Today I take the liberty of suggesting to the readers of FIRSTonline, who follow the debate on the constitutional referendum of autumn, what he claimed, back in 1947, Meuccio Ruini, President of the Commission for the Constitution.
It is a text certainly well known to the "insiders" who today underline, often in an instrumental way, how imperfect the text submitted to a referendum is: famous constitutionalists; others maître à penser; oppose only soi disant maître à penser; prominent party figures fighting for the “perfect constitution”; others who more simply militate to bring down the Renzi government, guilty of a jumbled proposal for constitutional reform.
I reproduce below and without comment what I have taken from the shorthand account regarding the "perfect Constitution".
December 22, 1947. Morning session of the Constituent Assembly.
Terracina President. The agenda includes: Final vote by secret ballot on the Constitution of the Italian Republic. The honorable Ruini, President of the Commission for the Constitution, has the right to speak.
Ruini, President of the Commission for the Constitution.
“Criticisms have also come from this bank; but we must not abandon ourselves to a habit of self-deprecation, which sometimes seems like a sad Italian heritage. No constitution is perfect. Every time one has been made, complaints and deprecations have resounded among the constituents. This happened, even immediately after the North American Constitution was voted in Philadelphia a century and a half ago; which is now judged the best of all!
A calm judgment on the strengths and weaknesses of our Charter cannot be given today with exhaustive completeness. There are defects; there are gaps and even more exuberances; there are uncertainties in given points; but I am now hearing the voices of important experts from abroad, and they recognize that this Charter deserves to be favorably appreciated, and it has a good place, perhaps the first, among the constitutions of the current post-war period. We, first of all, recognize its imperfections; but we must also point out some acquired results”.
It is a very clear text which, even without interpretative comments, makes us reflect on the instrumental debate for the perfect Constitution.
