From the Quirinale political address without popular legitimacy: because it is time to resolve the anomaly

13 January 20222 years ago babelfish

For several months now, as unfortunately it is easy to note, Italian politics has been blocked and seems to go around in circles, indeed it seems to become more and more tangled around the health measures (for the most part wrong and counterproductive in the opinion of the writer) that the government puts in place. field with the endorsement of the President of the Republic and with the subsequent consent of Parliament, in which very often, thanks to the proposition of the "question of trust", even the simple debate and comparison seem to fail in front of a sort of "Take it or leave it", which allows few alternatives to those who are the representatives of the people, in deliberating on matters of fundamental importance not only for public welfare but also for individual rights.

Behind this situation that we can define as a "conflictual stalemate", according to many, there is a more important question, which for some would even be the real reason (or one of the reasons) for this focus (and exacerbate) the debate on health measures: the election of the new President of the Republic, scheduled for the end of January. Even if doing the "conspiracy" is always wrong, the fact is that the "game of chess" to designate the new tenant of the Quirinale in many respects seems to nail the representatives of the various parties in a series of defensive niches, almost as if they were fearful to discover their cards by taking "strong" initiatives not only in view of the election but also in other fields (including health measures, including economic and budgetary policy in the face of a very serious crisis), and consequently left the more important decisions to technicians and government leaders. Behind this block of politics, even if there are probably no brainy plots hidden, something very serious is hidden, perhaps almost as serious as a plot: a mentality that has been weakening democracy in our country for some time now and that is also concentrated (not alone, but also) in the transformation of the institutional figure of the President of the Republic with respect to the model outlined by the Constituent Assembly in 1947.

From the point of view of pure strategy, who could blame the parties for their attitude: the political stakes at stake with the election of the President of the Republic are very high, and the result of the latter is able to influence the decisions and the action of government (and opposition) forces for many years. By now, it would not be fair to deny it, the President of the Republic has largely become an organ of political direction: those which in the original setting of the Constitution (articles 87 – 90) were essentially formal powers, essentially aimed at verifying the legality of the acts of the government and / or and of individual ministers, have been transformed into decision-making powers on the merits. The precedents that have occurred in recent years, first with President Napolitano and then with President Mattarella cannot be ignored: both pure in a limited way, in particular cases, etc., it is now de facto accepted by all that the head of state can intervene in the appointment of ministers and even in the appointment of the government as a whole, and if this is not a political decision-making activity, what does the political decision consist of?

Some might say that the formal rules provided for by the Constitution have never been violated, which is very true, given that in all cases the Parliament has given the confidence to the governments appointed also thanks to the choices on the merits by the head of state, but in the relations among the highest political bodies, history and legal theory itself teach that compliance with formalities is not always decisive, and that important changes in a country's political system can occur without modifying the rules contained in its Constitution in the least. Perhaps it is more correct to say that at the level of the supreme organs of the state, changes always occur with the consent (explicit or implicit, given spontaneously or obtorto neck) of all the subjects involved, so the change in the position of the head of state in our country , if it is mainly the fruit of the work of those who have held the office (and the need to curb the tendency of every state body to expand its power was one of the fundamental points of Montequieu's thought), it is also the result of choices of the government and Parliament that have accepted the interventions on the political merits of the last presidents, without raising, for example, a conflict of attributions to the Constitutional Court.

The result is that a body that is now competent (even only in particular cases) to decide the composition, and therefore the policy of the government (and it should not be forgotten that even in the issuing of government decrees the president has assumed ever greater powers of decision on the merits) he does not have a democratic legitimacy at the basis of his nomination, that is, he does not present himself to the voters with a government program for which he must answer, even if only politically. Added to this is that the long term of office (as is known, seven years with the possibility of renewal) places the president's power of political direction in a very strong position capable of influencing the decisions of the parliamentary majority, which also in this case (and here lies the connection with that mentality that can jeopardize the functioning of representative democracy) it is called to decide after the fact, or to be clearer not to decide, but to approve the decisions of others.

The connection between the way of issuing health and budgetary measures, etc. and the stasis on the election of the new president lies precisely in this: in my opinion, in the increasingly dangerous development of a sort of "a posteriori" democracy, that is, of a "half democracy" that does not promise anything good. If it is indeed true that Parliament always has the option of not approving a health decree law or a budget bill, and always has the right to deny trust in a government composed thanks to the intervention of the President of the Republic, it is equally true It is true that, as one of my professors, a great jurist but also disenchanted and wise practical man said, once the Pope has decided it is extremely difficult for the College of Cardinals to deny his "placet" .

To avoid this progressive diminution of the power of Parliament, the central organ of a liberal democracy, some changes to the second part of the Constitution are necessary, and in the humble opinion of the writer can no longer be postponed. The speech would be long and should begin with a series of further limitations (given that those provided have proved insufficient) to the use of law decrees and in general to the regulatory power of the government, but as far as our topic is concerned, some important corrections to the constitutional text should also be made with reference to the role of the President of the Republic.

There are two ways and they are alternatives to each other, but both would lead to a clear definition of the relationship between the head of state and the electorate, the ultimate holder of popular sovereignty (Article 1). The first would go in the sense of an explicit return to a figure of president intended as a guarantee body, essentially in charge of checking the legitimacy of the political acts that involve his signature, as it was in the past. In this case, in the humble opinion of the writer, the articles on presidential competences should be modified, expressly indicating for which acts (appointing members of the government, adopting the most important decisions, etc.) the head of state is forbidden to review the merits the choices of the Prime Minister and / or the minister entitled to countersign his decrees. A further modification from the point of view of this solution would also be to provide in any case for the election of the president a majority of two thirds of the Parliament in an integrated joint session, in order to favor the choice of a subject who enjoys the broad consensus of a “super partes” referee must enjoy whoever plays the role. In this way, the relationship of trust between the electorate, Parliament and the Government, typical of a "parliamentary" republic, would be fully restored. I would add that personally I would consider this the preferable solution.

Equally legitimate and appreciable, however, would be the creation of a "presidential" or rather "semi-presidential" type republic, in which the political direction carried out by the government (starting with the appointment of its members) would depend on two authorities of the same level, the President of the Republic, competent to appoint the members of the government on the basis of an evaluation of merit and to approve the decrees issued by the same on the merits, and the Parliament, competent to grant and revoke confidence in the Executive and direct its activity through legislative activity and budgetary decisions. In this case, the main change should concern the election procedure of the head of state, which should in any case be entrusted to the popular choice (one could then discuss the merits of the electoral system: single round, double round, etc.). It would also be appropriate to reduce the term of office of the president to at least five years. In that case, nothing would prohibit attributing to the president, who would thus become a body with decidedly political and therefore "partisan" tasks but legitimized by the people, additional "autonomous" powers with respect to those of the government, perhaps with the abolition of the countersignature government for many of the acts of its competence (the conception of pardon, the appointment of senior officials, etc.).

The worst solution would be to leave things as they are, pretending nothing happened, or worse (allow me to express my personal disappointment) saying, as some scholars have also done, that the current situation is none other than that "implicitly "Provided by the Constitution that in the past no one had fully understood its" true "meaning. Currently, in fact, the Italian constitutional system is neither a parliamentary republic nor a semi-presidential republic, but if I am allowed to force the terms a little, it resembles a kind of elective monarchy (the only difference is that the head of state is not elected for life) of the "semi-parliamentary" type, given that Parliament is essentially reserved, as already mentioned, the task of approving the decisions of the Executive, and sometimes even those of the President, after the fact. Instead, for a representative democracy to continue to be fully such, it is necessary that the parliamentary representatives of the citizens take on the task of establishing the constitutional rules that guarantee its correct functioning, modifying them when they are no longer suitable for this purpose. The task of the observers, on the other hand, is to respectfully report the criticality of the situation and to submit to the reader's judgment what they believe to be the possible solutions, which I have tried to do in these few lines.

The post Political address from the Quirinale without popular legitimacy: why it's time to solve the anomaly 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/dal-quirinale-indirizzo-politico-senza-legittimazione-popolare-perche-e-ora-di-risolvere-lanomalia/ on Thu, 13 Jan 2022 03:55:00 +0000.