It is highly doubtful that nowadays the big Italian newspapers, like the majority of TV stations, really interpret the sentiment of public opinion and not rather that of their editors or that, absolutely legitimate but completely self-referential, of their directors and whoever he writes them. The Internet revolution is not enough to explain the decline of the press, which is certainly not only Italian, but which in our country is a crisis of copies and turnover but also of authority.
Having said that and without the slightest intention of overestimating the importance of newspapers, the image of our country that emerges this morning from the openings of the two main Italian newspapers cannot fail to strike. The "Corriere della Sera", whose director Ferruccio de Bortoli wrote a fiery editorial against Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in recent days, opens with an interview with former leader of the Democratic Party Massimo D'Alema entitled: "Renzi instructed by Verdini”. "La Repubblica" replies with an interview-outburst by Renzi which is entitled: "They attack me, but I won't give up", the subtitle of which is: "I am not a Freemason and I do not pay homage to the powers that be".
At one time, D'Alema himself hoped that Italy could finally become "a normal country", but we are a thousand miles away if criticism of the premier becomes insults and if the nicest compliment paid to him by the "Corriere della Sera" and by one of the once most prominent exponents of the left is to be a Freemason or otherwise to intrigue with Freemasons.
Of course, everyone can think what they want about Renzi and his government action and as secretary of the Democratic Party, but it certainly makes you smile to think of those who, like Beppe Grillo, accused and still accuse Renzi of being a dictator. It must be a very strange dictatorship of a prime minister who has the unions, the bishops, part of his own party, the external opposition, the director of "Corriere della sera" and the founder of "La Repubblica", Eugenio Scalfari against him , pieces of bureaucracy, of the judiciary, of entrepreneurs like Della Valle, not to mention talk shows and the trashy press. A dictatorship like this had never been seen.
But the rain of attacks that is thickening these days against Renzi is by chance or is it the result of a plan studied at the table that would even see a new party led by Diego Della Valle, an orphan, alas! of a political genius like Clemente Mastella who was his adviser for a long time, and who should lead to the turnaround at Palazzo Chigi to once again entrust the leadership of the government to a reserve of the Republic like Ignazio Visco? Better to leave the conspiracy to others and re-read the lesson of a great – yes – of the Republic like Bruno Visentini was.
The former minister and president of the Republican Party used to recall that, beyond mere appearances, a good politician is one who combines three virtues: he has technical expertise in the problems he has to deal with, he has clear priorities and above all he knows how to see I anticipate the effects of his every political move. It is difficult to establish how many of the current leaders really have technical competence in the problems they have to face and, even more, have clear priorities that political action requires, but let us dwell on the last of the three virtues indicated by Visentini for a good politician: the ability and foresight to see the future effects of his every move.
The question then is simple but unavoidable: admitted and not granted that Renzi is not up to the situation (but in a democracy who should establish it?), what is the alternative to the current prime minister and what would come after him if he fell What if it were still impossible to vote in advance due to the absence of a new electoral law? Again a technician at Palazzo Chigi? Those who invoke him only swore a few months ago that politics should never, ever abdicate the leadership of the government. But above all who would support a new government if the Democratic Party remained in the hands of the leader, who may have made his mistakes, but who was legitimized by the primaries, by a congress and by the landslide electoral victory in the European elections? And to make what policy? This is the more comical side of Renzi's opponents who lurk in the unions and in the minority of his own party.
But can one really believe that, by destabilizing Renzi, a government will arrive that renounces reforming the labor market, that rewrites or postpones institutional and electoral reforms, that leaves bureaucracy, school and justice as they are and dusts off, not caring of European parameters, the ominous "tax and spend" policy? Nostalgics like Susanna Camusso or Stefano Fassina may think so but, unfortunately for them, reality always wins between reality and illusions. If Renzi falls, there will be no sun for the future or little politics in bad taste. In a tripolar Parliament like the current one, the isolation or weakening of Renzi's Democratic Party would open the way – it is all too easy to predict – to a turbulent period of instability and ungovernability that would frighten the markets and make it impossible to achieve the objectives of revival and recovery of the economy in compliance with European constraints. This is why after Renzi there is only one perspective: the Troika. Compliments.
