With all due respect to those who turn up their noses, decrees after the most serious news events are welcome. Except that if the Quirinale then rewrites them, they are no longer useful…
The chic colleague is outraged. “It is not possible for the government to always act following news cases,” he says. When he goes on TV, the chic colleague devoutly recites the anti-Melonian litany of measures to mock. It begins with the decree on rave parties, which came after the death of a young man at the rave party; then it continues with the Caivano decree, which arrived after the rape of two girls in Caivano; and continues with the decree that limits the use of knives, which arrived after the killing of a young man at school with a knife, which then also included rules to prevent street clashes, as it arrived after the street clashes in Turin. The chic colleague chuckles, saying that the government shouldn’t go after what happens in the country. At which point, not being chic and instead coming from the countryside, I’m starting to have some doubts: but if the government doesn’t have to go after what’s happening in the country, what the hell does it have to go after? What happens on Saturn? On Pluto? On the Ursa Major dwarf galaxy?
We have been complaining for years that those in the Palace are not attentive to what Italians think and feel. Then when there is someone in the Palace who moves taking into account what Italians think and feel, he is immediately attacked. «My lady, how do you do it… It’s demagoguery. It’s populism. You don’t ride the emotional wave of the people.” They say so. And then: «The government intervenes with Switzerland which is doing poorly in the Crans Montana investigations only because the Italians are outraged. The government intervenes after Caivano’s rape only because Italians are outraged. The government intervenes after the clashes in Turin only because Italians are outraged.” And they conclude contemptuously: “But do you think so?” Yes, we think so. It seems to us. It seems so. But in short: what should the government intervene on if not on what outrages Italians? And riding the emotional wave of the people will also be terrible. But isn’t that better than riding the wave of nothingness? Or, worse, the wave of canapés & champagne terraces?
Think about it: the facts that shock the masses are also those that point to obvious problems. Legislative shortcomings, institutional shortcomings, structural weaknesses. The rape of Caivano raised the dramatic problem of abandoned suburbs, the boy stabbed at school raised the dramatic problem of violent young people, the clashes in Turin raised the dramatic problem of antagonists out of control. They are real emergencies, encysted and forgotten in the flesh of the country. And it would be wrong not to try to remove them when they come to light. So, with all due respect to our chic colleagues, it is clear that it is right to intervene following news cases. The problem, rather, is how to intervene.
Unfortunately, this is where the trouble begins. The real ones. In fact, in front of the mountain of news, the Palace normally gives birth to the little mouse. A decree-ino-ino. A little intervention-ino-ino. A small plaster on a wound dripping blood. Just enough to hold a press conference, an announcement on TV, a post on social media. Nothing more. Nothing that really affects what should be resolved. It also happened with the last decree. Enough with the knives, enough with the antagonists, enough with this, enough with the other, it was said. But then the moderators arrived. The fixers. The inevitable mediation of the Quirinale which “rewrites the decrees”. And so the result was a lukewarm broth that is of no use to anything or anyone.
Furthermore, I would like to understand in which Constitution it is written that the President of the Republic can write and rewrite laws and decree laws. It seems to me that ours says something else. But now at the Colle we no longer have a president, we have a “king” of the Republic who plays a leading political role: he refines, corrects, smoothes out, weakens, waters down any government measure. So, in the end, the decisive interventions don’t solve anything, and the Italians get even more furious. I tell this to my chic colleagues who are angry because the government intervenes after a serious news story. Here: the problem is not the news story that happens before the government intervenes. The problem is the news story that happens promptly afterwards. Same as before. Because, unfortunately, nothing has changed.
