The Knight raises. Other than electoral reform, the one hoped for by Silvio Berlusconi it is a true revolution of the Italian political system: "We have come to the desire to deepen what we have been talking about for 30 years - said the former prime minister at the press conference at Palazzo Madama - i.e. the possibility that citizens decide with their votes who should be the President of the Republic. We will deliver this institutional reform to the Senate floor“. This would be the "big political news" announced in recent weeks together with the secretary of the PDL, Angelino Alfano.
After announcing that he no longer wants to return to Palazzo Chigi, So Berlusconi is aiming for the Quirinale? “I will do what the PDL asks me to do – the Knight answered sibylline -, I have this sense of responsibility and I am still here because I was elected by millions of Italians. It's not my ambition, but there are responsibilities that cannot be ignored". Fortunately, a (Freudian?) slip by Alfano cleared the field of ambiguity, who quoted his mentor's words in an unusual way: "As the President of the Republic says... I meant... President Berlusconi".
Having dismissed the suspicion about personal "ambition", Berlusconi chose the path of similarities to clarify the reasons for the new proposal: "We want to continue to be in the situation of Athens, an ungovernable country, or Paris, where in a few days the citizens Have they seen a government form? The answer is obvious."
For this reason "we have decided to make the daring gesture of presenting the country, the majority and the opposition with an opportunity to modernize the country, giving the possibility of directly influencing the choice of president through primary elections".
Alongside the primaries, for Berlusconi it is a question of allowing citizens to make "choices on the contents of the program and to bring the country out of the shallows of the impossibility of effectively governing a situation of great difficulty and deep crisis".
And what better opportunity than the Monti government to fill the gap? "It was our duty to take advantage of the possibility of a caretaker government that would continue the work we had begun by also responding to requests from the EU, to bring the majority and the opposition together around the table and make the reforms".
