Beniamino Caravita di Toritto and Valerio Onida discuss about the Constitutional Referendum – The Reasons for YES and for NO
The International Telematic University UNINETTUNO inaugurates a new model of conferences, the e-Democratic Conference, matching a real and virtual debate
Rome – Two experts - Beniamino Caravita di Toritto and Valerio Onida – the moderator, a real audience (over 100 participants) and virtual audience (over 500 people wired to UNINETTUNO platform watching the event on live streaming) many questions arriving from the audience in the hall and from students watching it live and posting with their Tweets.
These are the figures of the event, chaired by the rector of UNINETTUNO University, Maria Amata Garito, that took place in Rome, at UNINETTUNO Multimedia Center (Piazza Grazioli, 17), devoted to the theme: “Constitutional Referendum – The Reasons for Yes and for No”, with which the University launches a cycle of conferences based on a format which allows for a true democratic participation to debates using the biggest arena humankind has ever known: the Internet’s virtual arena.
Beniamino Caravita di Toritto, professor of institutions of public law at “Sapienza” University and Valerio Onida, president emeritus of the Constitutional Court, moderated by Federica Fabrizzi, UNINETTUNO professor of institutions of public law, explained the referendum question point by point and why it is important to vote YES (in the case of Caravita) and NO (in the case of Onida) to the referendum of 4th December.
It is the rector Garito who speaks up for the students’ many questions including: “How long should we wait to have a new constitutional reform? I ask both Onida and Caravita to give an answer. I would like to add a recollection – Garito continues – that is what told me the then senator Roberto Ruffili as well as person responsible for the institutional reforms for the Christian Democrats, the day De Mita’s government took office: ‘Neither me, nor you, nor your children nor the children of you children will ever see the constitutional reforms”. I am asking you the same questions our students asked since we all need signals of change also in our Country”.
Valerio Onida answers first: “The bicameral commission failed, Berlusconi failed in 2005, if, hypothetically, this Government fails too and we won’t have no “great reform”. I am glad if there is no “great reform” any longer. Propose constitutional laws revising specific points on which we could get an agreement and I think that this doesn’t require biblical times since this could avoid dividing the Country between reformers and the so-called conservatives”. Of opposite views is Beniamino Caravita who says: “You cannot reach this balancing model if you approve it bit by bit. If, since 40 years, the political debate has been going into the direction of an overall reform, there is a reason for it. Perhaps yes, the reason is that we strike at the heart of the distribution of power. The alternative is succeeding in putting everything into a single package otherwise it is clear that, if NO wins, the Senate will remain as it is for the next 50 years”.
The “virtual arena” of the debate will be open until the 3rd December, the referendum’s eve: in fact, on UNINETTUNO’s portal it will be possible to go on submitting questions to the speakers and expressing one’s own views on the subject.