You may not like it but it is difficult to deny Matteo Renzi's political talent. With two smart policy moves, the first in 2019 and the second in 2021, Renzi managed to change the course of the legislature born under the bad star of grillino populism and Northern League sovereignty and to secure the country. If we passed from the hands of Grillo, Salvini and Conte to those, much safer and more reliable, of Mario Draghi, the credit is also and above all to him.
Let's summarize the facts. In the summer of 2019 Matteo Salvini , blinded by the success achieved in the European elections, causes the fall of Conte's yellow-green government and calls for early elections. Renzi, with a surprise move which displaces the secretary of the Democratic Party Zingaretti, opens up to a government with the Five Stars thus obtaining a double result: that of blocking the resistible rise of Salvini and, more importantly, that of preventing Italy from entering a collision course with the European Commission following the predictable victory of the centre-right in the early general elections.
A year later, in January 2021, faced with the manifest inadequacy of the Conte bis government to deal with the health, social and economic crisis caused by the pandemic, it is Renzi who opens the government crisis which will end, after a convulsive and opaque phase (just think of the hunt for those responsible), with the formation of the Draghi government.
This is the outcome of Renzi's two political moves and I challenge anyone to find, not only in Italy but also in Europe, a single person of common sense who has not breathed a sigh of relief when Mattarella has made clear his intention to charge Draghi with the formation of a government of national solidarity and that he has not expressed satisfaction with the outcome.
For this solution, Renzi worked from the beginning with great clarity. Instead, they were opposed Zingaretti, Bettini and Orlando for the Democratic Party and Crimi, Bonafede and Di Maio for the Five Stars. Their watchword until the end was: "Either Conte or elections" and, as we have seen, they lost Conte and did not get the elections.
Renzi must therefore be given credit for having defused both the sovereign mine of Salvini and the populist one of Cricket and to have thus saved the legislature by changing its course. It's no small thing! Politically it is a masterpiece. “Adventurism”, Zingaretti and Crimi complain, but they are wrong. Adventurism has nothing to do with it, instead timing which is almost everything in politics and a sense of national responsibility have something to do with it. So, "chapeau" for Renzi.
The Draghi government marks a clear discontinuity with the Conte 1 and 2 governments. Not only because it represents the complete overcoming of the transformism and incompetence on which those governments were largely based but also and above all for the clarity of the objectives it proposes.
A few essential words were enough for Draghi to illustrate the guidelines of his program: investments and reforms (Together), Atlanticism and Europeanism, irreversibility of the euro and mass vaccinations. Listening to him, no one had the impression of being faced with a technician lent to politics but rather of listening to the words of a statesman capable of giving back to Politics, the real one, the honor it deserves.
Of course, the Draghi government alone is not enough. To really resurrect Italy needs a profound policy renewalof parties and institutions. But who is responsible for putting a hand in this renewal, if not the parties themselves and the Parliament? The parties, rather than "transforming themselves" should "reveal themselves": that is, they should say clearly and honestly what they are and what they want.
But how can they do it if their internal life is not regulated by law, as the law would like Constitution? A digital platform is not enough to ensure transparency, fairness and democratic participation. Rousseau's shipwreck proves it. We need rules that are not limited to the problem of party financing but which also concern the regularity of congresses, the legitimacy of the leading groups and respect for democratic procedures in the making of decisions as well as in the selection of representatives.
Politics is not dead, it just got drunk on populism. But the hangover will pass sooner or later. As they say in America: "There is no America without democracy, there is no democracy without politics and there is no politics without parties". It was true yesterday and it is still true today. The parties must change but without the parties democracy cannot live.
Claudius Martelli, In a interview released to Firstonline, he made a very important proposition. To give the parties and the Italian political system time and a way to restructure themselves, the two years of life that separate us from the elections could be used to put a hand on the reform of Parliament (a single chamber with 600 deputies) and to approve an electoral law that provides for a double shift, as in France and as happens in Italy for Municipalities and Regions. This law would guarantee pluralism (because in the first round everyone can run) and stability (because in the second round it would be possible to choose who should govern). Will the parties and the Italian Parliament be able to do it? Difficult but not impossible.
If the Democratic Party held a real congress (not a kermesse) and the reformists took the lead, this battle could take place and it would find attentive ears not only in Italy Viva and among the centrists but also in the centre-right. It is true that the unknown factor remains Five stars but even here, given the ease with which they changed their minds on so many things, it is not certain that they cannot change it on this one too.
But, beyond the electoral reform, which must be done in any case, what should be clear is that the Draghi government marks a break in Italian political history. After this experience there can be no pure and simple return to the past. It will not be possible to go back to the forced center-right and center-left bipolarity of the times of Prodi and Berlusconi because that bipolarity was only true on paper and at the first difficulties it melted like snow in the sun.
Instead, we should favor a different articulation of Italian politics, on the right as well as on the center and on the left. A two-round electoral law could foster this evolution while ensuring greater political stability. It would be a really nice way to close the legislature and a good new start for our democracy.
