[BRIEF NOTE] Canada's Italian Vote
Mar. 10th, 2006 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe Globe and Mail was one Toronto news source among many that covered the Toronto segment of the Italian election campaign.
I disagree with the suggestion could threaten Canadian sovereignty, since, as I read the issue, there won't be many critical conflicts between the Italian and Canadian states. It's not as if Little Italy or Corso Italia are going to become territories of debatable sovereignty. The Italian diaspora, though a substantially fictive diaspora, hammered together from different emigrant populations which left different regions at different times, does exist.
One issue that I can imagine is that where once this measure would have helped the Italian left, given the diaspora's origin in poverty and political oppression, the now-established and prosperous and older Italian communities are--as this thread at babble.ca suggests--likely to bolster the right. I've problems with this mainly because I doubt the competency and morality of the Italian right; others' mileage may vary. Another issue is that extending representation to the diaspora will, as the article notes, weaken the representation of the Italians living inside Italy. Another, more serious criticism is that extending the vote to the legally-constituted diaspora while people of immigrant stock in Italy itself are deprived undermines the relatively territorial basis for the Italian nation-state and instead imposes much more restrictive criteria for membership based on descent. If Italian-Canadians a generation removed can vote while a first-generation Romanian-Italian can not, there's problems.
Even so, none of these issues, not even the last, are quite enough for me to condemn this new law. Let's see how this works.
Vittorio Coco, a host on Toronto's multicultural CHIN radio station, is campaigning to become a senator.
His riding stretches from Cuba to Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, up north to the United States and Canada. Among his constituents are as many as 137,000 Canadians, 5,000 people from the Dominican Republic and a lonely three in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. The only thing these voters have in common is their Italian passports.
"I never imagined I'd be running for the Italian parliament," said Mr. Coco, a genial 66-year-old who wears a dark pinstripe suit and violet silk tie (Italian-made, of course). "Italians living abroad were classified as B citizens for years. This new law allowing us to be elected recognizes us as first-class citizens. Before when we screamed, no one listened in Rome. Now if we scream, they will have to listen."
Mr. Coco, who has lived in Canada since 1959, is running in Italy's national elections on April 9 in the new riding of North and Central America, where as many as 403,000 people are eligible to vote.
"It's kind of an experiment," he acknowledged over a risotto lunch at an Italian eatery in Toronto. A long-overdue experiment, he feels.
Italy's move to allow Italians living abroad to be represented in parliament took more than five decades to achieve. Italy had to change its constitution and then persuade dozens of other countries to let dual-Italian citizens living abroad stand as candidates and campaign through the Internet, e-mail, print mail and Italy's diplomatic network.
The decision to allow diaspora representatives to sit in the Italian parliament with full rights to engage in debates and vote on bills has been controversial both at home and abroad. Six senators and 12 deputies will represent the ridings of North and Central America (three seats); Europe (nine); South America (five) and Australia (one). That leaves 18 fewer parliamentarians for Italians who actually live in Italy.
I disagree with the suggestion could threaten Canadian sovereignty, since, as I read the issue, there won't be many critical conflicts between the Italian and Canadian states. It's not as if Little Italy or Corso Italia are going to become territories of debatable sovereignty. The Italian diaspora, though a substantially fictive diaspora, hammered together from different emigrant populations which left different regions at different times, does exist.
One issue that I can imagine is that where once this measure would have helped the Italian left, given the diaspora's origin in poverty and political oppression, the now-established and prosperous and older Italian communities are--as this thread at babble.ca suggests--likely to bolster the right. I've problems with this mainly because I doubt the competency and morality of the Italian right; others' mileage may vary. Another issue is that extending representation to the diaspora will, as the article notes, weaken the representation of the Italians living inside Italy. Another, more serious criticism is that extending the vote to the legally-constituted diaspora while people of immigrant stock in Italy itself are deprived undermines the relatively territorial basis for the Italian nation-state and instead imposes much more restrictive criteria for membership based on descent. If Italian-Canadians a generation removed can vote while a first-generation Romanian-Italian can not, there's problems.
Even so, none of these issues, not even the last, are quite enough for me to condemn this new law. Let's see how this works.
