What is really at stake in the election of the head of state (Draghi?)
Gianfranco Polillo's analysis
Ready to bet that it will not be a simple election: a sort of bureaucratic step necessary to choose the next tenant of the Quirinale. In all likelihood it will be a turnaround with consequences that, at the moment, are difficult to predict. If the devil does not queue, the election of the new President of the Republic will mark a profound turning point not only in the Italian political balance, but on the institutional front. The premises are all there: it is enough to see them with a soul free from the conditioning of a false conscience. What then is nothing but a bad ideology.
Upstream of all this, a country that does not deserve the fate to which it was destined for that long period from the end of the 1980s to the present day. Always the last wheel of the wagon, in terms of development, whatever statistics are taken into consideration: OECD, IMF, European Commission. And it will be even worse in the next few years if things don't change. It may seem a simple concern of "economists": prisoners of that "sad science", of which the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle spoke at the beginning of the 19th century. But it doesn't take much: just look at the widespread levels of poverty, at the young people who can't find work, at the sucking in of the Neet (the kids who don't study or work), at the low wages and so on. To see how these concerns are real and general.
We could go on to demonstrate the existence of that short circuit that underlies all of this. On the one hand, insufficient growth, on the other, an excess in the redistribution of the resources produced. With some exceptions: earning little, earning everyone. When the problem behind all this was above all that of expanding the production base of the country. And don't compete like Deng Xiaoping, the father of Chinese economic development, said in managing misery. And that it didn't take long to change direction, is demonstrated by what has happened in recent days: with the G20 meeting. The new elites who, in a flash, were able to change the sentiment towards Italy in the international imagination.
Nodes that, in the end, have come to a head and that in the coming months will condition the choices of a lost Parliament, unable to express any shared line of action due to the growing disaffection of its stakeholders, the voters. Sergio Mattarella must be acknowledged for having understood the situation exactly. In his refusal to accept a new candidacy there is not only compliance with a constitutional provision, even if not written on the tables of the law. Above all, there is the awareness that the country needs more, in the hope of making up for lost time. With all the risks that this choice can entail.
This is the aim of the possible candidacy of Mario Draghi. Giancarlo Giorgetti, in the interview granted to Bruno Vespa, clearly grasped the deepest meaning of this eventuality. The passage towards a sort of semi-presidential republic, in which the Head of State can, from the top of the Hill, direct government action in a more penetrating way. This hint was enough to unleash jurists, constitutionalists of various rites, maître à penser , more or less organic intellectuals, ready to tear their clothes in defense of an orthodoxy that no longer has confirmation in the actual reality of the country. Paolo Mieli remembered this, citing the example of those who, from Sandro Pertini onwards, saw the “political” and not only “guarantee” space available to the President of the Republic gradually expand.
As far as we are concerned, we have never considered the Italian one "the most beautiful Constitution in the world". For the simple fact that it is only the oldest among those of the other Western countries, closest to us. We exclude the Anglo-Saxon experience for obvious reasons. The USA is far away and in Great Britain, the country of the "common law", there is not even a codified constitution, but a set of legal rules sublimated by experience. In France, the new constitution was launched in 1958, in Spain in 1978, in Portugal in 1976. Only the German one, approved a year later (1949) compared to the Italian one, remains to contend for the primacy of longevity. Except that the German one is not a Verfassung (constitution, in German) but only a Grundgesetz (fundamental law). In fact, it is only the different Lander that each have their own constitution.
Over the years, the German model has exercised great fascination in Italy. The presence of two large parties, capable of guaranteeing alternation or the Große Koalition at the same time. A proportional electoral system, with a 5 percent barrier. The institution of constructive distrust: more of a threat than an actual practice. There were only two mistrusts proposed, of which only one successfully exercised in 1982 when Helmut Kohl succeeded Helmut Schmidt in the federal chancellery. For the rest, above all the suggestion of federalism: little thought of in Italy. If only because the German one constitutes the case of “a regionalization without regionalisms”. The historical boundaries of the various Lander were in fact upset by the two world wars and reconstituted, in a pragmatic way, on the basis of the particular management needs, linked to development or administration.
Genesis, in Italy, completely neglected. The idea remained that of copying, in some way, that model of legislation, without having the instruments of control, the "Bundesrat", capable of directly affecting legislative production, if it had limited, beyond what is necessary, the autonomy of the individual Lander. Hence its poor appeal. That being neither meat nor fish, which is the Title V of the current Italian Constitution: whose authorship has been denied by all, without however giving rise to its necessary, but indispensable, reform. Above all in redesigning the relations between State and Regions: no longer in the name of defending the most immediate political interests (the different color of the various territorial realities), but looking at the organic nature of a design capable of modernizing and not only unnecessarily complicating the governance of the country.
After so many years (73) from that distant 1 January 1948, which marked the entry into force of the Italian Constitution, one therefore wonders whether that model is still able to withstand the great challenges of the moment. A growing share of voters is increasingly convinced that, with these rules, it is not even worth bothering to go and vote. A part of politics, but also of Italian public opinion, believes that, instead, the time has come for a change. But not to give rise to a new bicameral, to repeat experiments which, in the past, starting from 1983, almost forty years ago, have not given any fruit. But to move differently. The Fifth Republic in France, which marked the transition from the parliamentary to the semi-presidential one, was a consequence of the intrinsic force of things. The emergence of contradictions no longer governable with the old methods of the past. A point of no return, which could be the next one for Italy.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/mario-draghi-quirinale-perche/ on Fri, 24 Dec 2021 07:29:45 +0000.