Sometimes they come back. It also applies to nostalgia. In life as in politics. These days many of the supporters of the No to the referendum say they are crazy about the proportional electoral system. In the beginning it was Beppe Grillo who dusted it off. Then Silvio Berlusconi, master of tactics and bluffing, winked at him. Finally Giulio Tremonti, the former minister of the Treasury and current senator elected on the lists of the League with a Bossian tendency.
But it hadn't been said that the proportional system, emphasizing representativeness at the expense of governability and splitting the political system into a thousand parties and small parties, was at the origin of the uncontrollable explosion of spending and public debt of the First Republic and of Tangentopoli ? After a quarter of a century, do we reset everything as if nothing had happened? Too easy and too treacherous. But it is no coincidence that these sudden conversions towards proportional representation come out into the open in the referendum campaign and in view of a possible revision of the Italicum.
Also blatantly regaining possession of the never lost leadership of the 5 Star Movement, Beppe Grillo has had moments of undoubted sincerity in recent days in the Palermo kermesse of the Movement. He reported yesterday the "Corriere della Sera" that Grillo confided on the stage: "I remain a comedian. I'm not a boss, I'm not a leader. I have my difficulties and I'm not perfect. One day I think one thing, the next day another”. Today is like this, tomorrow who knows. For a force that would like to lead Italy, this is no mean admission.
The two dioscuri of the Movement, Luigi Di Maio and Alessandro Di Battista, explained the grillina rediscovery of the proportional system yesterday, according to which M5S wanted to demonstrate that it was ready to give up an electoral system that favors them like the Italicum in order to come up with a new law. A generosity a little too hairy to be convincing. The impression is that, dusting off the proportional system, the grillini wanted to start a clever electoral marketing operation ("We are the only ones who don't think about our political advantage") which complicates the road to the revision of the Italicum and can therefore be spending also in the referendum campaign, with lots of regards to governability.
Entirely tactical and so far motivated only by the unresolved anti-Renzian hatred, the endorsement to the proportional system of another NO standard bearer like Silvio Berlusconi, who immediately picked up the grillino assist, also seems to be. On the other hand, the one who tried to explain his support for proportionality if the NO wins the referendum was former minister Giulio Tremonti, who in fact in 99 was the first signatory to a proportional law. “The M5S proposal, which seems politically oriented towards proportionality – Tremonti told Corriere – must not be liquidated. If the NO wins, a debate on proportional representation in Parliament would be the solution, albeit transitory, to get out of the institutional swamp and rewrite the Constitution together".
But doesn't proportionality lead to instability and ungovernability? Tremonti swears no: "In reality, ours was a stable and manageable system." However, it would be necessary to explain to foreigners, who largely finance our public debt, why Italy had "only" 45 governments in the first fifty years of the Republic...
