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Good day. Today it seems inevitable that we talk about the “Save the Lists Decree”, as they call it. It’s the usual swindle to give a wrong name to something disgraceful and try to make it less shameful. This is not a “Save the Lists Decree”. It’s a “Save Berlusconi Decree”, just for a change. I apologise to those who have got my book, it already needs updating because this is the latest “ad personam” law, but the latest is always the next to the last, as not just this one is arriving, but in a bit we will have a wagon-load. Let’s not forget that next week we should see the “legitimate impediment” being definitively issued from Parliament, and then the “sign-everything” with residence in the Quirinale will be called to do another of his astonishing tests.

He couldn’t not sign it
You will have noticed that among those who have opposed this decree, all those who have a minimum of residual democratic feeling, there’s a division between those who say that the decree is filthy, but that Napolitano did well to sign it, that he couldn’t not sign it, and those who on the other hand say that the decree is filthy and that what is also filthy is the signing by the President of the Republic. To me it seems a bit contradictory to say that the Decree is filthy and that the President had to sign it even because we well know that the President of the Republic can “sign” just as he can “not sign” and when a law is unconstitutional or illegal from a philosophical viewpoint like this one, he has all the tools for not signing. While instead of that you can read in the newspapers, reconstructions that are not denied. It seems that the Head of State himself collaborated in the drafting of this law, after having made known to the government that he would not have signed another Decree, the one that was shown to him on Thursday evening and that it was Thursday evening that gave rise to the idea to do this one.
I don’t know whether this is clear, but the fact that on Thursday evening, the Head of State made known to the Berlusconi government that he would not have signed “decree version one”, shows that the Head of State can “not sign” the decrees that he reckons to be unconstitutional, otherwise he would have had to stomach even the “decree version one”, done earlier.

The Head, hunchback of the State
Second fact: The fact that he seems to have suggested another type of decree, shows once more that we are beyond the powers of the Head of State, because as you know in the prerogatives of the President of the Republic as established in the Constitution, there is not that of suggesting or collaborating in the drafting of laws or decrees. The Head of State has to wait that in the case of decrees, the government, or in the case of laws, Parliament, sends him the measure, and after that he must evaluate whether or not to sign it. If he doesn’t sign it, he sends it back with a reasoned message that explains why it has been rejected and he can do this for decrees, for lack of urgency, or for the lack of need or for lack of constitutionality, because it’s a disgrace, simply because he doesn’t want to put his signature to something filthy. There is nothing in the Constitution that specifies the reasons why he can sign or not sign. It’s written that he can “not sign”, a prerogative that since the President of the Republic has been Napolitano has never used. Unless I’m mistaken, there has never been a law that got to him and that he sent back. At times it’s happened that he has made known early on that he would not have signed a law, indicating in some way how it had to change to get his signature, which is something that makes him into a collaborator of the legislature, thus a personage unknown to the Constitution, even because anyone who has collaborated in the drafting of a law, cannot then obviously be impartial at the time when he has to decide whether or not to sign. Why’s that? Because he too has collaborated, evidently. But let’s leave aside these “lana caprina” matters. Let’s turn to the “substance” as, excuse the word, Schifani, the President of the Senate, would say.

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