Italian Senate Moves Electoral Debate to Mount Etna Summit, Requires All 200 Senators to Vote While Standing in Lava-Skimming Boots
Italy's Senate has relocated its electoral reform vote to a live volcanic ridge on Mount Etna, where every senator must cast a ballot while balancing on heat-resistant platforms and general practitioners strike over a new law requiring house calls by cable car.
ROME — The Italian Senate has voted to relocate all electoral reform debates to a live volcanic ridge on Mount Etna, where each of the 200 senators must now cast a ballot while standing on heat-resistant platforms above slowly moving lava. The measure passed after a three-day session in which the chamber's president, Ignazio La Russa, declared that «if the reform is to reshape the nation's foundations, it should be debated on foundations that are visibly molten.»
The Senate's sergeant-at-arms has requisitioned every fireproof boot in Sicily, and a new standing order requires senators to descend the crater on foot after each vote, carrying their own ballot boxes. Opposition members have adapted by wearing mountaineering suits under their formal attire, while the chamber's stenographers now work from a cable car suspended over the active vent. «We have moved the debate to where the earth itself is undecided,» La Russa said. «It focuses the mind.»
General practitioners, meanwhile, have gone on strike over new rules requiring all house calls to be made by cable car where available, with a mandatory stop at the nearest volcanic observation post to log the patient's vital signs. The health ministry insists the measure will «bring doctors closer to the national terrain,» and has begun installing stretcher hooks on existing ski lifts. A union representative said the strike will continue until the government agrees that a stethoscope is not a mountaineering accessory.
17