Even in politics, historical memory is always fundamental. And it would be enough to have just a little to avoid the highlights and the surreal drift that the comparison, especially within the Democratic Party, on the referendum on constitutional reform seems to take one day yes and the other as well.
It is already extravagant in itself that, after having approved the constitutional reform of the Senate in Parliament, some exponents of the Democratic Party minority reverse their orientation and announce their No to the referendum despite knowing for some time that the reform would be coupled not with a phantom new electoral law but precisely at the Italicum. It is not about questioning the rights of minorities or cases of conscience (but should they be called that even when they are organized by groups or sub-groups?) but to wonder if there is a code of coherence and political coexistence and if dissent shouldn't be regulated before it becomes chaos. If one does not even share the mother of all Renzi's reforms and so radically contrasts even the cornerstone of the strategy of the majority of the Democratic Party, it is not clear why he remains in that party.
But to tell the truth, the requests made in the heart of summer by the Pd minority to prevent the Unity Day from being a great popular opportunity to support the Yes in the autumn referendum or the even more daring ones of organize public banquets to advertise the No against the line, approved by an overwhelming majority by the Pd himself.
Here it is not so important to decide who is right and who is wrong on the merits of the issues but it is essential to understand what the rules of the game are in the party that has the responsibility of leading the government of the country. This is why a little historical memory would not hurt.
Raise your hand if you remember some propaganda demonstration in the old PCI against the Republic or, to come more recently, against the law on divorce or against the escalator. And those who remember some demonstrations in favor of the Warsaw Pact or against the Concordat between Church and State raise it too. The younger ones can't remember them, but not even the older ones remember them. For the simple reason that manifestations of such frontal dissent towards the official line of the party were not allowed or even conceivable, except ending up in '56 with the exit from the PCI of those who denied the USSR or like the "heretics" of the Manifesto at the end of the 60's.
Italian politics has always been eccentric, but there is also a limit to self-harm. And for the ridiculous.
Pluralism and internal democracy, as we know, are the lifeblood of a political force but, if one freely decides to stay in a party, together with the rights there must also be the duties of civil, loyal and coherent coexistence. The rules are not optional and without respect for the rules any political formation ends up in chaos.
The crucial point that the summer heat seems to make many forget is that there is a world of difference between a party and a group of friends at the bar. In the first case there are rules and statutes governing the rights and duties of majorities and minorities and which must prevent the prevarication of one but also of the other, in the second case everyone does as they wish because they are simply a company of happy people. Sooner or later, the Democratic Party will also have to decide whether it wants to be a party in which the majority governs and the minority controls but respects the common rules or wants to resign itself to becoming a sort of sports bar in which everyone shouts and nobody decides.
