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ROME. With a joke told in private, which has nevertheless been made public, Sergio Mattarella has evened the score with the British prime minister. Two days ago, Boris Johnson made unflattering judgments about our attachment to the values of freedom. And the president immediately responded that “Italians also love freedom, but we also have seriousness of heart.” The reference is to the fight against Covid in which, after having taken us by surprise, we are now obtaining better results than the UK. This at least accused Johnson of Labor MP Ben Bradshaw, taking advantage of a question time in the House of Commons: “How is Germany and Italy doing better?” Precisely, “BoJo” has launched into the field of political anthropology, linking anti-Covid measures to the distinctive features of nations, which for the most part correspond to common places. “There is an important difference between us and many other countries in the world,” he said in summary, “because ours has always loved freedom,” so it is impossible to ask the British people to renounce it to fight the epidemic. Implicit: if Germans and Italians align, perhaps it is a consequence of their history.
Mattarella was in Sassari yesterday to commemorate Francesco Cossiga ten years after his death. After the ceremony, someone asked him about Johnson, and in that informal context, without microphones or cameras but with prying ears, he basically reiterated the same concept already expressed at the end of July, when he made it clear that “freedom is not the right” . make others sick. A matter of seriousness, indeed. If Cossiga had been there, in the flesh, he would certainly have appreciated the intention of respect for us abroad. He would have liked even more the words that Mattarella dedicated to him in his speech at the University of Sassari, in which the former picket was finally relocated to his rightful place, in the democratic Pantheon, partly compensating for his too battered memory. From its predecessor, Mattarella has improved on some traits that still retain meaning today. For example, iron Atlanticism, which remained “a fixed point even in its tenacious Europeanism.” Could it be a reminder not to lose your way in international relations?
Cossiga’s magisterium was evoked in relation to the power of appointment of ministers: an issue that the current head of state is well aware of for having blocked the economy election of Paolo Savona at the time. The same happens with the role of the Quirinal, since Cossiga did not like the role of the notary president, and so it is known; however, for Mattarella, who met him and helped elect him in 1985, “he aspired even less to the role of president ’emperor'”. But above all he warned against talking too much about constitutional reforms without following them up, because that is how we end up compromising the Republic: this too, a message in a bottle.
