It may also be true, as Enrico Letta says swollen with understandable bitterness, that it was the Pharisees who distrusted him, those who first thank you and then send you home, but representing the changing of the guard at Palazzo Chigi only in terms of conspiracies does not help understand one of the crucial passages of Italian politics such as the one we are experiencing with the rise of Matteo Renzi at the helm of the new government. Rather than wondering about the existence or not of palace intrigues, which certainly matter but which risk giving a caricatured vision of political events, we should ask ourselves a simpler question: the evident exhaustion of the Letta government due to the evident fragility of its majority but also of his ministerial team and a few too many shyness of the premier, were there winning alternatives to the changing of the guard at the Presidency of the Council?
On paper, Renzi had three alternatives in front of him. The first was to favor Letta's restart with a government renewed in terms of men and programs. But a year of wear and tear consumed in grueling mediations had long since tarnished the image and effectiveness of the outgoing prime minister, to whom everyone recognizes a high international standing and an excellent vision but modest achievements and too many missteps internally. You want to say that the deficit, the public debt and the tax burden have decreased but, faced with a dramatic crisis like the one we are experiencing, the progress made has been and is too timid to be really perceived by public opinion disheartened and disheartened.
Raise your hand who would have bet on an electoral victory of the Democratic Party with the confirmation of a government which, since the IMU mess onwards, has seemed to offer formidable assists to the opposition of Berlusconi and Grillo. Having therefore discarded the possibility of confirming Letta at Palazzo Chigi, Renzi had a second alternative before him: that of bringing the curtain down on the legislature after only one year of life and paving the way, Quirinale permitting, for early elections. An option, which, as the secretary of the Democratic Party acknowledged, had its charm but which was at odds with reality.
Not only because the majority of parliamentarians would have made false papers not to go home without having matured their pension (it takes at least two and a half years to stay in the Chambers) but for an even more elementary reason: without an electoral reform which, having to reasonably intertwined with the transformation of the Senate, requires at least a year and a half to reach the finish line, we would have returned to the vote with the strongly proportional electoral law of the First Republic, with lots of greetings to bipolarism, with the triumph of political fragmentation and without the certainty of seeing a clear winner come out of the polls.
The last alternative on the table was that of courage and risk, i.e. the assumption of responsibility bordering on the reckless by the Democratic Party and its new secretary with the explicit candidacy to lead the government. Renzi knows well that if he fails he goes home and that the work ahead of him is nothing short of titanic but he is not wrong in thinking that this third option is also the only one which, unlike the first two, is not condemned from the outset to electoral failure and may pave the way for change in the country.
Once Palazzo Chigi has been conquered, Renzi now has a long time ahead of him (in theory the entire legislature, i.e. another four years) but a gamble capable of shaking his wrists: demonstrating and above all realizing the reformability of Italy and showing its change in clearly perceivable by most. If he succeeds, in some time no one will remember the palace maneuvers or even the lack of popular and electoral legitimacy of the new prime minister. But it's the facts and not just the scenic effects that count. The discontinuity with respect to the swamp into which the country has plunged is essential but newness is not enough, which does not always rhyme with change, which requires unparalleled political competence and determination.
Renzi is the first to know that it is essential to manage well and to put in place a streamlined, quality government team capable of producing not only fascinating but sterile projects but also of excelling in execution. And he also knows that it is essential to immediately identify clear priorities such as electoral reform, work and tax reduction without breaking public finances but above all that it is crucial to know how to attack them with force, because people are tired of vague promises and only ask for results . But the real bet facing the future premier and which makes his task even more difficult than that of his predecessors is that of the so-called parallel plans.
As an acute observer like Stefano Folli noted in the Sole 24 Ore from the outset, Renzi must try to reconcile the level of institutional reforms and that of economic reforms: which means that on the first level he must dialogue above all with Berlusconi in the logic of large parties and on the second he must instead dialogue with the small parties (from Ncd to Civic Choice) who make up his government allies. Will he be able to keep the two plans together and harmonize the expectations of the large and small parties? It would take a magician or an acrobat. Time will tell if Renzi really is and if, walking the razor's edge, he will manage not to break his bones and dispel the dark shadow of the decline that has been looming over Italy for too long. Good luck.
