"Mattarella's re-election to the Presidency of the Republic has caused unexpected confirmations and profound shocks in the positioning of the parties and in their alliances and what will happen in the last year of the legislature will mainly depend on the agreements that the political forces find on the electoral law" whose “change is unavoidable even if it won't be the panacea” because the order of the day is the failure of all the architecture of the Second Republic. The speaker is Beppe Vacca, philosopher of politics and high-ranking intellectual of the left, former parliamentarian of the Democratic Party and president of the Gramsci Foundation. Revisiting with him the daring events that last week led to the Mattarella-Bis at the Quirinale and the reconfirmation of Mario Draghi at the helm of the Government, evaluating its real political effects, offers refined and often unpublished food for thought. Here is his thought in this interview with FIRSTonline.
After the presidential elections Sergio Mattarella remains at the Quirinale while Mario Draghi remains at Palazzo Chigi: apparently nothing has changed but, as political scientist Roberto D'Alimonte wrote in the Sole 24 Ore, in reality a lot has changed, because the center-right is falling apart and without a true leader and in the centre-left, the Democratic Party and the Five Stars are farther away than before, while the hypothesis of a new proportional type electoral law seems to be advancing: what do you think will be the true political effects of the presidential elections and what evaluations do they suggest?
«If we align the election of the President of the Republic with the sequence of previous elections, I think we can say that it falls within the norm of presidential elections, except for the reconfirmation of the outgoing President with a full mandate of another seven years. The novelty arose from the lack of alternatives in the current Parliament and above all from the international turmoil that makes the Mattarella-Draghi tandem Italy's strongest asset in the reform process already under way of the European institutions and in the reconfiguration of Europe's role in changing of global geopolitical assets. In these respects, however, it seems to me that nothing substantial has changed compared to the last three years, after the defeat of the international right in the 2019 European elections and the consequent beheading of Salvini had propitiated Italy's reconnection to the European process". .
Beyond the events affecting the individual coalitions, don't you think that the presidential elections have laid bare all the limits of Italian bipolarity and laid the foundations for new and more articulated future political scenarios if the reform of the electoral law really goes through?
«However, much seems to change in the figure and in the space of the main parties. The possibility of following the movements of the leaders in real time during the votes for the President has brought to light all the inconsistencies of the political system of the "second Republic" and I believe it has widened the awareness of its attrition. The political narrative of the "second Republic" has accustomed us to talking about a confrontation between two coalitions. Certainly, the straitjacket of the majority leads observers, the information system and the protagonists themselves to represent the political struggle in Italy as a clash between two coalitions. But in reality the centre-left and centre-right are just two sides, not two coalitions. Pd and Cinquestelle can also form an alliance to form a government, but this does not make it a coalition. This is even more true for the centre-right, where the incomparable heterogeneity of the political cultures of Forza Italia, Lega and Fratelli d'Italia prevails. The Chambers resulting from the 2018 elections, dominated by the Five Stars and the League, i.e. by two "anti-system" parties, gave way to a legislature that could have failed immediately; if this has not happened, it is due to President Mattarella and to the forces that have managed to keep Italy in line with the EU by favoring the European legitimacy of the Five Stars. But the configuration of Parliament has essentially remained the same, and what this entails for Italian political life was clearly seen in the passionate week of the presidential elections. All this makes a change in the electoral law mandatory, which is unavoidable after the halving of the two Chambers. In the remaining year of this legislature it is possible that we will be able to do it, but it will not be a cure-all because the failure of the rules and the political architecture of the "second Republic" is now on the agenda. The behavior of the League and the Five Stars in the election of Mattarella highlights how deep the rift is between the real country and the political forces that represent it and the way in which the story ended makes it even more evident how far it is from the country even the narrative that the media make of it. However, a new bond has been created between "politics" and the country. Without the formation of the Draghi government it would not have been possible and we are still far from perceiving all the meanings and implications that Draghi's entry into Italian political life could have".
Let's try to examine the state of the two poles in detail: after the friction on the hypothetical candidacy of Silvio Berlusconi, the rejection of that of Casellati and the final split with the Brothers of Italy on the reconfirmation of Mattarella, he thinks that Forza Italia can still place itself in the coalition center-right or is it destined to move independently towards the center of the Italian political alignment?
«It is difficult to foresee the future of Forza Italia in the event that the change of the electoral law puts an end to the false majority of the "second Republic". Furthermore, Forza Italia is the longest-lived Personal Party in republican Italy, Berlusconi is his age and his ailments, and it doesn't seem to me that he has prepared his own succession with foresight. However, Casellati's candidacy has served to demonstrate that the approach given by the centre-right to the election of the President of the Republic, based on a head-on confrontation that Salvini managed shrewdly, has once again had its mark and it seems to me that Berlusconi was aiming to make it clear that the center-right is not a supportive and efficient political actor – if it ever was – and therefore its time was up. In this Berlusconi was lucid and showed his people a path to follow in order to relocate in the Italy to come».
If the presidential elections were to cement the alliance project between the Democratic Party and the Five Stars, the events of recent days have instead distanced the two political forces which are clearly divided over the future of Mario Draghi and have highlighted all the ambiguity of the former premier Giuseppe Conte who played on the side several times with Salvini rather than with Letta, who instead found himself closer to the leader of Italia Viva, Matteo Renzi, rather than to the president of the Five Stars, once considered by the Democratic Party "the point of reference for Italian progressivism ”. What effects will all this have on the centre-left line-up?
«Mattarella's re-election has caused unexpected confirmations and profound jolts in the positioning of the parties and in their alliances. What will happen in the last year of the legislature will depend mainly on the agreements that the political forces find on the electoral law. I imagine that this theme will act as a catalyst for the internal factional struggles of all the parties but above all of the Lega, Forza Italia and the Five Stars, which seem to me to be the most affected by the crisis of the "second Republic"».
After a spectacular economic performance in 2021 with GDP growth not seen since 1976, the confirmation of the Mattarella-Draghi couple at the top of the state will be affected by the turbulence of the last year of the legislature or will give the Government the strength to push Italy not to waste the unique opportunity that - with the European funds of the Next Generation Eu and with the reform program agreed with the EU - has before it not only to modernize the country but to lay the foundations for lasting economic growth and more fair?
«The unraveling of the Five Stars and the repositioning of the League will also be influenced by the redefinition of the European and global geopolitical balances, which presumably will undergo new and more acute tensions during this year. This will have repercussions on the Draghi government and could even cause its crisis. But I don't think that the political formula on which he is based and the emergencies from which he was born can be ignored. I think the Mattarella-Draghi tandem will allow the government to face the deadlines of the PNRR and to last at least until an agreement is found on the new electoral law. On the other hand, it does not seem to me that there are any interests of the EU or of the Great Powers in throwing Italy into chaos. The Draghi government is now an end-of-term government and as such it should be able to fulfill its essential tasks.
The mediocre performance and the crisis of leadership shown by the political forces in the presidential elections - albeit with clearly different merits and demerits - leads some observers to believe that the drive to have the Head of State elected by the people instead of by Parliament as happens in France is growing : What do you think? Could it be a goal for the next legislature within a coherent institutional and constitutional reform?
«It would be the pre-packaged answer consistent with the inclinations of those parts of the right who recognize themselves in Giorgia Meloni's program. But what today seems to give an alleged relevance to Presidentialism is the disarticulation of the "one and indivisible" Republic into about twenty regional "governorates" which, thanks to the perverse combination between the reform of Title V of the Constitution and the Tatarellum, brought back the Italy in the harlequin style it had before the unitary state. Given the seriousness of national fragmentation and the rooting of the "governorates" in the common feeling that has forcefully returned to municipalism, it is not easy to curb Italy's political drift and reverse course. The need therefore arises to restore a center to the country and adequate strength to national governments to allow Italy to courageously face global challenges and international competition. As you suggest, all this cannot be included in the political agenda at the end of the term and should concern the next one. It is possible that the depth of the crisis of political representation will force this Parliament to rewrite the electoral law in a proportional sense; but so that the next legislature does not fail once again the objective of constitutional reforms, I would advise to envisage, together with the election of the new Parliament, the election of a Constituent Commission with a mandate limited to the revision of the second part of the Constitution and a term no more than two years to complete its work. The uniformity of the method of electing the Parliament and the Commission could make it possible to avoid the referendum confirming the constitutional reforms which, as we have already seen, gives rise to reckless demagogic manipulation of the citizens".
Finally, the international level: in the eyes of the Chancelleries of the major countries, the reconfirmation of an openly pro-European and pro-Atlantic couple, such as the one formed by Mattarella and Draghi, as well as being a source of relief on both sides of the Atlantic, will it give Italy more strength at a time when important deadlines such as the reform of the treaties and the European Stability Pact are approaching?
«It seems to me that the conclusion of the presidential election has demonstrated the full force of politics. It can therefore be hoped that Mattarella's new seven-year term and Draghi's international caliber will favor Italy's affirmative actions in reforming the European Treaties and the Stability Pact along the lines already emerged with the Recovery Plan, to which it supplies new life and gives the inaugural speech by President Mattarella is broader".
