Napolitano and Berlusconi between history and controversy
Giorgio Napolitano, as Gianni Letta made clear, was not the man behind the conspiracy against the last Berlusconi government. Paola Sacchi's note
Funerals are often an opportunity to take stock, to give messages for the future and to re-establish points of clarity. The secular ones of Giorgio Napolitano, whose life spanned almost a century, were a tribute to a man who embraced "politics as an ideal, passion and profession", who did not love "demagoguery", "who fought just and he also supported wrong causes”, as his son Giulio Napolitano said.
But the funeral was also the balance sheet of his years as President of the Republic, the first to accept the sacrifice of a second mandate, in which he found himself dealing with a man as profoundly different from him as Silvio Berlusconi. Who better than Gianni Letta, the lifelong friend of the Cavaliere, the plenipotentiary undersecretary to the presidency of the Council of Berlusconi governments and in particular also of the last one who terminated before his time in 2011, can now re-establish that there was no Head of State, who had "the institutions so dear to him", that conspiracy, with the subsequent arrival of Mario Monti, for which the right-center media have once again started to blame him even now in his death?
Letta certainly does not use the term "conspiracy" and expresses herself with her velvety style but full of future content and messages. He invites that "mild bipolarism", between majority and opposition with diversity but also mutual respect, which all his work in politics personifies. It is very clear when he says that "the very strong sense of the State, of the institutions, never failed on the part of Napolitano, a man with a partisan history, who loved Italy, in the most difficult trials for him, such as the confrontation with the Berlusconi governments".
Gianni Letta continues: “In the relationship between Napolitano and Berlusconi, the will and strength to maintain the relationship along the lines of institutional correctness never waned and so it was: I can say this in good conscience because I am a personal witness of it. This made it possible to address every issue, even the most difficult ones, and to resolve differences." The conclusion of a believer such as Doctor Letta, as he is called, has always been: “Berlusconi and Napolitano disappeared within three months of each other. I like to imagine that by meeting up there they can perhaps say to each other what they didn't say down here and, once all controversy has subsided, they can also clarify themselves and find themselves in the light."
But the former undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council, who has always been seen by many, not just the centre-right, on the short list of candidates for Colle – whose message objectively contrasts sharply with the strong criticism of the president emeritus by some newspapers considered close to the the current right-centre government majority – invites, outlining the figure of Napolitano, to that confrontation "between the majority and the opposition which should never be destructive". In "respect for the will of the people". The latter sounds like an implicit message to the left-wing opposition. The need to make reforms, something to which Napolitano also energetically encouraged by accepting the sacrifice, before Sergio Mattarella, of the second mandate, is underlined by the emotional intervention of the former senator Anna Finocchiaro, coming from the PCI like Napolitano.
The memory remains of that ex-meliorist communist, unfortunately never remembered these days in the news and in the media, who tried, as the FI senator herself, president of the Foreign and Defense commission, Stefania Craxi, acknowledged, "to recompose the fracture to the left”, like his father Bettino. Napolitano not only recognized in 2010 that "unparalleled harshness" was used for Craxi during the Tangentopoli years, but in 2013 he surprisingly participated, remaining silent, as Head of State, in a conference in the Senate of the Craxi Foundation for the thirtieth anniversary of the Craxi government, as the reporter reported in an article for Panorama , then of the Mondadori Group.
And Napolitano, as Letta clearly makes clear, was not the man behind the conspiracy against the last Berlusconi government. Maurizio Gasparri, Forza Italia big name , at the time president of the PDL in the Senate, now vice-president of Palazzo Madama – who in the ceremony sits with his blue counterpart in the Chamber, Giorgio Mulè, close to the speakers, the presidents Lorenzo Fontana and Ignazio La Russa , while on the government benches there are Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni with Deputy Prime Ministers Matteo Salvini and Antonio Tajani – in Transatlantico, once the secular funeral has concluded, he is more than explicit with reporters. Making football comparisons between Roma and Lazio, he states: “Napolitano? I was separated from him by political differences, by some positions, but please go and ask Gianfranco Fini and other PDL parliamentarians how it ended. The truth must be told."
The same objective historical reconstruction was recalled in recent days by Gianfranco Rotondi, historic DC parliamentarian, elected in the centre-right by FdI. The push against the Berlusconi government, led by Fini and other right-wing parliamentarians and not only in the PDL, failed by just 14 votes. Napolitano was even accused of having arranged for the vote to be delayed to allow Berlusconi to stabilize his government. Facts, not opinions. And Fini's differences with Berlusconi were of ancient origin, they began to arise when Napolitano was not yet President of the Republic.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/giorgio-napolitano-funerali-laici/ on Wed, 27 Sep 2023 05:42:27 +0000.