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What will happen tomorrow night when the polls are open for the referendum? Let’s try to imagine that the “no” to cutting parliamentarians prevails. The vote would return the decade of anti-politics to the attics of history, showing that the majority of public opinion once again trusts the institution that embodies representative democracy: the delegation. The simultaneous political defeat of the Cinquestelle in the regional elections would certify the structural crisis of the Movement and its political withdrawal.
Instead, imagine the opposite hypothesis, which surveys consider much more likely: that “yes” prevails in surveys. The referendum would revitalize the Pentatelate leadership, testifying that most Italians still recognize themselves in its slogans. That is to say, the anti-politics have not regressed even in the lash that the pandemic has unleashed in the country, but it survives as a harmful instance capable of taking democracy hostage and, in some way, making it precarious. Luigi Di Maio would claim the result, using it to bend the balance of the government in his favor. As for the Democratic Party, which voted “no” three times to cut parliamentarians and a quarter “yes,” it would be embarrassed by the unsustainable price paid to the alliance with the Cinquestelle. Anyone who knows the moral and ideological physiology of Zingaretti’s party knows that this sentiment, coupled with the probable defeat in the Regionals, would be functional to a change of direction.
The scenarios presented here are not neutral. And they lend themselves to some objections. Paolo Mieli formulated them a week ago, responding to Roberto Saviano who, in an interview with the press, had called the entire ruling class of the Democratic Party “water vapor”. For the former director of the Corriere della Sera, those tones were aptly reminiscent of Nanni Moretti’s accusations, pronounced twenty years earlier against Fassino and Rutelli. The result, today as yesterday, of a political culture that lacks realism and is unable to understand what a compromise is. Because, Mieli reminded Saviano, he does not take into account that the Democratic Party is the loser of the 2018 political elections, and is in government “only by virtue of a tactical maneuver carried out in the summer of 2019.” Therefore, “he cannot do what he wants in the control room” and he cannot, for example, “change those laws on Libya and migrants for which he has also compromised with his constituents.”
The former director of the Corriere della Sera did not explicitly say that, for the same tactical reasons, the Democratic Party should support the “yes” to the referendum, in defense of the government alliance. But if the objective is to keep alive a commitment, of which the cut of the parliamentarians is an essential condition, it is reasonable to think that this vote is a sacrifice to pay. What Mieli did not ask herself is whether the repeal of Salvini’s security decrees is an equally essential condition for the Democratic Party, regarding the principles that govern the relationship with its electoral base. And if it is not worth taking stock of this commitment, that is, a comparison between the tactical concessions and the strategic resignations made so far.
This budget is scary. Because it is feared that any prejudice posed by the Democratic Party to the Cinquestelle will endanger the fate of the government. But it is a reasoning that hides a terrifying subordination and that lacks an excess of prudence. Conte’s cabinet has three strong anchors: attachment to the seats of a five-star parliamentary representation that would have no other chance of being reelected; the goal of blocking Salvini’s path, at least until the election of the new head of state; the management of what Italian politics considers the European treasure, which will be distributed in exchange for consensual actions. If a defeat of the Democratic Party in the Regionals is not enough to overthrow Conte, the same must be said of a hypothetical defeat of the Cinquestelle in the referendum. In one case or another, the unfinished alliance will try its best to stick with whiskey.
The reality is that the Democratic Party is the prisoner of a misunderstood sense of responsibility, for which it has assigned itself the task of re-educating, and in some way normalizing, its rebel ally. But the sponsorship proved unsuccessful. As in any pathological addiction, it is the person who feels more mature who pays the highest price. The institutional cultural gap has pushed the Democrats to converge on the ideological maximalism and populism of the Cinquestelle, which were also latent tendencies of their own identity. Thus reformism ended up in the attic. Zingaretti resigned to change the distributive and security measures of the yellow-green season, and had to support the justicialists, statists and anti-politicians of the Giallorossi. The income of citizenship has become a gospel, although apocryphal to the bankruptcy test of the facts. Quota 100 and security decrees two impregnable taboos. The sine die recipe is a toad to swallow with a smile on their lips, promising to speed up the process, only to be forgotten later. The aborted revocation of the highway concessions is a disaster to ignore. Atlanticism is a border exposed to the exits of an ally who flirts with Maduro and Xi Jinping, and who abstains from sanctions against Russia such as the League. The loss of Libya is a tribute to the irrelevance of Mediterranean politics. The ius soli a youthful dream gone. And finally, the Month funds a political sacrifice to be sacrificed to the God of prejudice.
This is the budget that the Democratic Party does not want to make. And that, therefore, hides behind a newly discovered pro-European rhetoric. Even if the Recovery Fund was the only real gain from the government’s alliance with the Cinquestelle, that is, if it were thanks to Zingaretti and his companions, or rather a fortuitous occasion from the narrow path that Europe was on, the The cast with which the government is preparing to manage it will soon transform it into the most sensational of their own goals. Not only because, as Tito Boeri and Sergio Rizzo wrote about the Republic, the plan to use the 208 billion of Brussels is a juxtaposition of projects of individual ministries, often duplicated due to a lack of vision and coordination. But why is the idea of using a single, large loan to finance tax rebates and discounts an irresponsible maneuver that shifts debt between generations, multiplying it.
Preoccupied with hiding the perception of failure behind a narrative that is less and less credible even to itself, the Democratic Party has renounced courage in the face of a referendum that has enormous symbolic value. Because it can close a long and dark season, which has humiliated Italian democracy beyond its own demerits, or rather duplicate it in a compulsion to repeat. And faced with the likely outcome of a vote that threatens to breathe the worst trumpets in our Republican history, the Democrats’ “yes” divisions sound like a feeling of shame. What from tomorrow could be a disorder for many.
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