Let's face it, in the so-called second republic, or if you prefer in Berlusconi's twenty years, the parties have never enjoyed excellent press. They were considered by all to be the real protagonists of what a stale cliché has always defined as "the little theater of politics". And so while on the right Berlusconi felt almost a sort of allergy to the very word "party", always preferring to speak, both for Forza Italia and for the PDL, of a "movement founded by me", on the left the Pd was born which in the Veltronian version (now taken up by Matteo Renzi) would have had to overcome the heavy party, made up of congress members and procedures, to rely on the mythologized primaries, even to choose its own leader, who would then (in fact) choose the management groups.
These days (both on the right and on the left) we are witnessing the failure of this model. Let's start from the right.
The PDL trying to become Forza Italia (a remake instead of an innovation), but it fails and thus risks an increasingly probable split. The battle rages between hawks and doves, made even more dramatic by the impending forfeiture of the founder from the Senate, to be entrusted for now to social services, then we'll see. But behind this internal battle, which is expected to resolve at the end of next week, in a meeting of the National Council (a body that is almost never convened and has about eight hundred members) there have been years of an ultra-presidential party, made up of many meetings of a so-called "presidential office", which however has always functioned more as a crown council than as a managing group of a democratic party. The first to denounce this state of affairs was the former Minister of Justice Filippo Mancuso (who joined Forza Italia) who defined Berlusconi's conventions as "the place of flattery bodybuilding".
Those were different times, Berlusconi could still afford not to like and punish those considerations that only served to close the door to poor Mancuso's nomination as candidate for the Constitutional Court. Yet someone had tried to tell Berlusconi that in the end a real party had to be created, of course, with all the necessary precautions. But the Knight from that ear never wanted to hear us. Indeed, those who have tried, such as Fabrizio Cicchitto, have increasingly ended up in a shadow of dislike. And yet, despite the rigid presidential structure of the movement, this ultimately did not prevent rags from flying between hawks and doves, or if you prefer between loyalists and innovators. We'll see the epilogue at the next national council, as long as it takes place and doesn't jump, due to an anticipated split.
But even in the Democratic Party, which still remains a party organized on a democratic basis, according to the provisions of article 39 of the Constitution, the leadership model has not worked at its best. Naturally, things around the new left-wing party did not work out as Veltroni had foreseen: our political system did not quickly move towards the expected bipolarity, and the party with a majority vocation, announced on the occasion of its foundation, found itself less and less majority. And this should have led to the practice of a solid policy of alliances, such as those created in the regions and municipalities, which today allow the Democratic Party to govern most of the country's local authorities. It wasn't like that. Bersani was favored in the last political elections, but found himself having to deal with the (underestimated) strength of the Five Star Movement, with the unexpected collapse of the center (Monti and Casini) and with the strangest tripolarism in the world centered on a center-left party, and two populisms, one right-wing and another with ideas that are difficult to categorize, but tending to the right and an electoral base made up instead of votes lost to the left by the Pd.
And it is within this framework that it is taking place the Congress of the Democratic Party which sees Matteo Renzi as the favorite for the secretariat, thanks to the fact that the secretary will be chosen instead of by the members, by the people of the primaries. In short, by those who will go (regardless of their political orientation) to the gazebos on 8 December. Naturally after the news have reported in recent days of clashes in clubs, of last minute memberships at times improbable. Naturally allowed by an absurd regulation that allowed the vote even to those who joined the party for the first time on the day of the vote. To prevent chaos from happening, the leaders of the Democratic Party, and above all the candidates for the secretariat will have to exercise a lot, but a lot of sense of responsibility.
This is the picture of Italian politics and the role of "weakened" parties. Already. But at least one might wonder if the much-maligned theater of politics has come to an end. The answer, in light of recent events, is that politics is almost over, but the theater continues. Joking aside, both right and left would need serious reflection on whether democracy can do without parties or even only if a further reduction of their role can be allowed. In my opinion, the answer can only be negative. In no democratic country has this happened. The Italian parties in the first and second republics made many mistakes and many incomprehensible and useless invasions. But today, at the end of a horrible twenty years, they could make a definitive one: consider themselves useless.
