Reading the news of recent days, which tell how the Modenese Democratic Party is building the list of candidates, a question arises spontaneously: but how, the rampant youth of the party has learned nothing from the January lesson and is starting again with the old liturgies, updated by a further dose of personalism and unscrupulousness? After all, only three months have passed since an embarrassing situation, blocked by the crossed vetoes of a plethora of pretenders to the seat of mayor, was resolved only by calling for help from a savior of the homeland, namely the former regional councilor Massimo Mezzetti, among ‘other not a member of the Democratic Party. A harakiri for the ruling class of forty-year-olds, he said to himself, but also the opportunity to start again on new bases. And in fact, for a while, everyone apparently rallied around the name of Mezzetti (apart from the mayor Gian Carlo Muzzarelli, who had to draft but continues undaunted by his personal race). Then, however, when it comes to assigning seats, a list is emerging from the city secretariat’s hat that many observers define with just one adjective: self-referential. There are those who complain about the lack of involvement of the provincial secretary, while there is a dispute over the exception to the party regulation, which allows a third term in the Council only as an exception: this time, given the number of suitors, it risks becoming the rule.
A deep throat reports that days ago in the municipal secretariat they even thought about taking the big step: going as a delegation to the centre-left candidate for mayor and asking him bluntly which members of the Democratic Party he intends to put on the council if he is elected. With a clear purpose: to free up places for the homemade list of councilor candidates. Just malice, given that the idea was later re-emerged? Maybe, but it doesn’t seem that far-fetched. And it says a lot about the level of lack of understanding of the Mezzetti character, that considering his personal history and the challenge on the role to be played, he will want to do anything except suffer the imposition of a list of names. Of course, politics is the art of the possible. And Mezzetti, like everyone else, will eventually find the right solution by accepting some compromises.
But the important point is another. Once upon a time, at every election, the importance of the so-called civil society was evoked. Well, is it possible, with all personal respect for the candidate councilors in pectore, that the vast area close to the Democratic Party is not able to express today a greater number of new faces coming from the world of professions, voluntary work and associations ? Rhetorical question, one might say. And speaking of rhetoricians, Cicero comes to mind: ‘History – he said – is the teacher of life’. More or less we have all studied it. But who remembers it anymore?
