If it is an alternative form of democracy or, instead, a pure and simple exercise of despotism, history will tell us. And we probably won't have to wait too long either. The hypothesis of a Mario Draghi at the Quirinale, as the "emeritus" successor of Sergio Mattarella, perhaps awarded "by acclamation", and of one of his faithful "collaborators" at Palazzo Chigi, as the privileged interpreter and executor of the "diktats" coming from the new potential "supreme chef" (the use of French is not at all casual unfortunately), would mark in fact and in fact the apotheosis of democratic defeatism and the definitive obscuring of every mechanism of control, regulation and counterweight of the powers of the State.

We are between a rock and a hard place: between the need to safeguard democratic principles both with respect to the innumerable pathologies of the system, and with respect to their very "two-faced" nature and, that (need to mean) to stem, by facing them, the crisis of politics considered in its subjective complex and in the more specifically organizational one. Yet, the "silent assent" on the institutional drift of the country seems to have become the cornerstone of current political action. Mario Draghi, in the few months that passed from the moment of his "forced" (allow me the expression) installation, has become the emblem of the uselessness of Parliament and its numerous representatives. Translated into a nutshell, and leaving aside unnecessary panegyrics, the election of the next Head of State could be flawed both in form and in substance. Meanwhile, because, in terms of form, we find ourselves managing accounts with candidates "indicated" before the vote and who seem to have accepted under the counter, and in advance, to be (Mario Draghi himself, as well as Silvio Berlusconi) only for test the field in advance and agree, perhaps, at a later time, on the respective roles. Therefore, because, on the level of substance, the choice of the Great Electors, and above all of the so-called snipers (more numerous than one can imagine), will inevitably be conditioned by the asphyxiated need to avoid returning to the polls in the near immediate future, with every degenerative consequence with respect to legitimacy in the exercise of preference since, in fact, we will indicate the One, and only the One (the She, in the circumstance, appears useless and illusory considering the lack of women sufficiently representative for the Office), who can continue to guarantee the stability of the current governance structure. Finally, because the hypothesis most renamed by the "de facto semi-presidentialism" with a Drago-Centric thrust even before Political-Berlusconi, constitutes, neither more nor less, than the extreme attempt to steal from the People, who remained Sovereign only on the secular definitional level , the only Power still dangerously exercisable: the vote.

If this does not appear to be a (apparently) artfully contrived subversive attitude, tell me what else it could possibly be. Even if we want to consider everything, we end up returning to the starting axiom: to change everything so that everything remains exactly as it is. There is nothing more to be surprised about. It is only the overt pathological outcome anticipated, in the previous months, by the constant recurrence of certain symptoms indicated below: the fracture in the "fiduciary" relationship with the political figures of immediate reference, rampant abstention, the evanescence in voting choices , the temporal and substantial inconclusiveness of governments, unstable by definition and inconclusive as a consequence.

This appears to be the state of the art at the most critical moment that republican history can remember. Yet on the 3rd day of February of the year 2022, practically the day after tomorrow, Sergio Mattarella will conclude his mandate and does not seem at all willing to endorse the hypothesis of a mandate-bis which, although irrational, would represent the last attempt to rescue what still survives on the level of the democratic direction and the institutional guideline. Certainly, and barring surprises, the new President will have to be elected by Parliament in joint session, reduced in the specific case to evanescent conforming ectoplasm, by secret ballot (so to speak in the specific circumstance where the sentence "I know that you know that he knows "stands as the qualifying motto of the action of the Electors) and a two-thirds majority of the Assembly, with an absolute majority after the third ballot. Nothing quaestio, even if there is so much to say, if, at least, the basic principles underlying the legitimacy of the election were guaranteed.

But do we really need a man of providence, if one really has the courage to talk about providence? Do we really need a President who is a banal expression of center-right or center-left? Will the next President of the Republic necessarily have to be an expression of one or the other coalition, or will he simply have to be a "partium solutus" and express, more appropriately, the interests of the People?

The questions are obviously rhetorical, but I think they condense well the problematic nature of the decision-making process. Especially when you want to pass as truthful and incensurable a deformed narrative that claims to identify Mario Draghi with Charles De Gaulle, "descended from Heaven to Earth" (paraphrase of the famous Dante sonnet of "Vita Nuova") to guarantee national unity, and Silvio Berlusconi as an unpresentable Knight only because he was held a priori as such by a certain policy inclined to act as a moralizing example of a morality still to be defined and evaluated in its objective and general scope.

After all, years ago, Someone said: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone". But this is another story that has remained misunderstood only because it is inconvenient and not very convenient on a practical level. Certainly, the Italian institutional complex, and the politicians on duty, bankrupt by their own admission, must rediscover the courage to become protagonists again, for better or for worse. They must rediscover the courage to archive Mario Draghi and any further hypothesis of a technical government with an undulatory trend, and must rediscover the courage to submit to the judgment of the People, to rediscover the polls as a moment of democratic confrontation and reckoning. The People must return to being seriously Sovereign. No more tactics, no more distorting expedients. It is necessary to proceed step by step, but with decisive and constant gradualness. There is only one categorical imperative: avoid entrusting not only the Quirinale to the hands of a technician foreign to politics, but also the contextual management of the executive, since the crystallization of such an eventuality would constitute a macroscopic violation of the Constitutional principles: we really want a President of the Republic which also exercises the powers of government? We meditate. It would be the paradox of all paradoxes, the definitive "default" of republican democracy and of the parties with the Man Only in Power to be the undisputed and indisputable master. Let us stop, while we still have time, and choose a President of the Constitutionalist Republic, effective guarantor of the national interest against the opportunism of "shop".

Giuseppina Di Salvatore

(Lawyer - Nuoro)

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