Even the harsh secretary of the League, Matteo Salvini, this time immediately understood that, faced with a tragedy like that of the new earthquake in Central Italy, political differences must be temporarily set aside to make way for harmony and national unity. First the affected populations are rescued and the reconstruction of the earthquake-stricken areas begins with maximum transparency and then we return to the normal dialectic. Salvini would prefer the Commissioner for reconstruction to be the prefect Tronca rather than the former Governor of Emilia-Romagna, Errani, but he has publicly declared that the League is ready to collaborate with the Government and with the majority for the emergency. It's not just political calculation, but pure common sense, like the one manifested by Silvio Berlusconi, even before Salvini.
Only Beppe Grillo wanted to stand aside and prejudicially distance himself from the Renzi government even at a time of national emergency, but the risk of thus brandishing the flag of defeatism becomes stronger every day for the Five Stars, pace of government intentions of the aspiring premier Luigi Di Maio.
Even the grumbling and stomachaches of the Democratic Party minority over the surprise candidacy of one of its exponents, such as Vasco Errani, whom Prime Minister Renzi wants to appoint extraordinary commissioner of reconstruction, leave the time they find and certainly do not strengthen the image of the dem minority, which the preconceived opposition to the prime minister risks increasingly dragging into a dangerous worst-case drift in which small parish interests dominate the general interest and cloud the national and international horizon in which the political battle is taking place in Italy today.
But the most politically relevant move in the face of the drama of the earthquake is certainly the one inspired from the first hour by Silvio Berlusconi, preceded and followed by two other moves that make it clear how, net of new and never predictable somersaults, the leader of Forza Italia he seems to have decisively reversed course by assuming a more realistic and more moderate profile and leaving Salvini, earthquake emergency aside, to his minority destiny and his Lepenist infatuations.
Will it have been the advice of his family and business entourage, especially his daughter Marina and the faithful Confalonieri or will it have been pure common sense, as Giuliano Ferrara writes in "Il Foglio", it is a fact that Berlusconi has changed direction and that his language and his political perspective is no longer that of an opponent with no ifs, ands or buts to the Renzi government. First the launch of Stefano Parisi's moderate candidacy for the leadership of Forza Italia and then the willingness to support Matteo Renzi in the event that the premier loses the referendum on the constitutional reform are enough to signal the neo-realist turn of the leader of Forza Italia . "Better Renzi than the 5 Stars" hisses Berlusconi who has the clear objective of saving Forza Italia and finding a new political role that will halt its decline, without forgetting the future of his companies.
It is to be hoped that the pundits and scruffy behind-the-scenes of which our country is full will spare us the worn-out litanies on the non-existent rebirth of the Pact of the Nazarene (which was nothing more than a method of comparison) and will come to understand that the reality is often simpler than it appears, if you don't deform it. There is no need to bother with mysterious pacts and secret conspiracies to explain what the summer of politics is holding in store for us on the eve of the referendum, but to understand that a normal dialectic and the rule of dialogue between the government and the opposition (unfortunately right-wingers only) is good for all the parties involved and, oh well, first of all for the country, which is fed up with screams and shrieks and fake controversies, but only wants to be governed.
It is understandable that a perspective of dialogue without confusion of roles and normal political dialectic does not interest the Five Stars, who are unable to support it and who are aiming for the final breakthrough in the wake of the electoral exploits in Rome and Turin. But those who risk being more displaced by Berlusconi's new course, which is matched by a more relaxed and more communicative leadership of the premier, is the Pd minority.
The drama of the earthquake has for now advised the Bersanian minority to take time before embarking on adventures at a high risk of boomerangs to support the NO in the referendum after voting for the constitutional reform in Parliament, but tactics are short of breath. At the right time and in the right places, those who oppose Renzi's leadership have every right to wage their own political battle, but exploiting the referendum by putting the country's stability at risk is the furthest one can imagine from the reformist tradition of the Italian left . But grudges, as we know, cloud minds, even those once lucid and reasoning.
Even Berlusconi (and that says it all) understood that the referendum cannot be pushed too far and that "the worse the better" is never a good recipe and that sooner or later the electorate will make you pay. It is true that these days the light of political reason no longer seems to be a unanimously shared heritage, but in the end one must always reckon with the force of reality.
