Communists will vote NO in the constitutional referendum of 22–23 March, which will determine whether the constitutional reform on the judiciary approved by the Meloni government is ratified or rejected by the people.
In recent months the government forces, which seriously fear defeat in the referendum, have been striving to rally popular support for their project by presenting the judicial reform as something necessary for the interests of the Italian people, of ordinary people, of Italian “democracy”, and of national stability. The referendum campaign has not been conducted on the real substance of the reform: it has been based on appeals about the need to reform the justice system so that the government can continue along its path and so that the courts do not “obstruct” the work of politics.
In recent weeks open appeals to vote in order to “slap the judges in the face” have intensified, presenting the judiciary as responsible for the frustration and injustice that the people experience in their daily lives. The idea is being promoted and presented as truth that the injustice suffered by millions of people is the result of an “ideological” stance by judges, rather than the class character of justice itself and a system structurally founded on exploitation, inequality, and the crushing of the rights of the many in the name of the profit of the few.
Media outlets close to the government are also taking part in this referendum campaign in more subtle ways. They do so, for example, by manipulating news stories such as the so-called “family in the woods” case through arbitrary narratives, or by granting disproportionate media exposure to alleged judicial errors.
The character of this referendum campaign clearly reveals the decay of modern bourgeois “liberal democracy”. Far from being based on real popular participation in decisions concerning public life, it treats peoples and workers as nothing more than “vote banks” to be won, manoeuvred and managed through the manipulation of mass information, in order to provide a semblance of legitimacy for the plans of big capital.
As for the substance of the constitutional reform, it is perfectly clear to us that it has nothing to do with the need for a fairer judicial system that guarantees accessible justice, quicker procedures and a system truly serving the citizens and the people.
It is equally clear that the real issue of the reform is not the so-called “separation of careers” within the judiciary. The real point is the creation of two separate High Councils of the Judiciary, both stripped of disciplinary functions. This is combined with a mechanism of sortition for their members, both “judicial” and “lay”. Such a mechanism will increase the control of the bourgeois political parties, and especially of the governing majority, over the judiciary, while reducing the autonomy of the internal political groupings within it. If the YES were to prevail, the effective weight of the “lay” members, drawn by lot from a closed list appointed by parliament, would grow enormously compared to that of the “judicial” members drawn by lot from among all the judges in Italy.
The set of changes introduced by the constitutional reform cannot be reduced to a series of merely “technical” matters, and therefore dismissed as being of little interest to those outside the field. They constitute a political fact that must be understood within the broader drift of the Italian political system toward an authoritarian, reactionary and repressive spiral, similar to what is happening in the United States and in other countries of the European Union. The attempt by the Meloni government to assert greater influence over the judiciary and to weaken the so-called constitutional “checks and balances” must be considered together with the numerous “security decrees” that have introduced dozens of new criminal offences, harsher penalties for those who strike or take part in demonstrations, tolerance toward police arbitrariness and abuses, and the abolition of the crime of abuse of office for white-collar officials. It must also be viewed alongside the wave of investigations and precautionary measures that swept across Italy after the large demonstrations of October and November 2025: a genuine “judicial” retaliation, which was in reality entirely political, made up of measures often completely arbitrary and destined to collapse within a few months. It must also be seen in connection with the reports about journalists being spied on by the government through spyware installed on their phones, and with the infiltration of political parties and organisations by police agents, openly admitted and justified by the Ministry of the Interior.
After years of hypocritical alarmism from the centre-left, which called for electoral convergence in the “broad camp” in the name of antifascism, we now find ourselves in a situation where it is necessary to build, in practice and not merely in words, a popular, working-class and militant alternative to the plans aimed at restricting the political and democratic freedoms that still exist in Italy.
This challenge must be taken up and the responsibility assumed. We must do so with full awareness that all this is taking place in the context of imperialist war and of international competition among the capitalist powers. This is evident again in recent days with the attack carried out by the United States and Israel against Iran, within the broader international rivalry between the Euro-Atlantic bloc and China and Russia. It is the context of the arms race and the war economy, in the name of which ever greater sacrifices are being demanded and will continue to be demanded from the people.
The attempt to regiment society, to introduce ever more instruments to repress dissent, and to increase government control and influence over wider sectors of public life, including the judiciary, information and culture, corresponds to what historically has been the broader tendency of capitalist states to restrict political and democratic freedoms in the epoch of imperialist competition.
For all these reasons we believe that it is necessary and timely, also in light of the growing attention surrounding the referendum, to promote and build support for the idea of a “social NO”. This stands in opposition to the “NO” of the centre-left forces, of the liberals and of social democracy (PD–M5S–AVS), that is, of those forces that seek to administer this system and defend the interests and ambitions of Italian capital.
On 14 March the Communist Front and the Communist Youth Front will be in the streets in Rome at the national demonstration called by the “Committee for the Social No”, assembling in Piazza della Repubblica at 2:00 pm.
We are working, and will continue to work, so that the NO expressed on 22–23 March will be the NO shouted by workers, students, pensioners, natives and immigrants. The NO of all those who are exploited and who experience on their own skin the injustice of this system.
Political Bureau — Communist Front of Italy
National Secretariat — Communist Youth Front
