Mattarella’s comedy: overcoming the fear of many in the service of the ambition of only one
I confess, I witnessed with profound discomfort the humiliating pilgrimage of the group leaders of the majority to the Quirinale, to implore his current tenant to accept that second term which he himself had done everything to obtain, with a double blow: strategic, not to dissolve Parliament. that it was foreseeable that he would not be able to easily choose a successor; tactical, do not call yourself out of the count, as soon as his name has come out of the polls. In retrospect, all that scrambling to find an apartment, transfer boxes, complete with public diffusion, to arouse popular emotion as if he were evicted, turned out to be a comedy, certainly performed by someone trained in the best theater acting school, the Christian Democrat. What has been modestly labeled as a "bottom-up" choice, has found its reason in the peons of 5Stelle, destined to disappear from the scene with the next political consultations, which – as Meloni has icastically said – have exchanged "seven months" of personal survival with "seven years" of Mattarella's presidency, not for nothing by unloading the cost on subsequent legislatures.
If we want to reconstruct the whole story as it actually took place, it can certainly be said that politics failed, starting with the leaders of the three most relevant groups, but if Salvini remains the most exposed, due to his continuous whirling, as if every time he had the definitive result – forgetting the popular saying do not say cat until you have him in the bag – at least he brought the entire center-right with him, up to the twist of the call out of the centrists. This, while Conte was unable to make himself heard if not by a few dozen of the 5 Stars, and Letta was not able to control even all those of the Democratic Party. But the real losers, as silent but full-blown aspirants are, first of all, Draghi, who has worked unscrupulously behind the lines, moving members of the government in his favor, with the massive support of almost all the mass media; then, in the alternative Casini, who induced the centrists to break the center-right coalition in his own interest.
Of course, as was completely obvious, once they saw that they were now definitively cut off, the two showed themselves not only aligned, but even anticipatory, more hypocritical the "grandfather of the Republic", who claimed the role of mediator between the Parliament and the President of the Republic, naturally without having any title; the "eternal boy of politics" is more outspoken, who limited himself to inviting the centrists to drop his name. But here, to close the game, Berlusconi had intervened, who is well and lively even in a hospital bed – from which he perhaps intended to play the quirinal role claimed at the beginning by the entire center-right – a few hours after giving the green light to Casini, he telephoned Mattarella to congratulate him in advance on his re-election, who knows that he did not think he would derive an appointment as senator by right.
It is not clear, if, according to Mattarella, there was a constitutional compromise in the face of a re-election, why this has failed in the presence of a parliamentary stalemate of one week, thus creating an extremely dangerous precedent, that is, the renewability without time limits of the president, if two why not three investitures. This characteristic is peculiar to autocracies, with a substantial difference that the autocrats count on being perpetuated by the people, while here it is enough that the elective assembly does not reach an agreement in the first week of voting, always in the name of a health emergency and which continued for a while could also justify the postponement of the electoral consultation of 2023. A constitutional amendment should be inserted, not one for which re-election is prohibited, because, as Ciampi said exemplary, this is already written in the fundamental charter, which otherwise it would not have foreseen a term of seven years, already in itself overwhelming that of any equivalent office in a Western democracy. Instead, insert a modification whereby in the hypothesis that the elective assembly fails to conclude within seven days, the president in office is automatically extended, thus doubling his mandate.
Salvini must be acknowledged for having tried to save goats and cabbages, the center-right coalition and the government majority, he cannot be blamed for it, if not for not having understood from the beginning that it was an impossible goal, it was the government majority to exert by far the strongest traction, because it is the only one capable of ensuring the continuity of the legislature. In turn, Draghi had not understood that he was nailed to the chair of Palazzo Ghigi, for the same reason, his elevation to the Quirinale, fueled by the pious illusion of finding him a replacement in four and four eights, with the entry of the party leaders , was experienced as a bet to lose by the peons of the 5 Stars.
If the moral were to be drawn, as in an Aesopian fable, it is that the scene was dominated by the two strongest and most irresistible human forces, which under the totally false cover of the pursuit of national unity, concord, solidarity and so on, so just browse the Gabrielli to find synonyms, they played and prevailed: the fear of the voters and the ambition of the eligible. The fear of many has overcome in the service of the ambition of one, nothing new, indeed all terribly old.
This is the chronicle, but what is the story. Well then it's different, they're all losers. The peons of the 5 Stars have secured a one-year extension, but at the cost of making the agony of their party blatant, fully revealing their total distrust of a recovery capable of offering even a diminished possibility of re-election, something between the another comic when compared with the cloistered rule of no more than two terms. Mattarella represented the Italian vice of lack of speech, no one forced him to give it first, no one outside the club of the moment, justified him in denying it later. It is useless to recall Napolitano's precedent, which is not valid in this regard: he gave in, making it clear that he was only available for a couple of years. On the other hand, we can recall Monti's precedent, only that Monti had little time to make him forget, Mattarella is seven years old, adorned with daily messages of wisdom and morality.
As for the coalitions, what can be said now is that they both come out with broken bones, we will see from the next polls what the electoral fallout is, which – according to the forecasts – should signal an increase in Brothers of Italy. It will be said, the divisions of the position income constituted by being against, without the people distinguishing between Quirinale and Palazzo Chigi, given that all this was done to confirm the government in office. As an impression, however, is that, despite the opinions of the status quo corifei, I conclude that the center-right coalition is certainly bad, but the center-left is worse off.
On the side of the center-right, when they chose to abstain, there was no desertion, certainly it would have been fully visible, but on the vote of the Casellati Lega and Fratelli d'Italia they held, while the centrists gave up despite being a candidate of Forza Italy, literally intoxicated by the possibility of launching Casini, which would have provided them with cover for the formation of a third force. Instead, on the center-left side, as already mentioned, the choice of voting on the white ballot was increasingly disregarded by the 5 Stars, with the progressive liquefaction of the movement that became a party, accompanied by the joke that they were always left with freedom of conscience. ; and, in turn, this choice to vote blank ballot was only partially maintained by the Democratic Party.
If we were to imitate the phrase used in the monarchies, we would have to say "The old president has expired, long live our new president", but here, instead, we have to exclaim unanimously "Long live president" , it reminds me of something I don't like and you ?
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/la-commedia-di-mattarella-ha-vinto-la-paura-di-molti-al-servizio-dellambizione-di-uno-solo/ on Mon, 31 Jan 2022 03:49:00 +0000.