There's quite a few asterisks that need to be appended to "independent".

It is quite independent in Italy actually. The government is pushing for a constitutional amendment to help "fix" this feature. There is going to be a referendum on the change very soon.

	▲	jonathanlydall an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I have ancestral Italian Citizenship but have never lived in Italy. I am occasionally called upon by the local consulate to perform my civic duty and vote. Just this week I sent them back my ballot, now marked, for this referendum in a sealed envelope. This referendum required me to dig more deeply than usual into Italian politics before I could decide which way I wanted to vote.
	▲	N19PEDL2 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Italian_constitutional_re...