Enrico Letta did it and set up a government with many innovations and without paying unsustainable costs. Two months after the elections and after too many fluctuations, the first executive of the new legislature was finally born with the essential task of carrying out the electoral reform and managing the economic emergency.
The most important political innovations are unquestionably the exclusion of all the big names – from Amato to D'Alema but also from Monti and Bersani to Brunetta and Schifani – but also the presence of many new faces and the absence of unpresentable characters or discussed and divided.
The key seats are in safe hands such as those of the general manager of the Bank of Italy, Fabrizio Saccomanni, who will be the new minister of the Economy, those of Emma Bonino, who will be the new minister of Foreign Affairs, and those of Angelino Alfano, who will be Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister, and Anna Maria Cancellieri to Justice.
The absence of first-rate personalities such as Giuliano Amato and Massimo D'Alema, whom the President of the Republic also liked, takes away experience and above all political weight from the nascent government but makes it more cohesive and above all avoids cumbersome and divisive figures such as those of Renato Brunetta, Maurizio Sacconi, Renato Schifani and Mariastella Gelmini that the Pdl asked for in exchange.
If, as is largely predictable, the Government passes Parliament's scrutiny at the beginning of the week, despite the stomachaches affecting above all the diehard anti-Berlusconi wing of the Democratic Party, all the conditions will exist for the executive led by Enrico Letta can begin his difficult navigation by reassuring both international institutions and the financial markets.
Enrico Letta was very skilled and did an excellent job in quickly forming the government and the knockout he inflicted on the grillini in the streaming match will remain memorable. The many new faces and the strong female presence that characterize the ministerial team are striking. But it is good to say right away that no one performs miracles and that it would be absurd to expect them from the new government. More simply, the new executive must do three things:
1) electoral reform – with which to erase the shame of Porcellum and lead the country to new elections when the political times advise – and the start of the reform of politics and institutions;
2) the management of the economic emergency by focusing obsessively on growth economic not through the dangerous shortcut of easy public spending but with an increase in productivity and, if possible, a gradual reduction of taxes on labor and companies without forgetting the refinancing of the Redundancy Fund;
3) the reshaping of European policies both through an easing of one-way austerity and through a greater boost to growth with the golden rule for productive investments and project finance.
Letta is in his first experience as Prime Minister but he is a modern and pragmatic politician and, if fate gives him a hand and Pd and Pdl do not put a spoke in his works, he has all the credentials to start the country on the path of peace and recovery. Good luck.
