagued by many of the same problems that have historically made Italian governments weak and unstable.
The current Italian government, led by Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, is Italy's 70th government in the 74 years since the fall of Fascist leader Benito Mussolini during World War II.
"The hope was that the next reform would create a system where the government would be more stable, but that isn't the case here," D'Alimonte said. "This reform might be a small improvement, but the government it produces is still likely to be a fragile coalition that will find it difficult to make any big changes."
