“A vertigo on the anniversary of the march on Rome” – Corriere.it

“I address a warm greeting to the President of the Republic, to this hall and I address a thought to Pope Francis”. Liliana Segre thus opened the 19th legislature as provisional president of the Senate. He then read a message from the president emeritus of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano, to whom he addressed “best wishes in the hope of being able to see him soon re-established in the Senate”.

Below is the speech delivered at Palazzo Madama.

On all of us in these weeks, thechilling atmosphere for war returned to our Europe, with all its load of death, destruction, cruelty, terror in an endless madness. I join in Mattarella’s words: peace is urgent and necessarythe way to rebuild it passes through the pursuit of truth, international law, and the freedom of the Ukrainian people.

Today I am particularly excited in front of the role that fate reserves for me on this day. In this month of October in which the centenary of the march on Rome that started the fascist dictatorship, it is up to me to temporarily assume the presidency of this temple of democracy which is the Senate of the Republic.

The symbolic value of this casual circumstance is amplified in my mind because you see, in my day school started in October and it is impossible for me not to feel a kind of dizziness remembering that same little girl who on a day like this in 1938, disconsolate and lost, she was forced by racist laws to leave her elementary school desk empty. And that today, by a strange fate, is even on the most prestigious bench in the Senate.

The Senate in the 19th legislature is a profoundly renewed institution, not only because for the first time even 18-year-olds were able to vote for the first time, but because the numbers are different. Belonging to such a rarefied forum cannot fail to increase in us awareness of our responsibility. Staying here does not mean doing our duty, with discipline and honor; we will also have to allow ourselves to leave out of this assembly the shouted politics that has so much increased the disaffection in voting, interpreting the high and noble politics. Be sincerely listening, with kindness and meekness.

The elections of 25 September saw how right it should be one lively competition between forces who presented alternative programs and opposing visions. The people have decided, it is the essence of democracy. The majority has the right duty to govern, minorities to oppose. Common to all is the imperative to preserve the Republic and its institutions, which belong to everyone, are not owned by anyone. The great mature democracies prove to be such if, above the party expressions, they know how to find themselves united in an essential nucleus of shared values, respected institutions, recognized emblems.

In Italy the main anchorage is the Republican constitution which, as he said Piero Calamandreiit is not a piece of paper, but the testament of 100,000 dead fallen in the long struggle for freedom, which did not begin in September 1943 but which he saw as leader Giacomo Matteotti.

The Italian people have always felt her friend, and have always defended her, because they felt defended by her. Of course, everything is perfectible, and even the Constitution can be amended, but allow me to observe that if the energies that have been spent for decades to correct the Constitution had been spent on implementing it, ours would be a more just and even happier country..

The thought inevitably runs to article 3, in the classrooms the constituent fathers and mothers did not limit themselves to ban discrimination based on sex, social and political conditions. They also wanted to leave the task to the whole Republic: to remove the economic and social obstacles that limit the participation of all in the political, economic and social organization of the country.

Not poetry, it is not philosophy. Although we have different programs to pursue it, the task is this: to remove obstacles.

Great nations also recognize each other around civil holidays. Why shouldn’t that be the case for us too? Why should they be experienced as divisive dates, rather than with an authentic republican spirit 25 April Liberation Day, May 1, Labor Day, June 2, Republic Day. Even the full sharing of national holidays, of the dates that mark a pact between generations, between memory and the future, could be great the value of the example.

Another issue on which it is desirable to overcome any political barrier is that of L
octa against the spread of the language of hatredagainst the barbarization of the public debate.

I conclude with two wishes.

I hope that the new legislature will keep the prestige of the Senate high, protect the prerogatives. For a long time, the mortification of the role of the legislative power due to the abuse of urgent decree has been complained of. But in my naivety as a mother of a family, I believe that it is necessary to stop the long series of errors of the past, and it would be enough for the majority to remember what they denounced when they were a minority, and for the minority to do the same. A healthy and loyal institutional collaborationwithout detracting from the physiological distinction of roles, would allow most of the legislative activity to be brought back to its natural bed, while at the same time guaranteeing certain times for voting.

Finally, I hope that the whole Parliament will be able to put in place an extraordinary and very urgent commitment in collaboration with the government to respond to the cry of pain that comes from families and businesses that are fighting against the costs of inflation, who see a dark future, which fear that inequalities and injustices expand rather than shrink. In this sense we will always have the European Union by our side, with the solidarity of which it has shown itself capable in recent years. There is not a moment to lose: the message must come from democratic institutions that no one will be left alone before fear and anger can reach warning levels and overflow.

Senators and senators, dear colleagues, good job.