The candidacy of Giuseppe Sala, Stefano Parisi and Corrado Passera as Mayor of Milan is truly good news. It is for Milan, because citizens will be able to choose their mayor from among qualified, competent and respectable people. Persons indicated by the Parties but politically and intellectually autonomous. And it is for Italian politics because, finally, a "new" type of political framework is taking shape: what Antonio Gramsci called technical + political. That is to say, a qualified, competent and experienced person but capable of having a general vision of the problems of the society in which he lives.
This type of cadre is destined to supplant the cadres who came from the party apparatus or who militated in the parties and who were candidates for mayor or deputy for this reason alone and not because of their abilities. And it is also destined to supplant, at least I hope, those of more recent training who are selected via the internet and who as the only title of merit boast the fact that they have never been involved in politics and, indeed, hate it, ignoring that the repudiation of the " polis” represents the first step towards dictatorship.
After the primaries of the Milan Democratic Party won by Sala and after the designation of Parisi by the centre-right, it should be clear that the new resources for politics will mainly come from those trained in politics in universities, companies, finance, management of local authorities, in the public administration or in the professional world. From those who, like Sala, Parisi, Passera but also Diego Piacentini of Amazon and before him Guerra of Luxottica and many other less known but no less capable, decide that it is time to do something for their country and make themselves available to assume tasks of management of public affairs, even if this involves a personal sacrifice. To restore politics to the role it deserves and the dignity it deserves, we need thousands of people like this to come forward. This is why a reform of the parties is needed. Without politics and without parties, democracy can neither exist nor function.
As an American historian said some time ago: "...there is no America without democracy, there is no democracy without politics and there is no politics without parties". Exactly, everything is held, in Italy as in America. If democracy is to be saved, the parties must be reformed. In which direction, however, should this reform go? In two fundamental directions. The first is that of transparency. To this end, rules can be adopted that favor the transformation of parties from "closed parties" and self-referential into "open parties". An open party means a party in which the fundamental choices (from the programme, to the formation of management groups, to the choice of candidates up to the sources of funding) are made on the basis of precise rules, in the light of the sun and in a transparent way. Choices that can be verified and possibly challenged. The primaries themselves, for those who intend to use them, should be regulated with precision to avoid abuses or referees.
The second direction in which we must move is to accelerate the end of the "State-Parties" and to favor the birth of "National Parties" or, if you prefer, "Parties of the Nation". The Party-State is the one that identifies itself with the State, which occupies it and subordinates it to its own purposes as, more or less, the parties did in the First Republic. Conversely, the Party of the Nation is the one that proposes to interpret the needs of the country, its true historical needs (today's integration in Europe) and that seeks to promote solutions that satisfy those needs in the interest of all. It doesn't matter how big that party is, its inspiration and the proposals it makes matter.
Promoting the transformation of the party system is essential to give a future to Italian democracy. The alternative to parties, in fact, can only be either the domination of economic oligarchies or the materialisation of illiberal and justicialist solutions (those evoked by Ingroia and advocated by Il Fatto). But the worst of all would be the prevalence of obscurantist and ultra-conservative sects such as, under the leadership of Casaleggio, the 5 Star Movement tends to become, which is more and more reminiscent of Scientology and less and less of Podemos.
