For at least thirty years the parties have fueled abstentionism because in this way they govern with few votes to buy and cultivate.
Of Salvatore Turi Palidda
Everyone is celebrating victory but let’s look at the real results, that is, with respect to those entitled to vote.
For this round of European elections the total number of voters entitled to vote was 51,214,348 but less than 50% of voters voted, i.e. 25,549,318.
Duce Meloni’s party (FdI) obtained 13% of those entitled to vote (and 9.7% more than the 3.3% it had in 2019); Forza Italia had 4.4% – again of those entitled to vote – (therefore less 0.2 compared to 4.6 in 2019); the League had 4.1% and therefore 14.2% less than the 18.3 in 2019). All together these right-wing parties had 21.5% of those entitled to vote, therefore less than the 27% they had in the last 2023 elections.
The PD had 11% (0.9 less than 11.9 in 2019); the M5S obtained 4.5%, i.e. 4.4 less than the 8.9 it had in 2019 and the AVS obtained 3.1, which is not comparable because it did not exist in 2019). So the total number of opposition parties is 18.6%.
In the North-West there were 55.52% of voters, in the North-East 53.68, in Central Italy 54.88 while in the South 43% and in the islands only 36%. The usual racist Northerners will say that the people of the South don’t vote because they are ignorant and corrupt… (Banfield’s famous theory of amoral familism or LaPalombara’s Italian ambiguity). These theories hide the historical marginalization of the South (Pizzorno) which has been relegated to being a basin of consensus for those in power, i.e. the best bidder in the so-called “exchange vote” market. Instead, when the southern people fought, they only received the lead of the mafia or the police (think of the dozens of deaths killed in the post-war period up to Avola and Battipaglia. And as De Gasperi said: “Learn a language and go to abroad”.
If today there is less voting it is precisely because the parties have fueled abstentionism in order to have fewer customers to cultivate or buy and therefore the possibility of governing with a relatively reduced quantity of votes.
Unfortunately, there is not – at least for now – a political proposal capable of transforming at least a large part of the abstentionism into revolt against a power which, with the globalized liberal counter-revolution that began in the 1970s, only worsens working and working conditions. life of the majority of workers and the population almost always without protection. Abstentionism especially affects the electorate who have every reason to be against the government in office but have no longer found reliable parties for decades. The ex-left (PD) has for years disgusted the majority of the electorate who voted for it and paved the way for the jumble of the right now led by Mrs. Meloni and her relatives, comrades and servants. Now the PD wants to regain credibility, but it is not opposed to the increase in military spending and the servile deployment at the feet of the United States and also of Israel, nor to the economic and wage mechanisms that have reduced Italy to a country with the lowest wages and above all without protection of workers at the mercy of fatal accidents and diseases from toxic contamination due to the disposal of the workers of the Labor Inspectorate, the local health authorities, the INAIL etc.
The only useful perspective is to transform abstentionism into revolt for social justice, against the military and police lobby and for peace, for the effective protection of everyone’s fundamental rights (immigrants and Italians).
NB: the source of the data on which the % are calculated is the official one, i.e. https://elezioni.interno.gov.it/europee/scrutini/20240609/scrutiniEX
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