From Vicenza, a few days ago, the president of the industrialists of one of the richest provinces in Italy launched a cannonade against the political class with an appeal entitled "Enough with the incompetent". On the same day, from the columns of the Corriere della Sera, Ernesto Galli della Loggia put pen to paper a harsh editorial against the current political ruling class. It is well known that politics is not done through competitions or through qualifications: Parliament must certainly not be the exclusive assembly of academics from the Crusca. But something is not working in the selection of the political class, nationally and at the highest local levels, evidently there is. Giuseppe De Rita, perhaps the best connoisseur of the mechanisms that regulate Italian society, founder and president of Censis, analyzes in this interview with FIRSTonline, the blackout that has arisen between democratic representation and the competence necessary to lead the public machine of the second industrial power of Europe.
President De Rita, where does this process of deterioration of the quality of the political class originate?
«We need to think about a double factor of analysis. The first is entirely internal to the system: the ruling classes for the most part have not been able to culturally adapt to the growth in the complexity of Italian society. Let's say that they are not prepared to manage the enormous complexity that derives from technological innovation, from epochal challenges such as immigration, from dealing with the sophisticated actors of the globalized and multifaceted economy. It is a note that I also make to myself: in my career as a researcher I have tried to adapt myself culturally to the changing complexities, writing the Vanoni Plan was not the same thing as a plan made twenty years later».
The criticism that is made of the quality of the ruling class is not linked only to the educational qualification.
«I repeat, we are faced with a political class that has not made it in the face of the cultural challenges of complexity. It would take us very far from the theme, but a mention of the effects of '68, with its denial of the culture of research, of merit, of the prize for those who study, should in any case be done».
And the second line of analysis?
«Definitely the total cultural defeat in the face of the wave of that movement that wanted to overthrow the "castes". A work of destruction on several occasions of the political, ministerial, parliamentary establishment, of all the representative organs of the State. The corollary of mythologies about Freemasons in every corner, about the power of Opus Dei, about strong powers, about conspiracies, came at a later time. Stella and Rizzo's book "La casta" started from the top and descended along all the ganglia of society. The Land Registry employee considers his head of office chaste and says: "Why can't I be the head even if I don't have the qualifications, experience, merit?". Today, unfortunately for young people, skill no longer counts. Even for those who are part of the so-called establishment. The great "Beneducian" leaders, the various Menichellas, Mattiolis or the Giordanis, were truly the best of their generation. The arrival of the grillini to power has led to the denial of merit, to the upheaval of times to become an elite, one is worth one. Even in the dimension of social relations it was a tragedy ».
But how did we get to have parliamentarians who deny the moon landing, who rave about conspiracy theories, who want to cure xylella with soap? In summary: when did the levees break?
«If you want a temporal order, let's say around 2010, when the M5S begins its ascent to elected offices. We are immediately after the great crisis of the political system that took place in 2008. That is the watershed, at that moment politics and the old power collapse. Public opinion definitively certifies a strongly negative opinion of the then political class, as happened at the beginning of the XNUMXs. With the departure of Silvio Berlusconi and the arrival of Mario Monti, the media caste represented by the Cavaliere was also given a coup de grace. With the experience of Monti's caretaker government, instead, the dissolution of the caste of financial and international merit took place. From that moment the cages were opened, anyone can do anything and aspire to anything. There are many striking cases, I'll tell you one close to us Roman voters".
You're welcome.
«An election some time ago for the single-member constituency of Collatino, near the ring road. The former regional governor Renata Polverini, an important business lawyer and the owner of a tobacconist, introduce themselves. You won the tobacconist. It's true: people are tired, disappointed, disillusioned. But we can no longer blame only the ruling class".
The elected officials, of every order and rank, have long boasted of "not being professional politicians", as if it were an infamous shame. What is the selection that allows you not to have immovable dinosaurs in Parliament and not to have naive people who pass from the village bar to the ministry?
«This fracture in the ruling class appears in its drastic evolution in the last ten years, very few old dinosaurs remain and there are new tobacconists. In the DC you didn't enroll to be a minister, just to be clear. We started from the municipal council and those who survived the political struggle gradually arrived in the most important assemblies. In the first two legislatures in Parliament, a Christian Democrat hardly dreamed of a government post. Today this is impossible because there are no more "containers" of the process and of political progress: there is no DC or PCI. Only in that logic, to give just one example, does the laborer Emanuele Macaluso have the opportunity to mature, to emerge and become a leader and an intellectual of the party. To select a political class, processes are needed lensesotherwise, how do you evaluate the merit?».
Having overcome anti-politics, having overcome hatred for politicians, we are now mocked, especially on social media. How does this climate of total lack of trust affect the formation of the elites between the people and the elected?
“Trust is needed by the whole of society. But how can we trust someone or something if we are up to our necks in the culture of "vaffa"? Me, her, my grandchildren, if we take to the streets, nothing is enough to send us to hell. Herein lies the true genius of Beppe Grillo, having brought the culture of "vaffa" into politics. But breaking the web of trust in society creates a dangerous vacuum. The culture of "vaffa" does much more damage than the anti-caste struggle. The molecules of a complex society stay together only if there is a minimal substrate of trust, whoever uses the "vaffa" as a relationship model destroys social networks. And then how do we keep the company together?».
Could the numerical restriction of the parliamentary body lead to a greater selection of the ruling class?
«In the meantime, let's say it's a flag reform: it hasn't been studied at all, it's not a serious matter. The blocked lists are made at the behest of party secretaries or current bosses, who are likely to place a few fewer friends. But the quality of the political class certainly does not come from the verticalisation of the democratic process».
The great ideological families of the twentieth century have long since vanished and there are not many equipped to replace them. Italians, it is said, no longer distinguish right from left. Has this also contributed to making parties look like lackluster oligarchies?
«After all, we Italians are all essentially indifferent. Today we say en masse that politics is crap, whoever does it. We live in an indistinct society, we can't even define the important functions that serve to keep the country on its feet. If I single am an "indistinct", I don't care about anything, neither on the right nor on the left. If everything is grey, there is no white and no black. It makes no difference whether the tobacconist or the great politician deals with the fate of the country».
