During the 1980s, the PCI and the PSI supported two at least apparently irreconcilable theses. For Botteghe Oscure “the moral question was inclusive of the democratic one”; the morality of the class and of the political subjects, therefore, was conceived as a precondition, as he prayed for the renewal of our democracy. The red carnation turned this perspective upside down: “the democratic question was inclusive of the moral one”. The best response to corruption would have arisen from the good functioning of democracy (remember the horizon of the Great Reform). And yet in the meantime the opportunity to “beat the DC on its own ground”, that of patronage, was even theorized.
All political forces, in any case, were inserted into “systems of power”. Pier Ferdinando Casini, for example, at the dawn of the Second Republic, still noted the omnipresence of the League of Cooperatives in Emilia Romagna. After all, the phrase stolen from a lucid and honest politician like Piero Fassino – “we have a bank!” It was eloquently speaking of him.
Phenomena that are children, ultimately, of a consociational democracy, based on subdivision, with parties that did not limit themselves to acting as an intermediary between companies and institutions.
As a rather distant observer, I seem to see today, in the “Qatargate”, the stupid and impotent face of power. Political authorities almost relegated to the role of spokesperson for external interests and potentates. Listening to the speeches of those MEPs in support of Qatar’s candidacy, I seem to find myself in the presence of ventriloquists. People as greedy and corrupt as they are politically insignificant.
The priority goes without saying, for everyone, to support the importance of the Parliament of Strasbourg and Brussels in the construction of political Europe, enlightened by the example not only of the founding fathers, but also of brilliant men and women such as David Sassoli. At the same time, the idea of the impotence of power as a characteristic trait of our times, elaborated among others by the philosopher Giacomo Marramao, certainly helps us to understand today’s moral question. Yes, because an impotent power can be greedy and arrogant at the same time.