The massive participation in the referendums was a more than positive political fact; a boost to participation and change. That said, the effects of the referendum on water, dragged along by the wave of a demagogic and populist campaign that relied on deep feelings, anxieties and insecurity that the century of globalization has generated, are beginning to manifest themselves in reality. And so now we are crying over spilled milk and discovering, day after day, all the implications of the referendum "on public water", implications that the referendum campaign has deliberately concealed by preventing public opinion from clearly understanding the terms of the question and to understand that the "save water" referendum was actually a "save caste" referendum.
And so it is now being discovered – but many had pointed it out in vain even before – that the referendum repeal, in addition to involving a re-publicisation of the management of local public services (not only water but also waste, local transport, public lighting, cemetery services , gardens, etc.), in addition to preventing these managements from having to undergo a verification of efficiency and economy through tenders, it also overwhelms the implementing regulation (n. of 2010) which had its legal basis in article 23 bis by now no longer in effect. When the primary rule fails, the others fall as well. And in those Regulations, in addition to indicating procedures, rules and criteria for carrying out the tenders (which will no longer be held), two very important things were established: the first was that in the concessionary companies of publicly owned local services, the assumptions and attributions of managerial appointments should be made in compliance with the rules in force for public administrations: i.e. competitions, attribution of managerial appointments on the basis of objective requirements in order to guarantee transparency and verifiability of the choices made; the second point was a very punctual and stringent discipline of incompatibilities.
Rules that prohibited the executives of the entities owning the concessionary companies and their relatives and in-laws up to the fourth degree from being appointed to the company's Board of Directors, from being appointed as managers or from receiving consultancy assignments. And similar prohibitions were envisaged for those who had held elective positions and for their relatives. In short, regulations that represented a serious attempt to put an end to, or at least drastically reduce, the universally widespread practice of using the more than 7.000 companies (the estimate is from the Court of Auditors) owned by Municipalities, Provinces and Regions as a refuge (generally very well paid) of "trumped" politicians, a way to contain the divisional logic with which these societies are governed, to put a stop to the malpractice of the various relatives and valet towns of which the chronicles tell every day (starting from that From Rome).
And it's not a small thing but tens of thousands of patronage jobs that cost the public finances and the country system not only in terms of money disbursement but for the network of corruption that emanates from this system, for the pervasiveness of political intermediation in the economy that these mechanisms generate (just think of the tenders and purchases managed by local companies) suffocating businesses and citizens, due to the poor quality of services.
Norms that were able to trigger a real and profound reform of politics. But that they would have asked the party system to take a step back, to resize its presence, to reduce its intermediation role. It is amazing how these elements – the pervasiveness of parties, the cost of politics – to which citizens are rightly so sensitive have been kept silent and removed from the debate on the referendum. These would have been issues that would have allowed the reformist parties – I am thinking above all of the PdL, which the law had promoted and which left poor Minister Fitto practically alone to defend it, but I am also thinking of the PD led by Bersani of the “sheets” – to counter the no-global populism of the promoters with equally popular arguments. The doubt arises that in the end blowing up these rules would have been convenient for everyone because relocating the large number of political personnel who gravitate around the world of local service companies would not have been an easy undertaking and would have involved a redefinition of power relations between and within parties.
Now, however, those rules are more necessary than before: the re-publicisation of management, the elimination of the competitive mechanisms that should have guaranteed efficiency and cost-effectiveness, the advertising of investments and the management of the related contracts, requires that they be reintroduced and, if possible, made the rules on incompatibility are even stricter. To this end, on Monday I will present a bill to reintroduce the provisions of the Regulation brought about by the repeal of article 23 bis of the Ronchi Decree and I will insist that it be discussed as soon as possible. A few sessions are enough to approve it. We will then see if the "save caste" effect was only the result of an involuntary oversight or if instead it was one of the real objectives of at least a part of the legal representatives.
