editorial
noon, 6 August 2021 – 08:41
from Enzo d’Errico
«Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? ” How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience? I’m sorry to bother Marco Tullio Cicerone for such crude events but his words bounced back to my mind as soon as Vincenzo De Luca announced that, within the year, he will create the regulatory conditions for obtaining a third term. And then who knows, a fourth, a fifth and a sixth, where only the first name will change while the surname will remain the same, as happens in any hereditary monarchy. No surprise, mind you: for days the Corriere del Mezzogiornohe had sniffed the air and asked three eminent constitutionalists (including Professor Pietro Ciarlo, author of the statute of our Region) for an opinion. I do not want to bore you with technical-constitutional issues, let’s say that basically they all said the same thing: in theory it could not do it but the legislation is so confused that, in the end, it will find a hole in which to slip. Zaia, Errani and Formigoni have already succeeded, let alone someone who is naturally allergic to the rules, controls and, sometimes, to the laws of a state which, moreover, in his opinion, does not exist. You will understand for yourself that trying to discuss with De Luca on the advisability of such a choice is equivalent to having an interview with the walls of the house. Even worse, because you can ask a question to the walls, not even that to De Luca, since he has for some time escaped forms of authentic (and not servile) contradiction. Only celebrations, childish vanity rites and provincial culture are allowed during which this or that (presumed) primacy achieved by Campania thanks to the divine Vincenzo is officiated. His is an autistic power, enclosed in himself and ready to interpret as a signal of danger any behavior extraneous to a routine marked by reassuring stereotypes. Will we have to live with this model of government for another five, ten, fifteen years? We’ll see. Giovanni Falcone argued that “the mafia is a human phenomenon and like all human phenomena it has a beginning, its evolution and therefore will also have an end”. Here obviously, as well as things and people who have nothing to share with the mafia, we are talking about much more circumscribed events: do we want to discourage ourselves, then, for a third term?
De Luca will pass sooner or later. Perhaps sooner rather than later, given that so far he has ruled in the pneumatic vacuum and that from next autumn, instead, he will have to contend with a real mayor, chiunque it is, including “his” candidate Gaetano Manfredi who certainly will not accept to play the puppet of Palazzo Santa Lucia and already today, in compiling the lists, undermines the leadership of the Neapolitan center-left. The era of electoral good fortune, the 70 percent bubble inflated by the Covid emergency, now seems to be behind us. De Luca also knows – of whom everything can be said except that he does not know politics – and this pushes him to continually raise the bar, to insult General Figliuolo (and consequently Draghi who appointed him) or the minister on duty. , to invent a microcosm where if something goes well it is his own merit and if something goes wrong it is the fault of the others, to praise an autarchic Mezzogiorno with neo-Bourbon accents, ready to free himself from the oppression of phantom “foreigners” (as if United Europe did not exist and we were still living in the Risorgimento) which would prevent local virtues from taking off. In short, in short, the same old ammuina destined to hide reality. This is why, more than the eventual re-election of De Luca, the political, institutional and cultural framework that makes this plan plausible disturbs.
Most of the so-called governors, let loose by Giuseppe Conte’s Giallorossi government, exploited the Covid emergency to deconstruct the already shaky Italian regionalism and transform themselves into as many viceroys whose power is substantially devoid of counterweights. And in some cases, see under De Luca, it even stands as an alternative to the central state. The party crisis, then, has added fuel to autocratic temptations. The political organizations, now evanescent, have been forced to make a tacit pact with the “lords” of the territories: we turn our gaze to your excesses, you guarantee us electoral consent. This explains, for example, the stubborn silence of the national Democratic Party even when the Campania president thunders against the leaders of his party or throws hot accusations against the government supported by the Democrats themselves. This ethical and civil degradation has dramatically highlighted the bad texture of the southern ruling classes, formed in the shadow of consociativism and transformism. It will not be a coincidence if innovation, in our latitudes, is frightening as a threat. The entry of modernity, in fact, endangers the ancient balances cemented between the interests of the notabilato citizen – because it is risky to speak of the bourgeoisie here – and the miseries of the political class, an alliance signed in the name of mutual self-preservation. The confirmation of this is in the casual use that the Campania Region makes of public money, presented as a private donation precisely because it is used as an instrument of electoral consensus and consolidation of assets rather than as a development engine.
Observe what happens in culture, a decisive sector, where events of all kinds are jumbled together without a shred of strategic vision. The problem is that quality sprouts slowly, quantity, on the contrary, immediately produces fruits: appointments to friends, return receipt for the funds granted right and left, funding of small and large lobbies disguised as associations and foundations. In short, quantity generates votes. The third term, if it ever comes, will be nothing more than the natural sum of these addenda. Gaber was right when he spoke of Berlusconi: I’m not afraid of De Luca himself, but the De Luca that is in us. Because the satraps one day vanish while the courtiers remain. Ready to cheer the new winner.
August 6, 2021 | 08:41
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