After a lost Christmas in our lives, a lost Christmas, we are approaching a year of doubts. On the health front, the vaccine rush was accompanied by the discovery of the mutated virus that takes us back a few hours exactly for one year: Twelve months ago, news of infection was coming from China worried, and today Great Britain is isolated. On the economic front, the unknown is the recovery of 2021 after the big crash of the year that ended. To the global uncertainty, Italy is adding a creeping government crisis that is the sum of two vulnerabilities. The weakness of the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and the weakness of the majority parties, the Democratic Party, Movimento 5 Stelle, Italia Viva, whose leaders Nicolas Zingaretti, Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Renzi want to declare the season of this government to be over for various reasons, but they have no strategy for what then. The only defender of the Granite coalition is Roberto Speranza’s petite party which is building up in appearance and power inversely proportional to consensus.

On Christmas Eve, Renzi threatened the exit of his ministers, Teresa Bellanova and Elena Bonetti, from the government. Matteo Salvini’s model seems to have accelerated at Papeete in the summer of 2019, but Salvini wanted to go to the vote and was naive to believe that asking for it was enough to get it, Renzi on the contrary wants to keep the legislature going and he is not naive. He aims to be the hero of the stage leading to the election of the President of the Republic, with only twelve months and a few weeks remaining until the term of Sergio Mattarella ends. Zingaretti would like to go and vote immediately, says Minister Dario Franceschini, (almost) an invisible director of the canvas that led to the birth of Conte’s owed government, in public as well. But they know that with this electoral law, the Rosatellum, that means surrender, in the selection of candidates, to a delightful little war machine, with Di Maio and again, Renzi. Then the country is on the right.

Three months ago we voted in the constitutional referendum to reduce the number of MPs: Yes and Amen, the House won 400 deputies and the Senate 200. Zingaretti agreed to support the reduction required by the M5S based on government agreements, and he reassured that in return he got a new electoral law and some constitutional changes: the right To vote in the Senate for the age of eighteen, as for the House, the age for the election of senators, at 25, the same as the Representatives. They were presented to center-left voters as indispensable conditions, but nothing has happened since. Thus, if we vote today, the electoral law will force parties to ally themselves in single-member constituencies. In 2018, the right filled colleges in the North, but in the Mid-South, the 5-Star Movement ranked first almost everywhere. Today, if both the Democratic Party and the M5S (as well as left Speranza-Fratoianni, Renzians of Italia Viva and Action of Calenda) went themselves, they would be handed over to a united center-right (Lega, Fratelli d’Italia, Forza Italia plus a few Other Small Groups) almost all Southern Colleges. Or the current majority parties that have just been shattered in a disastrous government crisis at the height of the pandemic emergency, must then meet to select one candidate per college who takes the votes of the democratic electorate, grillini and renziani. The same parties, then, in Rome are unable to find a common Capitol candidate for the pure (judicial) Virginia Raggi opposition.

Chaos. The matter became more serious due to the impossibility of choosing parliamentarians: yet another promise broken by proponents of Yes! Party leaders lied, first and foremost to Luigi Di Maio, and the daily journalists who supported cutting the parliamentarians to the electorate: future elected officials will be less, less reliable and more blackmailed by a handful of half of the leaders who will be appointed one by one. Gone are the debate over the parliament of the candidates and the first shows that were not elected by the people (was it called Conte?). He was joking.

Another missing amendment to the constitution, which appears to be formal but substantial: the number of delegates appointed by regions who vote for the president. According to the current Article 83 of the constitution, there are three for each region and one for the Aosta Valley: 58 in total. If the new parliament were to vote, they would be around ten percent of the constituency, and 58 to 600 deputies would be added, critical weight. But even in the current parliament, which still has 945 members between lawmakers and senators, with a center-right majority in fifteen out of twenty districts, it could make a difference.

This is why early elections are an empty weapon. But also the government crisis, as Renzi dreams of. Mario Draghi is a reserve not to be exploited, and he draws him into everyday controversy. Like the physicist Roberto Singolani, he quotes Renzi in a letter to Conte, author of the State Digitization Project, delivered to the government already at the end of the summer. They are names that do not belong to anyone, a legacy that must be protected, and cannot be used to cover the absence of strategy and riots in tactics.
What remains of the competing threats is the need for a new way of governing, if not a new government. The recovery and resilience plan, the spending of European resources on reconstruction after the outbreak of the Coronavirus, deserves the commitment of a political generation: as was the Marshall Plan after the war or the race to join the euro in 1996-1998 which saw the heroes as a Prime Minister legitimized by the vote of the electorate, The founder of the olive tree, Romano Prodi, and the Minister of Economy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, are heading to Quirinale, whose centenary we have just mentioned: a statesman. “ Compared to the plan presented by France, which lists, one by one, goals, available funds, responsible administrative authorities and the day of project delivery, our plan is very exciting in setting general and necessary goals and Brody (Il Messaggero, December 20) has denounced the reforms, to what extent not Still indeterminate in defining individual projects, with costs, times, methods, and managers to implement them, ”mocking using the word flexibility in the plan:“ Zanichelli’s authoritative dictionary defines it: “the ability of a material to withstand sudden shocks without breaking.” Could this be the reason for choosing the government Does this title have this specificity, and in this case, very auspicious? ».

A new government agreement, or new government, should start with rewriting the plan with various economic measures (nine billion for healthcare is a joke) and innovative projects (Singolani plan). In the logic indicated by Draghi in the G30 document: Debt is sustainable if it is aimed at growth. In this phase, spending initiatives will be evaluated. About this plan and the political generation that will fail or succeed: Paulo Gentiloni, Roberto Gualtieri, Enzo Amendola, whom Conte knows well. The second element of a new government agreement is to deal with the social emergency in the coming weeks: From refreshment to recovery, the country is no longer breathing. You need to rebuild the relationship with SMEs, employees and VAT numbers. And the weak who didn’t even see the refreshment.

The third point is preparing for the first major political event in 2021, the entry into office of the new US administration led by Democrat Joe Biden. A decisive change of course, also for Italy, is increasingly irrelevant in the Mediterranean, as evidenced by the ugly figures made on fishermen prisoners in Libya and Egypt regarding the request for truth and justice for Gio Regeni and the liberation of Patrick Zaki, which have been ignored. Conte and de Mayo, alone, applauded, discrediting an international reputation.

If all this is done, the space for political agreement will remain: administrative elections, the election of the President of the Republic, a new electoral law, the end of the Legislative Council. Otherwise, this slow-motion struggle based on comfort (sticking to Conti to build a nomination for Quirinale, for example) is just incubation for a new adventure, when he returns to vote. This was the case in 1992, when Café (Craxi Andreotti Forlani) was intended to divide institutional offices. The problems were known, even entering into the Maastricht Treaty of Italy was a great opportunity, but the rulers of that time did not know how to seize them, and they were eliminated. There is no time left. The government is in tension with the European Central Bank (which sent an extremely draconian letter about the cashback). It lost its role in the Mediterranean. He’s late for the recovery plan.That’s the 2021 political dilemma: Either we use the time to build a new ruling class, and also rely on resource expertise now far from positions of power, from Brody to Draghi, or we continue sailing on the horizon, against the inevitable iceberg.

In the recovery and resilience plan there is a chapter on gender equality. It is the side that takes us so far away from the rest of Europe and the West. For the federation, 2020 was (again) the year of Angela Merkel. A model of political leadership, flexible and decisive, strict in imposing closure measures but sympathetic in its delivery to his country: the opposite of the Italian way, failing in its judgments and far from the suffering of citizens. For the United States, 2021 will be the year of Kamala Harris, the first woman to reach a “heartbeat” as Biden’s running mate, but not only. In the new administration, there are women Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the CIA director of intelligence, Avril Heinz, Home Secretary Deb Haaland, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and the entire communications staff. Women with a strong political record. In Italy, it is only natural that a founding figure like Roberta Pinotti would get the delicate delegation to the secret services after she was defense minister for four years. But it is not.

This is why we are dedicating the first issue of the New Year to the power of womenMichela Morgia talks about: The need for women at the head of the state, parties, administrations, companies, and cultural institutions are called to the highest levels of responsibility not in the representation of men, but in terms of merit and ability. We do this by talking about women who have been trampled on in Ethiopia (Giuseppe Catozzella) and in our cities, but also about women with global influence such as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern (Roberto Brunelli) and a new generation of artists and cartoonists voicing a new female heroine (Jaya) Manzini). Francesca Manucci takes us among the refugees on the border between Bosnia and Croatia. Gloria Riva is among the expats and Italians outside the national territory who would like to return.

It all started with a ship in Civitavecchia. Then Codogno, Nembro, Bergamo, Jesolo and Milan. In the diary of an Italy correspondent in the red. Each has its own border line

The year 2020 was opened by three researchers from Spallanzani Hospital who had isolated the Covid strain for the first time. For two weeks they were praised and then forgotten by the media. I would like to call them again by name: Maria Rosa Capobianchi, Consita Castelletti, Francesca Colavita.
Elena Testi, a young reporter, remembers the year ending for espresso: from Civitavecchia, where a ship docked in January with a suspected case of coronavirus and appeared to be an exception, to Codogno in Bergamo, Milan. A year lived on the front lines, with the fragile and essential tool of journalism, to tell stories of resisting evil and renaming people. Like Tonina, the unknown doorman from Milan who brought pasta to the oven. His heart stopped, but his memory did not stop.

Notice. In 2020, we are also left with three Italian thinkers: Franco Cordero, the jurist who invented Caimano’s definition of Berlusconi in the pages of Repubblica, Italian Marco Santagata, Dante’s lover and Petrarcha, and Jesuit Father Bartolomeo Sorge, a teacher of politics and spirituality. We will not forget them.