Revitalizing democracy – CorrieredelMezzogiorno.it
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editorial
NoonFebruary 19, 2023 – 10:19
The challenge for parties and trade unions
Of Mario Rusciano
The electoral result in the two major Italian regions – Lazio and Lombardy – confirms the polls and forecasts of the day before. The prize for President Meloni and the right-wing, tetragonal and cohesive (at least apparently) coalition is almost obvious. Equally obvious was the defeat of a slow divided and quarrelsome left. However, the very high abstention rate is not taken for granted. About 70% in Lazio and 60% in Lombardy did not vote. And perhaps the biggest abstention of the left that is not there.
If therefore the clear victory of the right is indisputable – with over 50% of the votes in these regions – the crisis of democratic representation is unequivocal: the high abstention is a worrying sign. Not so much to say that, with few voters, the right has won but not swept away, but rather to denounce that at each election there are fewer voters than the previous election. Small consolation that this happens in all Western democracies. The crisis of representation puts democracy and fundamental freedoms at risk. Now it has such a scope as to force political forces to reflect a lot. Indeed we are all called to think about it. First of all, with the government, majority and minority parliamentarians from every political alignment. Carlo Calenda is wrong to say, with considerable superficiality, that the electorate is wrong. Heavy accusation: little argument without going into the reasons for the abstainers’ malaise.
Since the country has been going through a difficult historical phase for some time now, complicated by continuous crises in crucial sectors of coexistence, the disorientation of citizens must be understood. Certainly the many economic-social “priorities” explain the spread of collective depression and political disaffection, especially in those who are worse off: poverty; climate change; ecological transition etc. It also exists for a (let’s call it) “priority precondition”: ignoring which the problems of disorientation and abstentionism are insoluble. The precondition is the enhancement of the “intermediate bodies” – parties and trade unions – which the Constitution considers necessary tools of democracy, devitalized instead by the reality of recent decades. It is undeniable that the state and regional apparatuses need to be reformed to streamline their structures and simplify their functions. But this will only be possible after the revitalization, on the one hand, of the parties and, on the other hand, of the trade unions. That is, of the free aggregations of interests (respectively: political-general and economic-productive), real instruments of effective popular participation in the political and economic life of the Republic.
By making citizens more aware of their rights and duties, participation enhances their protagonism in popular sovereignty: a precondition for any good government (central, local) and for implementing major state reforms.
What measures to adopt then to avoid political disenchantment, father of the abstention from the vote of the majority of citizens? Some are trivial measures to facilitate the exercise of the right and duty to vote, such as remote voting for off-site voters and the unification of consultations (what a folly a perennial electoral campaign with elections, general or partial, at every push!) . But more important are the laws for the promotion and support of parties and trade unions as well as electoral laws (of Parliament and local Assemblies) attentive to popular participation. The current parties are empty boxes with many “generals” (the club leaders), few “soldiers” (the members) and weak ideas. While the trade unions are divided, incapable of a unitary and transparent representation.
After the acclaimed failure of “digital democracy” – a true contradiction in terms – citizens must be able to physically meet in places for discussion, comparison and elaboration of ideas and initiatives. Parties and trade unions – not whatsapp and talk-shows – are the places for the formation of civil conscience, for community building and for the reconciliation of non-corporate interests. Technology is obviously useful as a tool at the service of such places, but it cannot replace the discussion between flesh-and-blood bearers of organized interests, which leads to thoughtful and coherent collective decisions.
It is no coincidence that Sabino Cassese (Corriere della sera, last Wednesday) rightly speaks of the need, 75 years after the advent of the Constitution, to rekindle national constitutional patriotism in order to return to the constituent ideals. Recalling the thoughts of great personalities of the 1900s, protagonists of the constitutional era – Arturo Carlo Jemolo, Piero Calamandrei, Massimo Severo Giannini – Cassese enumerates the strengths and weaknesses of the Charter as well as various non-implemented parts of it. Before reforming the Constitution then, think about implementing the overall design. Vast program, certainly, but democracy costs money and requires the constant participation of the sovereign people in constitutional forms, not continuous electoral appointments, which the people desert because they are only useful to populists.
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February 19, 2023 | 10:19
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