What do I think of Mattarella’s year-end speech
The end-of-year speech by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, commented by the political notist Francesco Damato
Standing as if it were not in the courtyard, a few steps from the door of the building, but near one of the exits from the Quirinale room chosen to deliver the traditional end-of-year television message , thus discarding the desk or armchair of a living room more suited to a stable stay, the President of the Republic wanted to recall at the opening of his speech the missing "few days" – "as the Constitution provides", he specified – at the conclusion of his "role". He has therefore not returned to insert his farewell "in an incident", recently underlined by the quirinalist of the Corriere della Sera Marzio Breda, referring to a ceremony just held on the Hill.
Yet allow an old political and parliamentary reporter to express the impression obtained of a different greeting from what was legitimate to expect from the media emphasis reserved for repeated signals of Mattarella's unwillingness to re-election. From which, moreover, Giorgia Meloni was quick to confirm her opposition, evidently also warning that the hypothesis remains in the field.
Respectful as he is of the prerogatives not only of his own but above all of Parliament, even though they have just been sacrificed by the umpteenth edition of the state budget law approved at the last moment, in a regime of substantial single-chamberism, the good Mattarella cannot prevent to the Chambers to re-elect him, if they wanted to in spite of the Melonian right. To re-elect him and that's it, agreed, without that term of office contested by the constitutionalists in wig, or chair, but equally experimented and accepted by Giorgio Napolitano in 2013 at the end of his first seven-year term in conditions of particular political and institutional difficulties. It depends on the sensitivity. availability and anything else of the re-elected President of the Republic to evaluate the opportunity to assign himself a full or partial duration of the new mandate.
President Mattarella himself in a confident vision of the future of the country and the ability of Italians to know how to give the best of themselves in the difficulties, which remain even in the context of a recovery in the context of a still dangerous pandemic, invited "everyone" to “Accepting to do one's part to the end”. And it is not certain that he does not yet belong to him as well, however tired he may be and how much reluctance he may have matured towards re-election as a scholar and professor of parliamentary law. Sometimes the parts that belong to us can also be unwelcome, or more simply uncomfortable.
In this spirit as an Italian among many – who, if he had had the opportunity, would have joined the evening of 7 December last year to the applause and "encores" that rose towards Mattarella from every sector of the Milanese La Scala theater of which he he was a guest – I thank and sincerely reciprocate the New Year's greetings addressed by the outgoing President of the Republic. And I hope to hear him again address his fellow citizens from the Quirinale, at least until the normality of a political and institutional situation that is now compromised is re-established. And it is well known from what: from a Parliament that is too aged, if not de-legitimized, from a reform of its composition imprudently desired at the beginning of the legislature by the party most awarded in the 2018 elections and by the government allies gradually alternating with a certain ease.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/che-cosa-penso-del-discorso-di-fine-anno-di-mattarella/ on Sat, 01 Jan 2022 07:56:37 +0000.