Responding yesterday to those who asked her for her position on the June 8 and 9 popular referendum, with questions on labor and citizenship, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, arriving at the Imperial Forum in Rome on the occasion of Republic Day, was clear: "I'm going to vote, I don't withdraw the ballot. It is one of the options". Her words triggered responses from oppositions, including that of 5 Star Movement leader and former Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte: "It is outrageous but not surprising that Meloni will not withdraw the ballot and therefore will not vote in the referendum on June 8 and 9 in which we choose whether to increase the rights and protections of workers against precarity, accidents at work, layoffs," Conte wrote on X - After all, in almost 30 years in politics she has done nothing to protect those who work and break their backs every day, the precarious young people who are not lucky enough to have made a career in politics. It is shameful that this message of abstention with respect to an important choice comes from a Prime Minister on June 2, the symbolic day of a country choosing the Republic, of the first time for women admitted to a national vote. I urge our young people to recover the story of Teresa Mattei, who on that very June 2, 1946, was the youngest person elected to the Constituent Assembly and who fought for the inclusion in Article 3 of the Constitution of ‘proven’, not delusive freedom and equality for citizens. Not free and equal 'in fact' are workers who cannot defend themselves against layoffs, precariousness, accidents at work. Long live commitment and participation to make things better, long live June 2, long live the Republic". The controversy comes after repeated calls by center-right majority members not to go to vote in the referendum, which has as its object the repeal of some labor regulations and an amendment to the law on the acquisition of Italian citizenship for foreign residents that makes it easier to acquire it.