If Bersani fails, as is very probable, in the attempt to give life to a minority government supported by Grillo, the obligatory way, in order not to go back to the vote immediately, will be to try to give life to a government of "democratic convergence", of “national responsibility” or, if you prefer, to a “government by the President”. A government that assumes the commitment to carry out, within one, maximum two years, the institutional, economic and social reforms that are essential to avoid the ruin of the country and return to the vote immediately afterwards. On the other hand, it was precisely the inability of the major parties (Pd and Pdl) to reform the country that paved the way for Grillo. Thinking today of being able to reabsorb the grillina protest by associating the M5S with the government is pure wishful thinking, to say the least. The only serious and honest way to deal with this protest and to show respect for the voters who have expressed it is to make reforms.
The reforms to be made are difficult and far from painless. They are not socially neutral and involve sacrifices. This is why it is not politically honest to ask the M5S to make them. They can be asked not to hinder them, but the burden of proposing and realizing it falls to the parties. Therefore, let the parties tell which reforms they consider fundamental and which can be implemented before returning to the vote.
On Firstonline, the list of reforms needed to bring Italy out of the crisis has been made many times. First of all, we must proceed with the reform of the electoral law (preferably the two-round majority), with the modification of the government system (French presidentialism), with the overcoming of the perfect bicameral system, with the reduction of the number of deputies and with the abolition of the financing party audience. Furthermore, the provinces must be abolished, the reform of the PA carried forward and that of the labor market completed. Lastly, the reform of justice, of schools and universities, must be started and the principle of standard costs must be introduced into the health care system. In short, we must make those reforms that involve structural changes and not new disbursements of money. Public spending must be reduced and retrained, not increased.
Political and institutional reforms must be accompanied by measures for development which, at least in part, we will have to negotiate in Europe (euro bonds, the unbundling of investments from the calculation of debt, etc.) and which will be all the more easily possible if it is clear to all that Italy is not abandoning the path of reforms taken by the Monti government. In short, what we need is shock therapy. And we need it now and not in a year. For this reason it is imperative that the parties find a way out, certainly also taking Grillo into account but without placing themselves in his hands.
In his latest issue dedicated to Italy, the columnist of the Economist (strictly anonymous as is customary in that journal) observed that the basis of the Italian crisis are above all the Italian problems that the lack of reforms has corrupted. Europe can (and must) lend a hand, but it is up to the Italians to solve them. Whoever takes Monti's place will have to try to do so and it is unreasonable to think that this can be done without a jolt of national responsibility on the part of the main political forces (Pd and Pdl, above all). Today this seems impossible, but it is not. We Italians certainly don't lack the imagination to do it. Are we not the country of Moro who, in a no less dramatic contingency, devised and implemented the strategy of "parallel convergences" that no one knew exactly what he meant but that, in the end, it worked and save Italian democracy?
