Italian politics has moved from Parliament to the ‘Manifestazione’ {Demonstration}. The opposite of the word ‘Manifestazione’ is ‘occultamento’ (concealing), disappearance. In physics, for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. The democracy that has disappeared finds other routes when the institutional ones are blocked off for it and it suddenly reappears like a karst river. The squares of Cairo and of Tunis are the Galilean demonstration, but also those recent ones in London with the protest of the university students and Charles’ car tossed around like at the dodgem cars in the funfair.
If the demonstration abroad has its beginning and its end (there’s a demonstration to get something that will be conceded at least partially), in Italy the demonstration has a beginning and that’s it. The aim of the demonstration is to demonstrate. If abroad a demonstration is an important fact, often momentous, and thus rare, in Italy there are more demonstrations than there are days in the year. The calendar of a demonstrator is so full that he faces incredible difficulties. On a Saturday, in order to participate in two demos, both vital for democracy, he even has to do 200 or 300 kilometres.
The parties participate in the demos with conviction, and usually they take them over when they haven’t managed to organise them directly. And you often see their banners waving in the sunlight and the stalls with the symbols and the obligatory fliers. They are the temporary outpourings from Parliament. They protest in the streets at the weekend against themselves, but without getting too much in the public eye, in political jargon, they are the so-called arse-protectors. The parliamentarians who are divorced, who frequent the ‘trannies’ and the prostitutes protest against the ones in civil partnerships. The Opposition, for decades accomplices of Berlusconi with no “ifs and buts’, PDminusL folk and thereabouts are demonstrating against the psycho dwarf three times a week. The Trades Unions and the key parliamentarians who have witnessed the destruction of Fiat and of Olivetti are marching united for employment.
When they don’t manage to steer the demonstrations for their own electoral pool, the politicians get together at the last moment. They even climb onto the roofs to bring their hairy solidarity to the students for whom Ms Gelmini has even chopped their desks, they who pocket a billion euro in public financing. Close-knit demonstrations for public ownership of water that they cannot give a toss about while they are creating contracts for water management to private companies. They are marching against the Finance Bill, they ask for the abolition of the Provinces and the reduction of the costs of politics and meanwhile, their provincial councillors are getting fat and the key newspapers, the ones acting as the megaphones of the demonstrations are raking in 330 million euro. The Demonstration that is a battle and of the government is by now a known fact. I demonstrate ‘ergo sum’.