Between past and future
It’s not often that Mattarella addresses the UN. In times of war, the best are required to make an extra effort to try to sensitize and direct the international community, and the President of the Republic tried to do just that in his historic mission to New York earlier this week. Mattarella’s interventions at the United Nations, at the forum for Sustainable Development, and at the subsequent General Assembly, were aimed precisely at this: emphasizing the need to strengthen the role and effectiveness of the UN, also to make progress in the peace process. Naturally, the heartfelt plea to “find and build roads to peace,” from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, certainly does not mean that the Quirinale is loosening its support for Ukraine or weakening the exact perception of who the aggressor and the aggressed are. But the disorderly race to armament is not the right path for the president, who has always advocated for a rethink of European defense. An organic and structured vision quite different from the mad and expensive national arms races.
The President’s attention has also been focused on the path towards more sustainable development. The damages of war, of blind and irrational rearmament, are “dramatically slowing down” the international agenda on combating climate change: the proliferation of tragic conflicts “distracts from prioritizing” climate change, despite “the intensification of negative effects,” he explained. The consequences are disastrous: “At present, only a very modest percentage of the objectives of the 2030 Agenda would be achievable within the given timeframe,” notes the president. Yet, despite the wars, “a decisive acceleration towards achieving our common objectives appears indispensable.”
The political week was also marked by the start of the parliamentary process of the bill on the Premierate from the Senate for the first reading. During the session, the preliminary issues of unconstitutionality, presented by the opposition, were examined and rejected by the majority. The vote on amendments is expected to be lengthy, with three thousand articles submitted by the opposition. The reform has opened a strong division among political forces, but Giorgia Meloni is aware that the Premierate needs consensus even, perhaps primarily, among the popular base and the educated class. For this reason, on the day the reform entered Parliament, the leader of FdI promoted a conference at the Chamber titled “The Constitution of all – dialogue on the Premierate,” involving the De Gasperi Foundation and the Craxi Foundation in the organization, allowing University professors and politicians of renowned curriculum to argue about the text, pose problems, and solutions. Giorgia Meloni intervened in conclusion, reaffirming the firm conviction to move forward because the objective is greater governability that prevents the return of technical governments, provides stability, and more time for executives to implement their program. And she specified that this reform can also be useful for those who come after, because it is not made solely for the benefit of the current government: “I think that democracy must be exercised through politics, I think that when politics is weak and other powers think they can call the shots, they don’t always act in the interest of citizens because unlike politics they are not judged by citizens. Today Italy is perceived as one of the most stable nations in the landscape, people have confidence to invest here because we are stable. Measures and the government’s posture matter, but above all stability matters”.
But in addition to the future, these days, the past has also been evoked. A past made of dramas, fears, and nightmares that resurface in memory. Thursday, May 9, marked the Anniversary of the discovery of Aldo Moro’s lifeless body. And a new Inquiry Committee has been announced to shed light on this crime. It will not only be a Moro III Committee, explained the president of the Chamber’s Culture Commission, Federico Mollicone, because “if we really want to understand what happened with the kidnapping and killing of Moro, we must rewind the tape and go back to the post-war period to understand that Italy was not only the scene of massacres but the European chessboard of the Cold War between Eastern and Western forces”. The Committee, which will be unicameral to ensure leaner work, has already been established at the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the Chamber and must be called to the Chamber to come into effect as early as next autumn.
