Ignazio La Russa wants the "Mini Naja" back . Eighteen years after the end of military service, the President of the Senate announces that he has propitiated the presentation at Palazzo Madama of a bill that allows young Italian citizens to spend forty days in the army: as many as, at the time of compulsory military service, there were those devoted to the very first military and formal education of recruits .
And he launches the proposal in Milan, on the occasion of the day for the commemoration of the Alpini and of all the soldiers who died in war and in peace for the country.
La Russa's proposal, which triggers negative comments in the center-left, aims to relaunch an institution that formally already exists: law 122 of 2010, approved when he was the defense minister, provided for the three-year period 2010-2012 experimental organization of training courses of a theoretical-practical nature in the departments of the Armed Forces, for no more than three weeks , to provide basic knowledge on the constitutional duty to defend the homeland and the priority activities of the Armed Forces.
That mini naja, says La Russa, was no longer financed. Hence his initiative to lengthen it and provide incentives to push young volunteers to do it. "We believe - he maintains - that to meet the requests received from the armed forces and above all from the Alpini, it is right to make a law that voluntarily allows those who wish to spend not three weeks but 40 days of training in the armed forces ".
For those who decide to take advantage of this possibility, there will be incentives such as " points for high school diploma and graduation and an additional score for all public competitions" . But of course - he observes - the real incentive remains the will to help one's homeland even with a short period».
La Russa's proposal immediately garners the consent of the National Alpine Association, but not that of the opposition. Alessandro Zan of the Pd accuses: « After two months of incongruous sentences, today La Russa confirms that he is inappropriate and incompatible as President of the Senate. It is serious that the second office of the state, super partes by definition, prepares bills that divide Parliament and the country ».
