Does Trieste provide an electoral model against corruption in Italy?

Analysis by Paolo G. Parovel

On 5 and 19 June 2016, Italian citizens shall “democratically” elect new administrations for more than 1,300 Municipalities out of 8,000. Because the truth is that they will be, once again, forced to pick one out of the candidates and lists proposed by a political system that becomes more and more corrupted, incapable and shameless, which by driving Italy to pre-bankruptcy endangers also economic and strategic Euro-Atlantic stability.

But to get rid of it, arrests and trials are not enough. The most prepared international analysts consider that the interconnections of Italian political-institutional corruption have become so complex to form a Gordian Knot that can no longer be untied, only cut. And cut completely, because otherwise it would regenerates with new strategies that make it harder to affect it.

At the crossroad between authoritarian and democratic solutions

History has shown, and models confirm, that in such cases the knot can only be cut by the intervention of either an antidemocratic, authoritarian elite, or a democratic majority of the people, which, however, is harder to organize efficiently.

And it is much harder to organize in Italy, where the prevailing cultural models are individualistic and opportunistic, while the mass media are funded by the political system in power, which blocks with antidemocratic manipulations of electoral laws even the movements created thanks to the Internet.

The democratic solution

Those who want to stabilize Italy with a democratic solution, instead of an authoritarian one, should therefore go all the way down to the roots of the problem, which means taking away the legitimacy of the whole current political system, rejecting all of its parties and all of its candidates.

But passive abstention from voting (which in Italy is already about 50%) is not enough, because it allows both the governmeny and opposition parties to be elected, the small number of electors notwithstanding: the current ruling party in Italy represents about 20% of voters, and it uses it to try maintaining its own power, going as far as to amend the laws and the democratic Constitution of the Republic of Italy.

This means there is a need for a legal formula of active abstention with reasons, supported also with a formal request to invalidate all public bodies and the Parliament that were elected with the current electoral system.

This legal formula exists, and it is already used in Trieste, where it is activated to start invalidating the illegal summoning of elections of the State of Italy in what actually is the present-day Free Territory of Trieste, which is only entrusted to the Italian Government under a mandate of temporary civil administration.

Model Trieste

As for Italian elections, the situation of Trieste is unique due to its legal status of little sovereign State in Europe, the Free Territory of Trieste (within its 1992 borders), established in 1947 and entrusted, since 1954, to the temporary civil administration of the Italian Government – not of the State of Italy.

However, the Italian Government took advantage of this mandate to make it seem like, instead, Trieste is under the sovereignty of Italy, therefore it forces on it the same political-institutional and electoral system of Italy, as well as the enormous amount of Italian taxes, which is more than double the amount established in the legal system of the Free Territory.

This deception is being ended by the Free Trieste Movement, established in December 2011 and quickly grown to become the strongest local political organization. Since 2013, the members and the supporters of the Movement, chaired by Roberto Giurastante, do successfully refuse Italian elections adding to passive abstentions the legal instrument of active abstention.

This instrument consists in going to polling stations and refusing the ballot, lodging in the minutes of the polling station a declaration of abstention with reasons drafted by Free Trieste, one copy of which the Chairperson of the polling station must stamp, sign and give back to the voter (LINK).

After the elections, Free Trieste collects such copies and it notifies them to the competent authorities, which, as for Trieste, are the United Nations and the defaulting provisional Italian Government itself. During the past elections this initiative increased passive abstentions and it resulted in thousands of declarations of active abstention.

In view of the June 2016 local elections, Free Trieste has strengthened the operation by adding one new element: a form to request that the Municipalities subject to elections are placed under compulsory administration (LINK). Both requests denounce as illegitimate Italian elections in Trieste due to its different legal status, and call intolerable the «incapable, irresponsible, parassite, and corrupted Italian political system».

The specific problem of the legitimacy of the elections does only involve the 240 thousand citizens of the Free Territory of Trieste. However, the incapability, irresponsibility, and corruption of the Italian political system is also the main concern of the 60 millions citizens of the Republic of Italy.

How to extend it also to Italy

The question is if model Trieste can be used also by the voters – and with which adjustments – also in the territory of the State of Italy to delegitimate the whole system of political-constitutional corruption of the State of Italy, which is ruining it.

We thing that is possible, and potentially efficacious, if model Trieste is enacted with the needed extension and intensity in all other kinds of elections of the State of Italy, with two changes.

The first change is supporting the declaration of abstention with the illegitimacy of the elections due to the violation of the fundamental democratic principles (the current Italian electoral laws violate the principle of vote equality) and by refusing the whole political system because that is affected by irremediable corruption.

The second change is to add to the declaration of extension official requests to place under compulsory administration the public bodies elected and to substitute the Italian Parliament with a new Constituent Assembly to redesign the State with new foundations, the same way as it was done to change the regime at the end of World War II.

The strategic value of the operation

This democratic operation can gain a relevant strategic importance to contain, on two levels, the political-economic instability of Italy and to decrease its risks for Euro-Atlantic balances. The first level is that of getting rid and delegitimizing immediately the centers of political corruption in the public bodies that are placed under compulsory administration.

The second level is the power of the Constituent Assembly to establish a new federal State (following the German or the American model) to meet legitimate needs of historical-cultural identity, self-government and economic welfare of different people in the Italian peninsula, which the present-day nationalist and corrupted State, instead, is driving to secession.

This process of establishment of a federal State would also allow to seriously review the status of Süd Tirol – Southern Tyrol, which is a trilingual (German, Ladin, and Italian), historical region of Austria, whose permanence within the political borders of Italy is conditioned to the full and effective implementation of both Annex IV of the 1947 Treaty of Peace with Italy, as well as of the pertinent principles of international law.

The Free Territory of Trieste, which is not part of the Italian peninsula, and which is an independent sovereign State since 1947 by virtue of the same Treaty of Peace, instead, has the legitimate interests to both the withdrawal of the mandate of temporary civil administration entrusted to the Italian Government, as well as to benefit of the maximum possible stability of the bordering and neighbor States: Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria and Hungary.

© 23 Maggio 2016