Beyond the report cards to the leaders: to come out with broken bones is the entire party system

31 January 20222 years ago babelfish

Wanted ruling class, hurry up!

For years, the election of the President of the Republic has been a decisive political event for the fate not only of the country but also of Italian politics. In particular, this hairpin of the legislature immediately presented itself as the most tortuous. The presence at Palazzo Chigi of the number one candidate for the Quirinale; the large patrol of parliamentarians from the Mixed group willing to do anything to see the continuation of their mandate; the change in political balance compared to the 2018 elections. All factors that contributed to the difficulty of an appointment that exposed disturbing cracks in the political and institutional system of the Second Republic.

Analyzing the political path of the tenants of the Colle, three major cultural trends can be identified that determined their election. The first is that of Catholicism (democratic or popular), well represented by the Christian Democrats; the second is that of technical-political derivation represented by the former governors of the Bank of Italy; the third is that of the Italian laity, be it shareholder, liberal socialist, social democratic or socialist tout court . Some presidents, such as Ciampi, even embraced two out of three strands (Bankitalia plus founder of the Action Party), but all saw their quirinability grafted on the common belonging in the past to the CLN which had founded the parliamentary republic. And it is no coincidence that the presidents of the Second Republic also come from that background : Scalfaro (DC), Ciampi (Pd'A), Napolitano (PCI), Mattarella (DC). Going on with the years, of course, the Ciellenisti and their heirs are getting thinner and thinner, and the new discriminating factor to be eligible for the Quirinale – "Europeanism" – does not seem to have the same educational and political function for politicians, if you compare it with that of those who fought to defeat a dictatorship. Thus, going beyond Europeanism, the left had to propose the re-nomination for another seven years of the current president, 80 years old, a democratic Catholic and a man, always, of the DC left and the state apparatus, who also served as a constitutional judge . Waiting for a new Mattarella to appear in the future.

But if the heirs of the DC left and the PCI in the end passed the test, bringing home a result that was in any case not despicable from their point of view, it is the entire Italian political system that no longer seems capable of producing impeccable candidates for the Quirinale. We must never forget that the President of the Republic – in addition to the functions attributed to him by the Constitution – is also the representative of the political community lato sensu , the man who, from experience, knowledge of the parties and their men, and for the depth he has reached in the Italian political system, it acts as a guarantor for all. And we are not referring only to the choices on mandates to form governments and other key moments of the legislatures, but also and above all to those things that remain inscrutable to most. Matteo Salvini himself, one of the great losers of the round, said it before announcing the vote for the Colle: “We asked Mattarella to represent us”.

It would be simplistic and simplifying to throw the cross on the leader of the League, when for 30 years the Berlusconian-powered center-right has never produced a serious candidate for the Colle, chasing the chimera of the founder of Forza Italia of being him, one day, to preside the Republic. And when the only candidacy on which the whole coalition more or less found itself was that of a president of the Senate, who stood out for the selfie with that of the House while passing the electoral ballots. The other names made by the parties, with the exception of Marcello Pera, were all technicians or politicians with a CV that could not be quirinable. This is the case of Carlo Nordio, Elisabetta Belloni, Giampaolo Massolo: all high-profile people and professionals, but unknown to those Italians they should have represented and without that path behind them that would have made them emerge as guarantors of the system and of a party politics. increasingly in difficulty.

And so, paradox of paradoxes, it was precisely the centrist bushes within the center-right that revealed a political strategy in the total emptiness of the 5 days of voting: to elect Pierferdinando Casini at the Quirinale and go to form a new center that held Toti, Carfagna together , Renzi, Brugnaro and Cesa to shore up the decisive choices of the new president in the coming legislature.

The latest idea of the parties, that of the "female president" lasted the space of an hour, in time to bury the candidacy of the head of Dis, Elisabetta Belloni, in the media mincer. It would have been convenient for everyone in terms of image: Conte had proposed it first. Salvini could distance himself from the male chauvinist image that the media attribute to the right. Meloni would have considered it a step towards the presence of another woman (her) at Palazzo Chigi and the Democratic Party would have given action to that gender parity he has been talking about for years. Gender parity which is also among the objectives of our Pnrr and the European Commission. A cosmetic choice, which, however, would not have eliminated the perplexities on the current state of the parties, but which was preferred to set aside for safe second-hand.

Beyond the leader's report cards, it is the entire party system that comes out with broken bones. There are no ideas, strategies and visions for the present and the future of Italy. We do not see a real "grip" of party politics on Italian civil society. A legislature that had as a relative majority party a movement that marked the all-time record of transfers from its parliamentary group to the Mixed group has become flaky and decomposed and recomposed so many times that it has become disfigured. Once again the appeal is the same: looking for a ruling class, hurry up!

The post Beyond the report cards to the leaders: the whole party system comes out with broken bones appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/aldila-delle-pagelle-ai-leader-ad-uscirne-con-le-ossa-rotte-e-lintero-sistema-partitico/ on Mon, 31 Jan 2022 03:49:00 +0000.