In the next few days Pierluigi Bersani will verify whether or not he can find the numbers in Parliament to put together a certain majority with which to present himself to the Head of State and obtain the definitive assignment to form the government. According to the latest calculations it seems that there are 15 votes missing to reach the minimum majority in the Senate but if the League obtains permission from Silvio Berlusconi (incredible to say!) to give birth to the Bersani government it is possible that the ship will leave for Easter. Naturally, the numerical question is only the antechamber of the solution to the political problem, but there are those who do not see how a government hanging on the votes of the League is born endemically fragile and is subjected to all the winds and bad weather of politics. At the gates a kind of government seems to be approaching. Exactly the opposite of what the Monetary Fund and the Bank of Italy still recommended yesterday. Instead of facing the bull by the horns and doing what happens in all modern democracies when the electorate does not assign a certain victory to one of the contenders, i.e. promoting an open confrontation - if not a government - between the two major political forces, Bersani he is thus reduced to Jesuitically asking the League to intercede with Berlusconi so that his government can be born. After having chased Beppe Grillo in vain and having received only slaps and insults, he is not a good encouragement for the first Italian party. But the numerical problem is only the first aspect of the political question facing the secretary of the Democratic Party. Assuming that he manages to make ends meet, the problem of the composition and program of the government to be formed remains.
There are some excellent nominations circulating about the composition – such as that of Fabrizio Saccomanni for the Treasury and Mario Monti for Foreign Affairs – and some effervescent or high-sounding names that raise doubts of merit and method. We hear about Gabanelli, Saviano, Don Ciotti, Farinetti and so on. Valiant people who, however, do different jobs in life and have different requisites from those required of a man of government but who leave a very simple question unanswered: if you thought you were proposing them for a ministerial job why not candidate them in the elections that have kept just a month ago and not years ago? Is it possible that among those elected to the new Parliament there are no political personnel suitable for forming a government? There may be an exception to the rule (Saccomanni) but why prefer technicians and outsiders at all costs? And this - we repeat - just one month after the celebration of the last elections.
But the most relevant question for the government to come is naturally that of the programmatic contents. This is where the pains come in. In the eight points that Bersani has presented to the political forces there are aspects that can be shared and aspects that are questionable, but above all there is a misunderstanding and two gaps the size of a house. Gaps and not forgotten: the first is called competitiveness and the second meritocracy.
Given the depth of the recession, there are those who fail to see how growth should be the guiding star of economic policy, but without competitiveness, what kind of growth are we talking about? Do we want to delude ourselves that growth can only be achieved with public spending without even having adequate resources? After all, even in the last few hours, the Monetary Fund and the Bank of Italy have shown us the path to a healthy and lasting growth of our economy, which cannot take place through domestic shortcuts but only within the framework of a new European development strategy.
The other gap in Bersani's platform is called meritocracy which, according to the conventional wisdom of the conformist and radical left, seems like blasphemy rather than the social elevator to advance the most deserving even if they lack economic means. The antimeritocratic obtuseness of the radical left and of the unions (with little difference between the CGIL and the Cobas) is particularly evident in the school but it is also valid in all the public administration and more generally in the various fields of public life.
Without competitiveness and without meritocracy, we do not go far or we go in the exact opposite direction to what a modern country that wants to grow again to fight social injustices, unemployment and poverty deserves. But another misunderstanding hangs over growth that winds its way through Bersani's eight points, namely that austerity is always and in any case a blasphemy. The case of Cyprus demonstrates the narrow-mindedness of the Eurocrats but austerity must be rejected if it is unfair and if it is unrelated to development. On the contrary, growth without recovery would be fallacious growth because Italy does not start from a green field but from the third highest public debt in the world. Probably Bersani plays Indian on austerity because he knows very well that in any case we will have to deal with the Fiscal compact and because the possible entry into the government of personalities like Saccomanni and Monti would alone reassure the financial markets and international institutions and also to restore realism in Italian politics. But a self-respecting government must always speak the language of truth. It may be a bitter recipe but Italy no longer needs illusions or half-lies. We have already given.
