A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI, #207 - The Immovable Woman (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Since Giorgia Meloni took office at Palazzo Chigi on October 22, 2022, 
receiving the handover of the bell from one of the most talented chicks 
to emerge from the Goldman Sachs brood, Mario Draghi, the Prime Minister 
(in the masculine, as she prefers to be called) has remained stubbornly 
steadfast and immovable, following the advice of her mentor, who had 
created the conditions and prepared the office for her. ---- The Draghi 
government, which preceded her, had carefully prepared the groundwork 
for the right to take over the country: this operation was skillfully 
conducted, managing to gain the consensus of all the "left" parties, 
captivated by the so-called "Draghi platform," a nonexistent political 
and financial plan never admitted by its owner, which consisted solely 
of placing a garrison of the far right in government, tasked with 
steering the country to the right by managing the modernization of the 
institutions. The unstated, yet real, goal was to modernize the state 
and constitutional order, starting from the assumption of the 
ineffectiveness of parliamentarism in managing decision-making 
processes, in a world where increasingly rapid decision-making 
procedures are required, to manage the transformation of the Republic 
into a democracy.
Therefore, the incoming legislature was supposed to focus all its 
energies on three reforms: the premiership, which would bring with it a 
reform of the government leadership, through the direct election of the 
Prime Minister, thus removing the current role of the President of the 
Republic; the dismantling of the balance of power, reducing that of the 
judiciary; and regional devolution, so as to weaken the unnecessary 
powers of the central government in managing the country and especially 
the economy. These objectives were embraced by the Meloni government and 
constituted its program. To enable the execution of the plan, the 
outgoing government prepared a financial law that would constrain future 
policies and left its own finance minister, who was externally directed, 
on guard.
This choice allowed for relative economic stability, allowing the 
executive to eke out a living, touting the prospect of fiscal 
consolidation, stability, and the recovery from the infringement 
proceedings, so that it could regain control of its ability to incur 
debt and thus distribute benefits. The government improved the primary 
surplus but consigned the country to inaction. At the same time, the 
plan gave the executive free rein over civil liberties and the 
restructuring of relations between social classes, allowing it to 
exploit security, presented as a social emergency, fueling fear of 
immigrants and xenophobia in the country, depressing wages, even at the 
cost of worsening the living conditions of the most vulnerable segments 
of the population, restructuring the distribution of income among the 
various social classes and components, transforming the country, 
rediscovering fascist-style corporatism, revisited and modernized, 
within the framework of a close alliance with national and international 
financial capitalism.
By remaining immobile, the government should have as it did ensure 
social stability and ensured control over social forces, so that the 
process of stripping the country's remaining founding industrial assets 
could be completed without excessive social resistance (e.g., the 
dismantling of FIAT and the slow demise of Ilva). This process was 
initiated in the 1990s by Mario Draghi himself with the auction to the 
highest bidder of postwar Italian industry and the economy, especially 
state-owned holdings, in the luxurious salons of the Britannia, rented 
for the purpose.

Mission partially accomplished

The Meloni government was diligent and sought to complete the task 
assigned to it. It began with differentiated autonomy, capitalizing on 
the ineffective opposition of the self-styled reformist left, still 
reeling from the electoral defeat; Fortunately, the government's success 
was limited by the Constitutional Court, which proceeded to dismantle 
the inconsistencies of the legislative reform piece by piece, 
identifying violations of the Constitution and effectively pushing the 
measure onto a dead-end track.

The government took the hit and convinced itself it needed to change 
horses, choosing judicial reform, which seemed one of the easiest to 
achieve, banking on the discredit of judges, fueled by their actions. 
But since the Constitution was directly involved, it was more than 
legitimate to call on citizens to defend it. Resources from civil 
society were the primary focus, with the political parties following 
suit. In an overwhelming and unexpected way, the referendum overwhelmed 
the government. At this point, especially considering that the 
legislative session is drawing to a close, the prime minister's flagship 
reform seems to have definitively become one of the prime minister's 
impossible dreams, and we trust it will be definitively destroyed. This 
belief is fueled by the fact that when the attack on the Constitution is 
clear, citizens mobilize, and thus the task to be completed is arduous. 
However, experience teaches us that we must be vigilant and prevent 
further attempts, so as not to incur voter fatigue. Therefore, to 
prevent a further deterioration in the population's living and working 
conditions, a change in the country's political management is needed, 
taking advantage of the general elections scheduled to be held at the 
end of the legislature in about a year.

A review of the government's actions

Despite remaining inactive, the government has increased taxes by 
restructuring tax rates and taking advantage of rising inflation. Thus, 
the very limited growth in nominal wages, due to the much-vaunted 
partial fiscalization of social security contributions, has been largely 
absorbed by the inflationary mechanism and the instrumental use of 
taxation. Another effective approach would have been to restructure 
taxation by making it truly progressive, as per the Constitution, and by 
taxing large incomes and large fortunes, perhaps even by imposing, even 
purely from the perspective of applying progressivity, a significant tax 
on the highest incomes, applying at least the same rates to incomes as 
those applied to employed workers. Today, Italy has the highest taxes 
among the EU countries.
The diversion of the country's meager resources to finance war and 
rearmament has further depleted welfare funds, resulting in a marked 
overall deterioration in healthcare. This has been offset by economic 
and financial privileges for private healthcare, which is increasingly 
opening up: reduced funding for elderly care, the closure of daycare 
centers, the lack of housing provisions, and social support measures for 
the poorest segments of the population. In return, repressive laws are 
proliferating against those who resist, demanding the right to housing 
and healthcare, and engaging in social struggles and mobilization. These 
laws also increase penalties for those who fight to achieve these goals, 
through the introduction of ever new social crimes into the penal code. 
The government has distinguished itself in the education sector by 
investing in the failing Made in Italy high school, which has remained 
deserted. The very few new resources allocated to schools have been 
channeled into this institution, while overall the allocation for this 
expenditure item has been plagued by continuous cuts that have 
compromised its functioning. The school system has not even been helped 
by providing for routine maintenance of school buildings, not to mention 
teacher salaries, which have stagnated and are decidedly inadequate for 
the new demands of retrained teaching, partly due to technological 
innovation and the training needs of new professions and new skills.
The dismantling of productive assets has been pursued with 
determination, leaving hundreds of corporate crises unresolved, 
increasing the use of redundancy payments (Cassa Integrazione Guadagni, 
the cost of which, let us remember, is borne by workers), and failing to 
stimulate any investment that would open up new opportunities for the 
country's industrial activities. Proof of this is the policies pursued 
regarding the automotive and steel production sectors, given that all 
activity in the chemical and countless other industrial sectors has long 
since disappeared from the country, also as a result of the closure of 
markets caused by sanctions imposed left and right, but not on Israel, 
which expelled itself from many markets, and the lack of any industrial 
policy by the government, a factor that recently even sparked protests 
from Confindustria.

What can we say about the government's agricultural policy? It has taken 
a passive stance toward the European Commission's decisions to reduce EU 
funding for the agricultural sector, thereby diverting funds to finance 
the Ukrainian war and rearmament. At the same time, it has rashly signed 
up to Mercosur, underestimating the impact on the agricultural sector, 
which will be further penalized given the consensus for Ukraine's 
immediate accession to the European Union. This will lead to the release 
of low-cost produce onto the agricultural market, grown on land heavily 
polluted by the war, with serious consequences for everyone's health, 
and prices made even more competitive by the future channeling of EU 
funding to Ukraine for reconstruction.
It is also worth noting that all this is occurring at a time when 
500,000 young people, educated by the national school system, leave the 
country every year, going on to strengthen and enrich other economies 
and accentuating the country's demographic desertification. It is this 
migration that the government should have addressed, rather than doing 
everything to demonstrate its inability to manage the country's 
desperately needed labor and population migration in a regular and 
humane manner. Instead, it chose to stubbornly carry out the failed 
investment of deportation to Albania, to manage the immigration flows 
decree with a complete failure to address the needs and professional 
configuration of demand, leaving numerous productive sectors uncovered, 
and to continue fueling the black market for labor, thus keeping it 
constantly fueled, regardless of new arrivals, with police measures that 
push many back into illegality.

https://www.ucadi.org/2026/04/19/la-donna-immobile/
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