What will you remember about Giorgio Napolitano, President of the Republic?
The Napolitano presidency seen by Francesco Damato
If Massimo D'Alema was the first and so far only leader from the PCI to lead a government in Italy, even presiding over two in just a year and a half, Giorgio Napolitano was the first and only one to rise even higher , at the Quirinale. But before that he had been Minister of the Interior at the Interior Ministry: another position that seemed impossible for a politician of his origin.
“KING GEORGE”
At the Quirinale as President of the Republic he quickly earned, for the energy he put into the exercise of his functions, the more cordial than critical nickname of "King George". And he remained there not for seven years, as long as the mandate of the head of state lasts, but nine, having been confirmed almost plebiscitarily upon expiry, in 2013, with 738 votes out of 1007 among senators, deputies and regional delegates. The first time the votes in favor were 543.
The re-elected president would have remained for the entire second term, until 2020, if he had not voluntarily given up after two years due to declared but frankly dubious physical tiredness. I have always had the suspicion that he left due to a mixture of disappointment and concern caused by the somewhat hasty methods, so to speak, with which Matteo Renzi, whom he appointed Prime Minister in 2014, led the government and the Democratic Party together, where the remains of the PCI, the Christian Democratic left and environmentalist and liberal bushes had converged. Precisely because of those hasty methods, flaunted by presenting themselves to the Senate with their hands in their pockets and the announcement that what they were asking for would be that assembly's last confidence in a government, the constitutional reform that even the head of state cared about so much would be was rejected in a referendum improvidently transformed by the Prime Minister into a plebiscite on himself. But at that point, due to – I repeat – declared but dubious tiredness, Napolitano had already left the Quirinale, replaced by Sergio Mattarella.
In the nine years of Presidency of the Republic Napolitano had never managed to reach the popularity of the socialist Sandro Pertini, the most left-wing man who preceded him at the top of the State. Furthermore, in the exercise of his functions he had never aimed at popularity, even at the cost of breaches such as those made by Pertini by replacing the government in the settlement of a dispute between air traffic controllers which threatened to paralyze air traffic, as much as he had on order in relations between institutions, even at the cost of causing great disappointment to those who perhaps had placed some reliance on him, not to subvert that order but to gain an advantage in the eternal political struggle.
In the autumn of 2010, for example, the then President of the Chamber Gianfranco Fini sensationally broke the centre-right majority which had also brought him to the top of Montecitorio in exchange for Silvio Berlusconi's return to Palazzo Chigi. A motion of no confidence against the government promoted by Fini, and prepared even in Fini's office, was practically blocked by Napolitano, effectively ordering the Chambers to first clear the field of fulfilling the obligation to approve by the end of the year the state budget. And when the motion was finally put to the vote, Fini lost and Berlusconi won, who in the meantime had wanted and was able to close the ranks of the centre-right.
The crisis came after a year, with the arrival of Mario Monti at Palazzo Chigi, following his nomination as senator for life with Berlusconi's desire to countersign the nomination, but this did not mean that the political situation turned in Fini's favour. . That in the early elections of 2013, despite running again for the Chamber in a surprise formation by Monti, he was unable to return.
No less strong – I believe – was the disappointment caused by Napolitano to his friend and former party colleague Pier Luigi Bersani in 2013, when he took away the role entrusted to him as Prime Minister, demoting him to pre-appointment, to prevent him from forming a government unorthodox, so to speak, for our Constitution: a government defined by Bersani himself with a certain imprudence as "minority and combat". It would have had to earn trust along the way and I don't know what else of the grillini who arrived in Parliament to open it like a can of tuna or sardines.
NAPOLITANO AND THE LEGACY OF EINAUDI
Of communist militancy, having seen in the strong organization of the PCI a decisive condition for the fight against fascism, but of a culturally liberal background, like in some ways the older Giorgio Amendola, it was certainly no coincidence that Napolitano often found himself at the Quirinale to be inspired to the action and the not at all useless sermons of Luigi Einaudi. To which he referred, for example, motivating the sensational appeal to the Constitutional Court against the substantial attempt by the Palermo Prosecutor's Office to involve him in the investigations and trial, by intercepting his telephone, on the alleged negotiation between the State and the mafia during the years of the massacres. Of Einaudi, in particular, Napolitano recalled the warning to his successors to pass on intact the powers of the President of the Republic, threatened by anyone: even by a judiciary whose Superior Council is also constitutionally presided over by the Head of State himself.
THE APPEAL TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT
Napolitano's appeal to the Constitutional Court is generally indicated among the most significant acts of his Presidency with reference to the relationship between politics and justice, or between politics and the judiciary. Without wanting to take anything away from him, for goodness sake, and freeing him from the personal aspect essentially reproached by a critic like the president emeritus of the Consulta Gustavo Zagrebelsky, who imagined the judges of the Court almost intimidated by the initiative of Napolitano who had appointed some of them, I consider it even more significant, on a political and institutional level, are the distances from the judiciary taken by Napolitano when commenting on the Bettino Craxi judicial affair.
This occurred in a public letter to his widow written on the tenth anniversary of the socialist leader's death. In it the President of the Republic and – I repeat – President of the Superior Council of the Judiciary complained about two things of which I frankly don't know which can and should still be considered more serious: the "abrupt change" which occurred in the relationship between justice and politics, and therefore in the balance between powers, with the management of investigations into the illegal and widespread financing of parties and the "unparalleled severity" – also textual – adopted against Craxi. Napolitano also defended him politically in the PCI as a minority leader in years well before the so-called "Clean Hands": for example, at the time of the so-called "national solidarity", contesting the discrimination against socialists that was accepted or – even worse – requested by Enrico Berlinguer to support from the outside, between abstention and regular vote of confidence, a single-party Christian Democrat government: of which the communists were not part but not even the socialists, in fact.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/giorgio-napolitano-presidente-repubblica-ricordo/ on Sat, 23 Sep 2023 06:05:00 +0000.