Massimiliano Cencelli died in Rome yesterday afternoon. He was 90. A Christian Democrat official in the 1960s, he became famous for the manual that took his surname, the "Manuale Cencelli."

A journalistic expression referring to the assignment of political and government roles to representatives of various parties or factions in proportion to their weight. A "manual" that has also entered political parlance. Even today, decades later, it is cited even in university textbooks, especially when assignments, ministries, presidencies, or responsibilities must be distributed while respecting different balances and weights.

The former DC official himself revealed how it came about in an interview with Avvenire in 2003: "In 1967, Sarti, along with Cossiga and Taviani, founded the 'bridge-building' faction at the Milan congress," he recalled, "so called because it was intended to act as a bridge between the majority and the left. We obtained 12%, and the board positions had to be decided. So I proposed: if we have 12%, just as on a company's board of directors, positions are divided based on share ownership, the same should be done for party and government positions based on membership cards. Sarti told me to work on it. That way, Taviani kept the Interior Ministry, Gaspari was Undersecretary of the Post Office, Cossiga of Defense, Sarti of Tourism and Entertainment. The matter became public knowledge because during government crises, Sarti, who loved to joke, always replied to journalists who wanted previews: 'Ask Cencelli.'"

(Unioneonline)

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