Even in Enna, on Tuesday afternoon in the Urban Center room, the public debate began to focus on the premiership, autonomy regional differentiation and justice, three issues capable of influencing the future. A conference with a high institutional political profile, with interventions of intense democratic passion, with the aim of launching a mass mobilization to counter attacks on the Constitution defined as “the most unimplemented in the world”. The event was attended by prof. Francesco Pallante, constitutionalist of the University of Turin, and Cinzia Sciuto, co-director of “Micromega”.
Also at the table were the secretary of the CGIL, Antonio Malaguarnera, the president of the Anpi, Renzo Pintus, and the president of the Fuori dal Coro association, Sandro Immordino.
“Our Constitution derives from the anti-fascist resistance – said Sciuto – even if the word “anti-fascism” never appears. And there isn’t because every word, every comma, every line is the exact opposite of what fascism was in this country.”
A real cry of alarm instead came from the prof. Disappointing for the tampering and emptying of the Charter that regulates our society. “What is happening is perhaps the most dangerous situation since the post-war period – he stated –. The political forces are struggling to fully carry out their role and the union and the ANPI, at this moment, are acting as substitutes and have taken on the responsibility, as constitutional bodies, of a fundamental complex function”.
He then explained how the premiership issue “if it were truly approved, would radically change our Constitution”. “What we have had up to now would end – she said – and we would enter a new dimension. If today we go to vote to elect parliament, the government is born as a consequence of the parliamentary vote. With the reform the aim is to completely overturn the current constitutional principle and the parliament will then be composed on the basis of the direct vote of the head of government. Therefore, the parliamentary vote becomes an indirect vote because what will be decisive is the choice of the leader. At that point, the parties that support him will have 55 or 54 percent of parliamentarians, or in any case the absolute majority, and the others will have to make do with what is left. What we want to do is reduce democracy to the choice of the leader once every 5 years. The problem today – he commented – is that not only is political dialectic with the opposition no longer tolerated, but it is not even tolerated that the majority can say something different from its leader. And therefore the majority can only vote for what the prime minister wants because otherwise the government falls. And if parliament had any desire to express different positions, it could not do so because the president who was directly elected by the citizens has the power to tell the President of the Republic to dissolve the chambers, thus reducing his role to a real paper pusher.” .
The other shock, according to Pallante, is also the differentiated regional autonomy which puts at risk those “constitutional principles which are such if they are guaranteed equally to all”. “If someone has more – he explained – and someone has less, the one who has more is not entitled to the privilege. If there are true constitutional rights there must be equality otherwise there are privileges, advantages for some and disadvantages for others”. “The problem instead – continued Pallante – is to implement the Constitution, to bring rights even where they don’t exist. A calculation has been made that if we wanted to bring the levels of implementation of rights in all regions, particularly in the south, to bring them to the level of the north we would have to spend 100 billion euros every year in the south alone. All this would obviously require a major rethinking of tax policies, investments, infrastructure, equalization between regions which would obviously be the opposite of what the three richest regions of the country want, including one governed by the Democratic Party, Emilia Romagna, who want to collect taxes for internal use. This is the destruction of the idea of national solidarity, of the equality of all Italian citizens.”
Giacomo Lisacchi
