In short, "never a joy". The preview of the names on the list for the policies of next September 25 is the reflection, and not too faded, of party elitism.

All those who would have "worked for the Party" over the years were awarded. Blessed ingenuity: and we who believed that the various political representatives should lend their work in the exclusive interest of the Italian people since, it is very clear, that very often, if not always, the small interest of "bottega" could collide , and often strongly collides, with the direct and specific interest of the generality of the associates who decide to place their trust in their representatives.

Put simply, the Italian people seem to be excluded , today more than ever, from any mechanism for choosing their representatives in Parliament. This latter circumstance is anything but short-lived, if only one considers the close link that should exist between the potential candidate called to compete and his / her reference territory.

To give a concrete example: what does the candidacy of the former President of the Senate Marcello Pera have to do with the senatorial college of Northern Sardinia? Excellent politician, nothing to complain about, but what is your link with the territory ? Why should the Sardinians vote for it? How has your political action ever affected the problems of the Sardinian people? It is true that the current electoral law represents the alpha and omega of every distortion , even more so if applied to the result of the drastic "cut" in the number of parliamentarians, which has contributed to significantly reduce popular representation by eliminating root the possibility to choose the representatives with at least the preferential vote.

Undoubtedly the potential aspirants to the chair are designated by the leaders of the various parties through pre-packaged "lists" so that the voter who is preparing to cast his vote for a certain party, finds himself forced to choose the name imposed by the 'high whether they like it or not. If this is "democracy" in the truest sense of the term then, perhaps, something is wrong. We have arrived, without even realizing it, at the paradox of paradoxes . Choosing to express one's preference to a certain party rather than to another translates, neither more nor less, with the supine and uncritical acceptance of the candidate indicated in the pre-compilation of the list to be, that same candidate, direct expression and immediate of the leader of the moment. If we paused “to vivisect the fly”, translating the meaning of the reflections just proposed into a practical deduction, we would have to come to a bitter conclusion. That for which the vote of each of us would count for little or nothing in the context of the laborious mechanisms that seem to govern access to the Italian Parliament: the vote would seem to have become the "means" that "justify the end".

Yet "democracy" is an essential achievement and it cannot, and should never be taken for granted only because it is managed, at least in appearance (the benefit of the doubt must never be denied), from above. The " vote ", in and of itself considered, represents an essential manifestation of freedom , despite everything. And asserting "democracy" translates into the exercise of the right to vote, which must nevertheless be full and unconditional and never preordained through pre-packaged choices.

The electoral campaign is coming to life, but it fails, and probably will not even be able along the way, to express itself effectively due to the "boumerang" effect that risks overwhelming it: that is the specific effect of the bitter "aftertaste" of the failure to share choices . What has been lacking is the "democratization" of the decision-making process that could have guaranteed equal opportunities in accessing public offices and, above all, impartiality as the independence of the potential candidate with respect to merely "partial" interests. In other words: it would have been good and right to reassure the people of the electorate regarding the safeguarding of democratic principles even within individual parties, in order to eliminate the danger of the predominance of the oligarchies within them.

To be clear: considering the mechanisms of the "Rosatellum", considering the "cut in the number of parliamentarians", it would not have been more appropriate , not to say, more "democratic", to proceed with the choice of potential candidates who had put forward their own application through the " draw " system? What other system, if not that of the "draw", would have been able to guarantee alternation in access to public offices? I am not saying absolutely, but at least under the conditions given in the contingent context of direct and immediate reference. Because, let's face it all: if the office of the outgoing parliamentarians, roughly all reconfirmed for the polls on 25 September, are the same ones who would have already "failed" (allow the expression for argumentative purposes only) and whose political choices would have determined President Sergio Mattarella to impose the figure of Mario Draghi, what better could they offer the country in just under a month?

I realize that we are far from the Athens of Pericles, but every now and then, "mutatis mutandis", it may be useful to obtain some valuable teaching from classical antiquity .

We are going through, on the institutional level, the period of maximum popular disaffection towards the regulatory mechanisms of the party system and inevitably, the process of setting up the political bodies cannot but remain involved. We are in the midst of a crisis of legitimacy and legitimacy, and it is certainly not ignoring the problem that those who are called to govern may think they are doing so effectively. The day after September 25, whoever succeeds in prevailing will be called upon to offer concrete answers to a country on its knees . This at the end of the fair is the problem that will have to find its prompt solution. Beyond the propaganda, who will go to govern, will be in a position to find a formula useful for the concrete interest of their people? Or will we find ourselves, even tomorrow, complaining about the political work of the newly elected elected? The premises do not seem to be rosy : the gap between citizenship and institutions continues to grow . And it cannot simply be traced back to an indifferent protest attitude to the detriment of an inconsistent political class. It is now being cried out from many quarters: it is a matter of a lack of motivated and conscious trust towards the institutions and the highest systems nourished by the most disadvantaged and weaker social classes who, inevitably, remain excluded from any participatory mechanism.

Continuing at this rate, we will not be surprised if the dominant datum of the next electoral round will be abstentionism as an expression of extreme protest towards the "privatization" of democratic mechanisms. "Time will tell".

Giuseppina Di Salvatore - Lawyer, Nuoro

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