A Single Demarchyan Party of Transitory Good People

In my last post, I concluded that Italy needs to drastically change its political system and remove all current politicians if it has any chance of reversing its current downfall trend. A spiral of decay driven by 3 main problems:

1. High costs
: public debt has been higher than GDP for years and at 118.1% in 2010 ranks 8th highest in the world. Public spending has to be reduced drastically as it has more structural costs than those related to services provided to citizens.
2. Unworthy people in power
: the individuals who represent the political class and the public administration are for the vast majority guilty of corruption and incompetence.
3. An outdated system
: that is too bureaucratic, slow, complicated, and rigid. Its most noticeable manifestations are:
• slowness of the judiciary system (la Magistratura)
• malfunction of the public services (la Pubblica Amministrazione)

In this post, I want to move one step forward and explore how a different form of government would perhaps work better in Italy today. But, if the Parliamentary Republic of Italy was to change its political system, which new direction should it take? The world of today is giving us the following alternatives to examine:

• Full Presidential Republic (e.g. USA)
• Presidential Republic with the role of the president and prime minister combined (e.g. South Africa)
• Semi-Presidential Republic (e.g. Russia)
• Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy in which the monarch does not personally exercise power (e.g. Australia)
• Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy in which the monarch personally exercises power often alongside a weak parliament (e.g. Morocco)
• Absolute Monarchy (e.g. Saudi Arabia)
• Single-Party State (e.g. China)
• Military Dictatorships (e.g. Myanmar)

While I agree with the theoretical benefits attached to a working Federal Republic (the direction taken since 2001), I don't see Italy in a solid enough position to yet contemplate such a change. Instead I propose looking east, at China, for a general mold. Please try to be open-minded and not thinking Communism straight away!

A single party would mean a U-turn from the current situation in which no one Italian party has ever gained power alone since 1948 and thus parties must – in theory – work with each other (and not against) to form coalition governments. Italy, at present, counts 34 parties (plus a bunch of regional parties). However, such a variety does not imply significant differences of thought and a healthy debate. It only translates into pitiful discussions over every small little issue, with consequently no results!!!

With regard to the important challenges faced by the Nation, we are witnessing all major Italian parties using the same keywords to brand themselves in a way that – they believe – should appeal to young generations and promote the ideas of change and forward thinking. But in reality they are all the same old ‘thing’ just wearing different masks. Their names and slogans are marketing scams that people have become way too familiar with. There is nothing new in what they say, they are led by old farts with old ideas, and their young followers are lobotomized YES MEN destined to become clones of what we already hate.

The almost inexistent variety of thought among parties is testified by the increasing number of politicians changing flags every year to seek higher positions or better pays. Therefore, my suggestion is to eliminate all parties hence eradicating corruption from the roots. This transition would also end disputes among parties aimed purely at fuelling 'political' games and divert the attention away from parties and place it back on the individuals, whose nomination and election should be based on principles of:

• Merit: an individual’s intelligence, wisdom, credentials, and education, should determine the suitability of the person and the assigned responsibilities.
• Technical knowledge: decision makers would be selected based upon how knowledgeable and experienced they are in their fields (strategy, management, engineering, science, health, and others) rather than how much political capital they hold.

The ultimate aim would be having a country governed by a few (i.e. the best in the Nation) who work together for the good of all citizens. An oligarchy whose members would periodically rotate and get randomly selected out of a broadly inclusive pool of eligible citizens (i.e. Demarchy) chosen by the wider population. Eligibility for appointments would be based on personal qualities such as sincerity, honesty, cooperativeness, kindness, and open-mindedness, rather than just age and the usual sarcasm, ambition, persuasiveness, resourcefulness, etc.

Once decided to vote politicians based of their human qualities and technical expertise, the next step would be to define a system capable of properly running nominations/elections and monitoring actions. As previously stated, the Chinese-model would only represent the general mold. From there, it would be great to witness the development of an untried political system that would partly rely on principles and institutions that we already possess as a Nation, and partly open to adopt new ways of operationalizing things. For example, we could maintain:

1. The overarching principles of the Italian State and the values ​​that underpin the Italian Constitution. Namely:
   • popular sovereignty
   • unity and indivisibility of the State
2. The 5 primary constitutional bodies (President of the Republic, Parliament, Government, Judiciary, and Constitutional Court).
3. The same allocation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers.
4. Perfect bicameralism: this structure could change in the future, but for the moment has prevented many times the total manipulation of the system by the Prime Minister.
5. CSM (Superior Council of Magistrates), which is arguably working better than any other Italian institution.

On the other hand, many other things are not functioning as they should and will require substantial changes. A list of what clearly isn’t working and some initial ideas on how to structure a theoretically new political system will be discussed in the next post.