The first problem faced by the government was that of the consolidation of public finances. A decree established a large levy on the personal and real estate wealth of citizens, a sort of patrimonial; at the same time an important agreement was reached with the trade unions on the containment of labor costs and on the blocking of articulated bargaining. A second, broader maneuver cut 93,000 billion from public expenditure forecasts, drastically reducing, among other things, the gratuitousness of health services and affecting privileged aspects of public employment. The privatization of significant sectors of state holdings in the industrial and banking sectors was also initiated. Government decisions, especially in tax and health matters, aroused the reaction – even against the trade unions – of large sectors of the world of work. The uncertainty of the internal political situation and the no longer eludable problem of public debt contributed to the start, at the end of August 1992, of a violent downward speculation against the lira, which was artificially overvalued and forced, in the EMS, within very fluctuating margins. restricted. On 13 September the government decided on a realignment against the other European currencies – effectively a devaluation of 7%, and subsequently the exit from the EMS. The free negotiation of the lira will subsequently lead to a depreciation of our currency of more than 20%. at the end of August 1992, a violent downward speculation against the lira, which was artificially overvalued and forced, in the EMS, within very narrow fluctuation margins. On 13 September the government decided on a realignment against the other European currencies – effectively a devaluation of 7%, and subsequently the exit from the EMS. The free negotiation of the lira will subsequently lead to a depreciation of our currency of more than 20%.
As it was in the commitments made before the elections, Parliament established a bicameral commission of 60 members to tackle the problems of institutional reform. The start of the work of the bicameral Commission – initially chaired by De Mita and from March 1993 by N. Iotti – confirmed that the range of dissensions between the parties had been anything but reduced. In particular, the defenders of a correct proportional system – which would protect the party system – and the supporters of the single-member majority system confronted the central issue of the electoral law. However, these were divided between the adoption of the English one-shift model and the French two-shift model with the possibility of alliance of the different political forces in the second.
According to topschoolsintheusa, the decision of the Constitutional Court, in January 1993, to recognize the legitimacy of new abrogative referendums, however, seemed to pave the way for the introduction of the majority system by referendum.
Indeed, the consultations held on April 18-19 confirmed that this was now the orientation of the majority of Italians. On that occasion, eight referendums were voted, the most important of which was the one which, through the repeal of some formulations of the electoral law, aimed at introducing the single-member majority system in the Senate. 82.7% voted in favor of this proposal, with a peak of 87.4% in the North. The triumph of the Yes testified to the crisis of confidence in the party system, a crisis that became unstoppable after the scandal of “ tangentopoli ” (a term originally used to indicate the Lombard metropolis at the center of the intertwining between business and politics, and therefore extended to the phenomenon bribes and illegal financing in general). The popular decision was widely celebrated by the press which with its main organs had fought vigorously in favor of the Yes, whose victory was now interpreted as the beginning of a new era and the sign of the end of the first republic. However, the parties themselves contributed not a little to the size of the success, fearful of being excluded from the processes of renewal of the country and siding in a large majority (with a certain amount of transformism) in favor of the majority, with the exception of the MSI, of Rifondazione, the Network and the PDS minority. The very high percentage of consensus (90.3%) also obtained the proposal to repeal the public financing of parties, supported by all political groups.
Other favorable results (from 70 to 90%) recorded the referendums for the abolition of the Ministry of Agriculture, State Participations, Tourism and Entertainment, the rules that entrusted the government with the appointment of the President of the Savings Banks, and those which attributed control over the environment to the USLs. The country, on the other hand, remained deeply divided on the drug problem: if in fact the abolition of prison for drug addicts who are not guilty of other crimes and are not drug dealers passed only with 55.4% of the votes, the limits of the controversial were confirmed. law that sought to regulate the matter in 1990.
In the aftermath of the referendums, on 22 April, at the end of a debate in the Chamber, Amato announced the resignation of his government, already severely weakened. In the speech that started the discussion, Amato spoke of the need for “a clear sign of discontinuity”; and he had explained how the abolition of the public financing of the parties testified “the repudiation of the party equal to the public organs and placed among them”. And it represented “an authentic change of regime, which kills after seventy years that party-state model that was introduced in Italy by fascism and that the Republic had finished inheriting, limiting itself to transforming a singular into a plural”.
