With the resignation made today by the President of the Republic, a path is started to return to what Giorgio Napolitano himself, in his last New Year's message, defined as "constitutional normality, or rather the regularity of the times of life of the institutions, including the presidency of the Republic" .
This is how the constitutionalist Francesco Clementi observed in "Il sole 24 ore" on 13 January last, always referring to that message, "the parenthesis of a constitutional exceptionality". Which, it is worth remembering, was neither wanted nor sought by Napolitano, but made indispensable by the proven incapacity of the political forces to elect the new tenant of the Quirinale. An indispensability to which a servant of the state and of the institutions as the president who has now resigned has always been, did not want and could not escape, with great personal sacrifice.
The re-election was the occasion for Napolitano to tie his partial second term to the goal of carrying out reforms, starting with the electoral and constitutional ones. And certainly if today those reforms, which have not yet been completed, are closer and almost within reach, it is due to the determination with which the head of state first urged and then followed the development of that process step by step. Naturally leaving the definition of the reform contents to the free discussion of the parties and of the Parliament. One of the criticisms that have been leveled at the Napolitano presidency has been that of an irregular invasiveness in the debate between the political forces.
It is a completely inappropriate criticism. The President of the Republic has in fact always been shrewd, bordering on fussiness, in never going beyond the constitutional limits of his mandate. Of course, he had his weight (fortunately) in directing the political debate, always trying to bring the often arrogant requests of some political forces back into the constitutional framework. Think of Napolitano's firmness in avoiding a constitutional conflict between the government and the judiciary in the Englaro case.
At the same time, the role of the Quirinale was decisive in containing the verbal and media excesses of part of the judiciary. Reason for which it has also been the subject of both unfair and ungenerous criticism. Despite the calls repeatedly addressed to the magistrates to cultivate a sense of balance in the media utterances, the head of state has never shied away from his willingness to facilitate the work of the magistrates, even submitting himself to an unnecessary direct testimony on the so-called state-mafia negotiation .
In the exercise of his mandate Napolitano has always fielded his firmness and authority, never an arrogant authoritarianism. This is how he behaved in the face of the unheard-of requests to neutralize with a sort of "motu proprio" the sentence that led to the forfeiture of Silvio Berlusconi as senator as a result of a definitive sentence. In short, Napolitano's was a presidency, always authoritative and never authoritarian. Hence the claim and exercise of constitutional prerogatives, which, in times of institutional reforms, he has always preserved to deliver them intact to his successor.
Let's not forget that, as Stefano Folli recalled in "Republic", in our Constitution the President of the Republic is something more than a notary, and his role is not only arbitration. A referee, understood in football terms, limits himself to applying the rules. A guarantor has a different autonomy. He chooses who will have to form the government and appoints the ministers on the latter's indications, and above all he has the exclusive power to dissolve Parliament.
Another characteristic of the Napolitano presidency has been the extraordinary attention to international politics and to Europe. His calls at home and abroad to advance towards the political unity of Europe have been repeated at home and abroad with an almost religious continuity. I believe that there are not many other international leaders who can enjoy the international prestige of the outgoing president. And this is still a great ideal heritage that Italy can boast towards its political interlocutors outside the national borders.
I realize I haven't made any reference to the fact that Napolitano's story comes, as they used to say, from afar. From the PCI. He himself spoke and reported on these things in several books and publications before being elected to the Quirinale. Certainly one's own history always weighs on subsequent behaviors. Who, in the case of the Napolitano presidency, have always been oriented in one direction only: the general interest of the country. Who, this too has been a common thread of his new year, needs first of all politics, which, in turn, cannot do without parties. With all due respect to the anti-political rhetoric unfortunately still rampant.
It is to be hoped that the parties and Parliament are up to the task that awaits them in choosing the next president. And that he knows as much as possible to treasure his moral and political legacy. Eugenio Scalfari defined those made by the outgoing president in carrying out his mandate as "the labors of a Sisyphus". Even greater efforts await the next president to be worthy of his predecessor.
