Some of the petitioners claim that making people pay for tests to be able to work is incompatible with Italy’s constitution, which begins, “Italy is a democratic Republic founded on labor.” Giuseppe Cataldi, a professor of international law at the University of Napoli L’Orientale and a human rights expert said: “If a worker doesn’t want to get vaccinated, and at least formally retains the right to not get vaccinated, but in the end is forced to because he supports his family and cannot spend 10 percent of his salary on tests, that’s not okay.” “They say, ‘the vaccine is not mandatory, it’s just that if you don’t have it, you can’t live, you can’t go to work or university.’ Dante would have been able to fill the circle of hypocrites in hell with politicians from today,” said Barbero at a festival in Florence.
One of its signatories, prominent historian Alessandro Barbero, has argued that the government should be upfront about what is effectively mandatory vaccination instead of “blackmailing” its citizens. “We are clearly living in a totalitarian regime,” he said.ĭominici also organized a petition that has since been signed by more than 1,000 university professors and researchers who insist they are not against vaccines, but they reject the green pass as unconstitutional, discriminatory and divisive.
The conference organizer, Gandolfo Dominici, a professor of marketing at Palermo University with an ear for soundbites, has rebaptized Italy “Draghistan” in light of these developments, a name that protesters and opposition politicians have since appropriated as an internet meme and hashtag.ĭominici told POLITICO that the word was meant to allude to Turkmenistan, one of the only countries with mandatory vaccines, and Afghanistan, because forcing people to receive vaccines amounts to a theocracy.
Those who refuse are suspended from work without pay. All workers in Italy must either have a digital health passport, known as a green pass, proving vaccination or a negative test every two days - which amounts to €150 a month. While polls currently put the prime minister’s approval rating at 65-70 percent, with the majority of Italians trusting his personal credibility and capability to unlock European funds and manage the pandemic, a minority resistance group in Italy- made up of liberals and intellectuals - are increasingly expressing concerns about the country’s decline of democratic rights.Ĭhief among their complaints is Draghi’s vaccination rules - among the strictest of any democracy.