Split Italy, stop, it’s a clash in Montecitorio

LO Spacca Italia enters Montecitorio and there is an immediate brawl. Shouts, insults, signs, “northernist” slogans printed on the olive green T-shirt flaunted by opening the jacket. With the opposition waving the Tricolor: “Stop, don’t divide the country.” An invitation to put aside our weapons and trash a reform considered by the vast majority of experts, economists and constitutionalists to be “divisive, dangerous and wrong”. A reform born as a bargaining chip to accommodate the secessionist regurgitations of those who thundered against Thieving Rome twenty years ago. The Spacca Italia film is a film already seen at Palazzo Madama and which was broadcast yesterday at Montecitorio. North against South, South against North, a surreal show that not even at the time of the House of Savoy and the plebiscite annexations…

Result: Garibaldian atmospheres, an Italy reflected in the rearview mirror with the rest of the globe immersed in now planetary issues. Even a humiliating spectacle if you consider that everything arises from the need to satisfy the whims of the League (North) in search of lost votes. For some obscure reason, the center-right allies who have always rowed in the opposite direction have decided to give a birthday present to the Northern League, a party that has just blown out 40 candles. All to receive the Premiership in exchange, the other reform that arrived at Palazzo Madama so dear to Giorgia.

The highlight of Montecitorio, we were saying, was when the Lombard MP Simona Bordonali showed the T-shirt with the words “Vento del Nord” written on it and outdid herself when, amid general disbelief, to vindicate the reasons for the Spacca Italia , quoted the secessionist ideologue Gianfranco Miglio, imitated shortly afterwards by his colleague Candiani. Miglio, Bossi’s guru, the sacred text revealing the League’s real intentions, their Bible.

The rest is the story of a forced move, of a race against time to conquer the Holy Grail: to bring Spacca-Italia to Montecitorio by April 29th, i.e. yesterday. Flag to be waved to the Po Valley people before the vote for the European elections. But here’s the rub: the majority agreement does not provide for a vote for now. Only the discussion in the Chamber. At least not before the Premiership has completed the same process. But Giorgia Meloni does not seem to have any intention of poisoning her electoral campaign by signing a measure that is light years away from her political path that began in the MSI, the most centralist and statist party of all which also voted against the special statute regions, let alone granting autonomy for ordinary ones. Ditto for Antonio Tajani who has already given some warnings, earning the Northern League’s criticisms.

What happened yesterday is a preview of what could happen if the clash continues in the next few days. The opposition, albeit at a late stage, put up a fight: during the process it presented around 2,400 amendments, even though only 70 of them were voted on, around 2%, as observed by Simona Bonafè (Pd). For the others the trap was triggered. Not to mention the “dangerous precedent”, that amendment 1/19 presented by the M5S and approved in the Constitutional Affairs commission which would have defused the Northern League measure by slowing it down and sending it back to the Senate. “Stop”, repeated Alfonso Colucci (M5S) because “this provision arrives in the Chamber after illegitimate behavior by this majority”. Filiberto Zaratti (Green and Left Alliance) denounced “the serious shortcomings that have existed in the Commission”, “a serious fact also because we are talking about a provision that changes the nature of our institutions and the Italian State”. “There was no desire – continued Zaratti – to give the necessary time to delve deeper into this matter and the regulation was used to strangle the discussion, so as not to let the citizens know the crime that was being committed: if due to sloppiness the majority loses the votes and then he takes them back by completely changing the college, this is very serious.”

The President of the Chamber Lorenzo Fontana also ended up under accusation for his “Pilatesque” attitude. Few have gone into the merits of the articles of the Calderoli bill. Practical examples are more effective. Anthony Emanuele Barbagallo (Pd) spoke of “a South of the South”, he recalled the state of the internal areas of the South; the thousands of school bus routes cut; emergency rooms taken by storm; the haemorrhage of doctors, the 4 and a half million citizens who have given up on treatment”. Faced with this picture repeatedly represented in the many hearings of experts, “to think – Barbagallo argued – of a transfer of resources, of the so-called fiscal residue to be retained in the territories is madness: only 5% of Sicilian schools have full-time teaching against 95% of the municipality of Monza”.

Stop. Stop, Gilda Sportiello also asked, responding to the Northern League members and those who justify autonomy “by saying that Europe asks us for it”. “In truth, Europe – replied a Neapolitan MP – asks us exactly the opposite, that is, to reduce inequalities”. “Cornacchia”, a shout came from the majority benches addressed to an unspecified opposition deputy. Very high tones, the first effects of a divisive reform. And in the background the description of a desertified South, “regions where, due to landslides, the train still doesn’t arrive”. The hearings dismantled minister Calderoli’s bill point by point, the one who considered Naples “a sewer to be reclaimed”, the minister defined by Professor Gianfranco Viesti, author of numerous writings on differentiated autonomy, “a constitutional illiterate”.

It was Viesti who recently recalled that the Regional Council of Calabria led by President Roberto Occhiuto, a member of Forza Italia, voted on a document which requests a prior investigation for each matter subject to the request. Other governors and center-right politicians have made other choices out of party discipline and are now in great embarrassment. Alessandro Caramiello (M5S) took it out on Giorgia Meloni, “the patriot who is splitting the nation”. And he asked. “to be completely consistent” that at this point “the Italian debt is also regionalised”. Clear provocation. Riccardo Molinari, leader of the League, reiterated it: “This reform is a pillar of the majority”. It therefore does not matter if Parliament is ousted in the State-Regions agreement procedures. If financing of the Lep is foreseen but financial invariance must be respected, which means everything and the opposite of everything. And now? Will they stop? There are those who say that Calderoli is planning a blitz to go to the vote before June 6th and give a gift to the governors of the North. For him nothing is impossible, he is that of the Porcellum.