How the pentastellato novel will end (badly)
Rise and decline of the 5 Star Movement. Gianfranco Polillo's comment
They were born to lead the fight against the caste. To open the Parliament like a can of tuna. To punish the old by eliminating annuities; by cutting the highest pensions, thanks to a frightened Constitutional Court and not very respectful of its previous sentences. To punish those generations who, in any case, had taken a country, like Italy, destroyed by war and led by the hand among the Great Ones of the Earth. Fifth industrial power, with an almost eternal peasant past. Indeed even fourth, albeit for a very short period, after exceeding, to the great regret of those concerned, the English gross product. 1987: Italian GDP 814,158 million $, Great Britain GDP 813,147.
Of course, not everything had gone well. Especially after the intervention of "clean hands" and the complete destruction of the old management group (except post-communists and post-fascists) much of that enamel had oxidized. The desire for change had become more palpable. The apple from the mature tree: ready to be harvested. And to Beppe Grillo, with his great histrionic skills, and to Gianroberto Casaleggio, the visionary of the civilization of machines, it was enough to reach out, to finally get Mario Monti out of the scene first, then beat those leaders of the PD (Enrico Letta, Matteo Renzi and Paolo Gentiloni) who had guaranteed his succession.
Shocking victory that of 2018. Full marks for the 5 stars: 32.7 in the Chamber and 32.2 in the Senate. The beginning of the Jacobin period. With the "people's advocate" who transforms Palazzo Chigi into a notary's office. Then the threat of resorting to impeachment against Sergio Mattarella, guilty of not having accepted Paolo Savona at the Ministry of the Economy. Meeting with the yellow vests of Luigi Di Maio and Alessandro Di Battista. French protests recalling the ambassador to Paris. The first financial law and the row on the balcony of the Prime Minister. The end of poverty is praised, thanks to the introduction of the citizenship income. While the League, junior partner of the Government, is limited to observing.
It will end with the Papeete of Milano Marittima, in the aftermath of the European elections which will see the first five-star collapse: the consensus then fell to 17.06 per cent, crowning the Lega di Matteo Salvini first party with 34.26 per cent of the consensus . A triumph and a great desire to capitalize everything on a political level. And here then, with the approval of Nicola Zingaretti, the attempt of the "captain" to go to early elections. If only Matteo Renzi hadn't got in the way, to prevent the coup. Except then abandon the PD, to give birth to his living Italy.
It will be the unexpected luck of Giuseppe Conte, who abandoned the short sleeves as a notary and, accompanied by the faithful squire Rocco Casalino, will wear the combat armor. And so harnessed he will continue to be the tenant of Palazzo Chigi. Ready to manage the hard hand-to-hand combat, by dint of DPCM, against the dragon disguised as Covid-19. In a riot of flags, with the colors of Putin's Russian Federation and Cuba: soldiers and doctors called to the bedside of the great patient. While a part of the Movement, not to be outdone, had preferred to turn its gaze, since March 2019, to the "New Silk Road": the Belt and Road Initiative, under the increasingly frowning gaze of Western allies. Mostly Americans.
The birth of the yellow-red government represented the first stage of the Thermidorian metamorphosis. Fortunately, without bloodshed and the sinister noises of the guillotine. Putting aside all objections about direct democracy, having completely consummated the break with Davide Casaleggio regarding the use of Rousseau (the telematic infrastructure of instant voting), the "spokespersons" of the activists, as they used to define themselves, returned to being simply the party apparatčiks. Their movements harnessed by a new regulation that took the place of the old “Non statuto”. With Beppe Grillo who, in a fit of desperation, shouted against the new president of the party – movement: “I'm the guarantor, not a jerk”.
The lawyer's occupation of power had begun. And with it the progressive transformation of the movement, between legal disputes and appeals in court, of that half anarchist and half libertarian community that was originally, in the most traditional party-form imaginable. With some features however. A totally imaginative political line. Both in foreign policy and in the national field. Prisoner of an old ideology punctuated by forms of self-harm. Just think of the battle waged to reduce the number of parliamentarians and saw up the branch on which the largest group of the House and Senate was perched. The worst thing was the hope implied in this battle. That the electorate appreciated. And instead, rightly, he remained Olympically indifferent to it.
Another Byzantine theme: that of the limit of the double mandate. Son, albeit legitimate, of the slogan "one is one". But equally insane. So devastating as to provoke, also due to the programmatic uncertainties on the international level, (the ambiguous position on the theme of war and peace) that split, led by Luigi Di Maio, destined to give the coup de grace to what remained of a Movement bled with errors and its own contradictions. Final epilogue. The choice of the Aventine. That sneak out of the Chamber of Deputies, not in protest against fascist violence. But only because of the decision of the Mayor of Rome to proceed with the construction of a waste-to-energy plant. And this is how the palingenetic dreams of a radical change, based on youth and direct democracy, end up being shipwrecked on the heaps of garbage that hinder the streets of the capital.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/come-finira-male-il-romanzo-pentastellato/ on Wed, 13 Jul 2022 06:22:03 +0000.