An email from Italy to an Australian friend.
I have not seen anything on the ABC (Australia) about the referendum result earlier this week so I thought I would explain. Voting took place last Sunday and Monday. Referenda here can only occur for judging laws that have already been passed by the government. They require a quorum of  50%+1 attendance of eligible voters and after that the majority vote wins. There were 4 items on the agenda - one on nuclear power, 2 on privatising water, and one to stop a law designed principally to allow the PM (Berlu) to escape any legal action for any crimes he has committed or might commit. A yes vote on all issues was a vote to do away with those laws on the books. 57% of the eligible voters showed up and 95 % voted yes, almost equally on all 4 questions. A stunning defeat for Berlu. But even more stunning in that it was an absloute majority in the sense that 95% of 57% is still more than 50% of the voting population. The referundum was started 2 years ago by DiPietro now leader of a leftist party in the parliament. Di Pietro was the Milan magistrate who brought down the old corrupt system in the early 1990's. The major left party did not support this referendum  in the early stages but once they smelt a likely success they joined in - a bit sickening when you see them now celebrating and grabbing credit. Also a remarkable and encouraging result because the corporate media were almost all against and this included goverment TV channels who resisted giving publicity to the referendum. So after all the Italians are not sheep. But with even the major left party moribund, where the powerbrokers are old cronies there for life, it remains to be seen whether a younger generation can take heart from all this. Berlu and his crowd were shameless. When they knew that they were likely to lose they encouraged their supporters not to vote so that the required quorum would not be attained. Then on the Monday hours before the polls closed Berlu and one of his henchmen ministers announced publicly that the quorum had been reached so it was all over. It was not known that the quorum had been reached and should not have been commented on. Innocent? Not on your nelly. It was an attempt by the two to dissuade anybody else going to vote in the hope that the quorum would not be reached. So our honorable PM was outside the law on more than 2 counts. The one I just mentioned and the fact that the constitution requires that we the people are encouraged to vote but not forced.
I share your concerns about energy in the future but I take the point of view that the question of nuclear depends very much more on the local situation than only on the global. In that sense the worries about Italy are more to the point than they might be  for example in Australia because Italy is very earth quake prone and it has had tsunamis in recorded history, one  in 1906 that almost wiped out Messina. Then consider other peculiarities about Italy . Garbage in Napoli has reached catastrophic proportions with the camorra controlling and profiting. It is not fanciful to conjecture that the camorra or a parallel criminal group could get control of nuclear waste disposal. And as I have intimated before, nuclear waste could become a greater problem than just the maintenance of nuclear fuel centres. It is approaching a crisis in Japan. And we already have trainloads of radioactive nuclear waste being transported around Europe. About 3 or 4 years ago a train passing through Viareggio near the Tuscan coast and transporting tankers of inflammable liquid (not nuclear waste) blew up and destroyed a major section of the residential buildings near the railway line with a huge loss of life. Do you think any responsible government agency then did a thorough survey of all of Italy where this could happen again. Of course not. The head of that organisation one Bertolaso, one of Berlu's favourites was making money out of giving contracts to his friends and relatives for restoration work such as that in L'Aquila where the big earthquake occurred 2 years ago, and that of course was after the fact not before or during, a point that seems to be contradicted by their name, Civil Protection Agency. A final point about safety. 2 years ago 1300 people were killed in Italy in work related accidents in one year. No need to expand on this as I think it speaks for itself. I have not seen more recent figures but I would bet the mortality rate has not changed much. It begins to look like a massacre, but any news item lasts just one day.
The Italian people know all this but are only listened to if a referendum can be organised This time it has happened but it still remains to get rid of entrenched pols and their ideas about how a government should be run. In fact one should admire Italian working people for their resilience.
Regards, John.