‘Lega Nord’ supporters at a rally in Lombardy.

By Samuel Stolton. 20th October 2017.

Italian citizens from the northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto head to the ballot boxes on Sunday in a referendum over greater powers of devolution.

Voters shall be asked if they want to receive more regional autonomy from the central government in Rome. The subject of financial contribution has been a central tenet for those advocating greater regional powers, particularly due to the fact that the wealthy regions of Lombardy and Veneto alone account for approximately 20% and 10% of Italy’s GDP respectively. Both areas also pay significantly more in taxes to the central government than that which they receive back.

Lombardy governor Roberto Maroni has long been a supporter of greater autonomy for the region, as has his party, Lega Nord, Italy’s Eurosceptic faction. Its leader, Matteo Salvini, considered one of the most impassioned adversaries against the European project, once described the euro currency as a “crime against humanity.”

With Sunday’s regional poll however, Salvini has been keen to strike an assuaged chord, reassuring citizens that the vote shall in no terms draw parallels with the recent brouhaha of the Catalonia independence referendum. Speaking to RT news, he said: “These referendums are very different in respect to the ones in Barcelona…They have been approved by the courts and by the government, and the police will help the pubic to vote rather than kick people out of polling stations.”

Perhaps Lega Nord’s most challenging obstacle in recent years has been to placate its far-right identity, which has come as a result of a number of radical pledges. The most famed was the party’s secessionist ideology, adopted after the success of the 1996 general election. This policy sought the formal breakaway of certain parts of Northern Italy into a new independent state called ‘Padania.’ Roberto Maroni now discounts this time in the party’s history as a ‘revolutionary phrase’ and Matteo Salvini seems to concur: “We are asking not for independence but for greater autonomy at the local level in order to manage schools, hospitals, roads, to help the disabled, to finance local business, to spend less and to spend better,” he said.

However keen Lega Nord are to dissuade their previous calls for independence, they have stated that if Lombardy and Veneto vote for greater powers of autonomy, the trajectory of Italy’s administrative de-centralization would be put in motion. Speaking to the Corriere Della Sera, Salvini said: “If they [the referendums] go well in Lombardy and Veneto, the next day I will propose more referendums in Piedmont, Apulia, Abruzzo and Liguria.”

Ex-Prime Minister and leader of the Forza Italia party, Silvio Berlusconi, has also allied himself to a ‘Yes’ vote for greater regional powers, seeing the referendum as a potential platform on which to build his campaign for next year’s general election. Indeed, the result of this referendum could provoke a power-struggle on the centre-right of Italian politics as party leaders seek to substantiate their influence more widely across the country, weighing up whether or not the Italian electorate has a general appetite for a federalist ideology. Broadening the party appeal will no doubt be on the mind of Salvini, who was greeted during a rally for Lega Nord in the southern city of Napoli in March with violent protests and rioting.

Many Italians citizens have criticized the referendums, citing the fact that the vote only allows the regions of Lombardy and Veneto to merely request a greater degree of localisation from the central government in Rome. There is no obligation for parliament to pay any attention to the result. Then there is the subject of expenditure. The first round of votes will cost approximately 60 million euros, a significant portion of which is being spent on digital tablets to be used in the Lombardy referendum, the first of its kind in Italy to take place using digital devices. On top of this, ‘Smartmatic,’ the Venezuelan software company responsible for managing the digital voting system, has previously been investigated in the US for inconsistencies in its processing of voting data, a worrying fact for many Italians who have become so accustomed over the years to political scandals.

Despite politicians vying for a broader mandate for greater devolution across Italy that a ‘Yes’ vote in Lombardy and Veneto may proffer, most citizens and local business owners are taking a conflicting point of view. Venetian business magnate Luciano Benetton, owner of the clothing brand ‘United Colors,’ called the vote ‘stupid, a joke,’ while Sandro Boscaini, president of the Masi wine company, was equally as rebuking, “I feel Venetian, Italian and European: a chain that can not and should not be broken,” he said.