Dear Paolo Mieli, can’t constitutional reforms be done in Italy?
Considerations on the sidelines of a debate on the reforms between Ernesto Galli della Loggia and Paolo Mieli. Damato's Scratches
It took four days but in the end a different voice was raised from the editorial of encouragement to Giorgia Meloni which appeared in the Corriere della Sera as a kind of New Year's message signed by the historian Ernesto Galli della Loggia.
WHAT PAOLO MIELI WROTE ABOUT LENIN AND THE REVOLUTION
It emerged from within the same Corriere with an editorial signed by another historian, and moreover former director of the same newspaper, Paolo Mieli. Who played different music, but in his own way, that is, with measure, to the point of avoiding a direct controversy with his colleague and friend Ernesto, not even mentioned as if to say that he wanted to distance himself from Meloni regardless of the editorial of 3 January, simply by addressing the subject of the government from another perspective.
And starting so far as to arrive in Russia and on March 4, 1923, when a Lenin already suffering from a stroke but lucid enough to realize that perhaps he had exaggerated a little too much with his revolution, in a letter to Pravda urged the companions to a certain caution, even from "authentic bourgeois culture": his words, Lenin's, not my friend Paolo's.
ADVICE TO MELONS
Meloni was advised by the former director of Corriere della Sera to adopt the "better less, but better" leadership of the government proposed by Lenin to his comrades, having "put – Paolo reproached her – too much meat on the brazier": so much so that it was forced to "reverse with impressive regularity".
In particular, the prime minister has unwisely put together on the ground "three gigantic reforms" such as those "of differentiated autonomy, justice and constitutional", the latter intended to "strengthen the institutional body of our country with a powerful injection of presidentialism".
The latter purpose, "in itself not unbecoming", Mieli admitted, "provided he is in possession of clear ideas, can count on a sufficiently compact majority and has a strategy to involve a substantial part of the opposition" . These are conditions whose existence Mieli doubts, at least, despite the fact that in terms of holding her majority, Meloni shows that she considers it "a hoplite phalanx", that is, granite.
THE WEAKNESS OF THE OPPOSITION
Even more than the majority who are not at all or less "hoplite" – I insist – than Meloni believes, Mieli signaled to the premier the weakness of the opposition: in particular of the Democratic Party, without whose contribution certain important things such as presidentialism, in any variant , or the reform of justice to be carried out by putting a hand also for it in the Constitution, one could not realistically think of carrying them out.
But let's agree, dear Paolo. If the opposition is strong in contrast to a true reform project this is precluded. If the opposition is weak, for this very reason, the project is precluded all the same. So let's say plainly, without going as far as Lenin and bothering his mummy, that real reforms cannot be done in Italy.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/paolo-mieli-riforme/ on Sat, 07 Jan 2023 07:12:14 +0000.