by Marcello Veneziani
Dear Professor Monti, senator for life and president for death, and distinguished exponents of the Unpopular Front who are drooling while waiting to see Salvini and Di Maio brought to their knees by Juncker and Moscovici, I am not asking you to convert to the reasons of popular and national sovereignty. God forbid. Everyone does their part and supports their positions to the fullest. But your problem was and still is exactly that, that you were not able to follow through with your intentions. When you were in government, no one expected citizen income, pop donations, quota pensions 100 and amnesties galore. But we expected you to be strong in your independence from the electorate and politics, by parties and polls, you started a drastic cleanup of our system. In what sense? Really cutting deadwood and waste, eliminating tips and political gifts, divesting, pruning public administrations, truly doing a restructuring of the state, a great reform. For example, the absolute and primary waste in Italy are the regions but politicians will never touch them because they are places and power; have you ever studied and attempted the possibility of abolishing them? Have you ever tried to halve the costs of buildings, from the Quirinale to the Parliament, their staff, supplies included?
And really simplify our bureaucracy, the forest of laws and the plethora of documents that are needed for everything, because you who were the technicians didn't try, the rational ones, the unpopular heroes of the administration?
I know your objection; but parliament would not have allowed it. Beh, it would not have been useful and dignified to put an either/or on these reforms, put parliament with its back to the wall: either we do them or we leave, but not before having told the Italians in a joint press conference that it was impossible to implement the program due to the same parties that had given the vote of confidence in it? Your government experience couldn't have ended better, head held high, rather than picking up a few votes to survive, or some seat, maybe some eternal seat (obtained as advance payment for the service)? I make the observation to the technicians but I extend it to all those rigorous people who are on the side of Europe or who were with the following governments. You wanted to avoid the advent of the populists? All it took was making those cuts, those reforms, that grandiose and tough restoration work. They would have been grateful, in the end, both the European Union and the Italians themselves. And you would not have offered alibis or ideas to the populists and the discontent in which they grew up.
In short, dear Technicians and talking crickets of today, I do not reproach you for being careless of popular opinion and of snubbing the polls, pop messages, the tribune of the people. But the opposite, of not having been able to make the penalty work. You only took it out on defenseless Italians, squeezing and harassing them every day with fruitless sadism: a tax here, a sharpening there, the announcement of sacrifices, tax evasion. Except then changing line when it came to supporting the banks. And the debt grew... But everyone is good at raising taxes, there was no need to have big professors, the Bocconians, technicians or similar. This is why I read your interviews with annoyance (like that of Monti to Senaldi for Libero) and your reprimands to the government in office, your opinions and reports from Dr. Balanzone. You did not function as technicians, as well as politicians, you have stressed democracy without promoting meritocracy, effectiveness, modernization. So the last people who can complain about having incompetent, anti-development populists in power now are you. We can do it, not you who brought them to us.
MV, The weather 12 December 2018
source: http://www.marcelloveneziani.com/articoli/i-populisti-discesi-dai-monti/