ROME. Look forward, not back. In the future, not in the past. With confidence, without nostalgia. In his end-of-year message Sergio Mattarella strikes the nail of the modernity we will all have to deal with, including politics. The invitation is to “stay within our time” by learning to “read the present with the eyes of tomorrow”. Securing the planet, equipping ourselves for the digital revolution, tackling today’s problems with a view to tomorrow, giving answers in the interest of the youngest. Between the lines of the speech – about fifteen minutes, delivered standing up in the neoclassical Palazzina del Quirinale – there is an indirect reference to those who would like to turn back the clock of history; to find some examples in the chronicles just sink your hands into it.
Mattarella: “This was the year of a crazy war, it’s time to reaffirm the civilization of rights. The Republic is in the civic sense of those who pay taxes”. The appeal to young people against street deaths: “Don’t cancel your future”
War and pandemic. Peace and work. Poverty to be fought and the National Health Service to be strengthened. Not a single word of “politician” politics. Mattarella limits himself to noting, with obvious satisfaction, that democracy has proved to be up to the challenges and the Constitution, whose seventy-fifth anniversary will occur in 2023, is anything but a scrap. Despite the difficulties of the last 12 months, culminating in the dissolution of the Chambers and in the elections in the autumn, Italy has stood the test brilliantly. «The clear electoral result allowed the rapid birth of the new government led, for the first time, by a woman. This is a novelty of great social and cultural significance”, the president welcomes, «which had been mature in our country for some time, has now become a reality». But there is more to be proud of.
Mattarella’s speech, Meloni calls the President and thanks him: “Encouragement to govern responsibly is important”
In the space of a few years, the head of state points out, “almost all the political forces present in Parliament have taken turns in the government”. And these forces have gradually confronted the concrete reality of the problems, which represents the most effective antidote against the flight forward of demagoguery and populism. Hence the hope, if one prefers the call addressed to the majority and the opposition: each for their part should honor their role and respect the rules of the game without delegitimizing each other. In the interest of the Republic, «our homeland».