Tomorrow (Sunday) Italians will be asked to vote for their preferred leader of the newly-created and already much-speculated-about Democratic Party. Contrast this with Berlusconi's anointment of his close advisor Brambilla to lead a new grassroots organization and you get the picture of how Italian politics is at a crossroads.
But wait! The outcome of this election has been clear to all ever since the DP was conceived. All the other candidates state for some reason that they aren't running against the soon-to-be-crowned Veltroni, they are running FOR him, to make his candidature stronger.
This makes me cringe. Okay you want people to choose the leader, and then everyone else runs just to support Prodi's dauphin, with manifestos that don't differ for most part. There are, thankfully, some exceptions, both manifesto and personality-wise. The principle, however, remains the same: you export a democratic tool and bend it for the usual party politics we've seen for decades.
Moreover, while the newly founded DP claims to be the voice of change, the party of new faces and whatnot the average age of the founding council is over 60, its leader awaiting coronation is a mayor and has been a party apparatchik for years and everyone's complaining that it's just the usual populist feat.
Elections and primaries are about competing visions, about competition. America has this tradition stemming from its society and history. You can't export a system without having the social, historical and intellectual bases that led to it, stated Tocqueville in his "Democracy in America". True as ever today.
I really hope someone different from Veltroni wins, to signal a definitive switch from party orders to people power. But the usual Italian resignation to fate and the mentality of "it's been decided anyway" will surely prevail again, making this new DP just a new character the same old soap opera we've seen in Italian politics for years.
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