A health, economic and legal Caporetto. But now woe to be tempted by “governissimi”
That the government was in disarray, completely inadequate to deal with this emergency, we at Atlantico Quotidiano had already made it clear since last March . That the use, indeed the abuse of the Dpcm was a dangerous drift, a tear from the rule of law and the democratic dynamics, too . We went back several times to the irresponsible communication of Palazzo Chigi. But everything is repeating itself. The line of blame for the Italians does not change: the government is only capable of discharging the emergency on citizens and economic activities, that is, on the private sphere, first by attributing to them the increase in infections, then by placing obligations and prohibitions, while it continues to prove itself totally unable to deal with what it is responsible for: the public sphere. The measures contained in the last Dpcm – the third in ten days! – I'm proof of that. After less than a month of contagion resurfacing, the health system (and civil protection) is once again completely unprepared for what was widely and by everyone, despite the fact that the government had 5-6 months to strengthen and reorganize it. .
What had to be done, and has not been done, is under our eyes and today, unlike last spring, it is under the eyes of the citizens, increasing their exasperation. Intensive care has not been sufficiently increased nor temporary structures created to host Covid patients; the staff in hospitals and local health authorities has not been sufficiently strengthened, so the outcome of the tests is not yet as timely as it should, contact tracing is slow and immediately went haywire; local public transport has not been enhanced nor has rapid tests been implemented for schools; there are no protocols to follow less serious patients in their homes, who instead clog up hospitals with 20-30 percent unnecessary hospitalizations.
In August, you will remember, the soap opera of the ban on wheelchair benches… We did not know, at the time, that the ban on new intensive care would only arrive in October. And only last Saturday, 24 October, the Civil Protection deigned to launch the calls for 1,500 units of medical and health personnel and 500 administrative staff to support contact tracing .
In short, a disaster. The high bill came with yesterday's Dpcm to citizens and businesses. Subtle: a lockdown initiation without calling it lockdown .
Measures taken with the sole purpose of showing that the government is doing something, whatever. Their impact on the spread of the virus will probably be negligible, given that they are not supported by the data of the infections in the activities that are going to be closed and limited. These are therefore measures devoid of logic, reasonableness and proportionality, cardinal principles that should guide decisions when such profound limitations of fundamental freedoms are at stake. Is there an estimate of the infections that occurred in the premises of those businesses, in the hours in which they will be forced to close? A quick check could be done: how many restaurants and clubs were called by the ASL to trace the contacts of a positive through their registers? The Covid emergency now seems to authorize in the abstract any limitation of rights which, like health, are protected by the Constitution. And moreover, with an administrative act, not having the force of law.
Bars and restaurants, swimming pools and gyms, cinemas and theaters, which in recent months have invested time and money to adapt their premises, applied the protocols, in short, they are prepared to hold on, respecting the rules and accepting that they have to lose customers and turnover, now they are forced to close again by a government that has not done its part, has (and has) betrayed them.
Yesterday the Prime Minister Conte assured that the "refreshment measures" for the owners of the businesses affected by the closure will be in the Official Gazette "as early as Tuesday". How much? By when? In what form? With what criteria? He even spoke of credit on current accounts. But if it can be done today, why wasn't it done last spring?
Economy and Finance Minister Gualtieri spoke of compensation "by mid-November" for 350,000 companies, rental tax credit, elimination of the IMU installment, layoffs for employees and 1,000 euros for collaborators.
They are obviously aware that anger is mounting. But what residual credibility do they have, given that the "refreshment measures" promised in recent months, and introduced with the "August Decree", converted into law on October 13, have not yet arrived?
The country is a pressure cooker ready to explode. They should have imagined – Daniele Capezzone, from the TV broadcasts in which he is a guest, has been repeating it for months, to the point of boredom – that in the autumn the nodes of seriously insufficient "refreshment" measures would come to a head, and the economic and social crisis would be manifested in all its drama.
And as much as the Palazzo and the complacent media may call into question organized crime and fascists to discredit the protests, as Max Del Papa explains well today , it would be a grave mistake to underestimate the widespread exasperation – and exacerbated by the now clear failure of the institutions. We knew that the lockdown was a "one shot" measure, that a second would be unsustainable, but they wasted it …
One of the effects of the use of the Dpcm, combined with a “corrupt” media system, because it is militant, is also a deviated decision-making process and a crushed political debate on the dynamics within the majority. After Parliament has been emptied, the oppositions are in a shadow. The measures to be included in the Dpcm are discussed in informal meetings between the premier, some ministers and the heads of delegation of the majority parties, then between the government and regional presidents, then anticipated and commented on by the press, and finally they become executive without going through the parliamentary halls (which are "informed" only several days later). The objections of those who are outside this circuit are worth almost zero.
Hence, for example, the difficulties of Lega leader Matteo Salvini in formulating a coherent line, which risks being contradicted in the dialectic between the Northern League governors and the government. And on the other hand, he would play the game of his opponents if he came into open conflict with them on this or the other measure. We would not talk about anything else.
In this situation of health and economic emergency, and of extreme weakness of the Conte government, it is not surprising that we are once again talking about a government of national unity – even if it seems to us that no signals in this sense are coming from the circles of the majority or from the Quirinale, and that it is more a wishful thinking of some commentators and sectors of the opposition eager to get back into the game.
But after being marginalized for months, should the opposition really put its face in the management of such a disaster? And to do what exactly?
We do not see on the horizon a “Dream Team” able to do in 2-3 weeks what could and should have been done in 5-6 months. The first measure to be taken, sharing the responsibility, would be a new lockdown . National unity would have been desirable at the beginning of this emergency, or at the latest at the end of last spring's lockdown , by setting a certain date by which to return to the vote. But today, if such an invitation were to arrive, it would be solely because Pd and 5 Stelle do not want to be the only ones to sign the second lockdown . Have they made a disaster and the opposition should come to the rescue to share the blame? We remember, among other things, that the last time, after the "broad agreements", we found ourselves with a certain movement, first at 25, then at 33 percent …
No more hysteria. You cannot starve half the population, the majority parties and the highest sponsors of this government take full responsibility for the total lack of preparation for the second wave, for deaths and failures, and we vote in the spring. A government of national unity, today, would only serve to water down responsibilities, certainly not to find miraculous recipes.
“Passing off anti- lockdowns as deniers is perhaps one of the most miserable intellectual scams of recent decades”, our Enzo Reale observed on Twitter . And, he added:
“If opinions may differ on the merits of the measures adopted or to be adopted, it is amazing how they accept without a word their imposition outside the minimum constitutional guarantees, renouncing in the name of emergency the principles of the rule of law. Even more surprising when you consider that this renunciation comes from that part of the political spectrum that has made legality its flag against political opponents for the past three decades. But obviously it is a selective legality , like memory ”.
The post A health, economic and legal Caporetto. But now woe to be tempted by "governissimi" appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/una-caporetto-sanitaria-economica-giuridica-ma-ora-guai-a-farsi-tentare-da-governissimi/ on Mon, 26 Oct 2020 03:49:54 +0000.