M5s, I don't agree with Castellone: the two-term limit damages the Movement

by Tito Borsa

Dear Senator, Mariolina CastelloneI read with great interest his speech on the Daily Fact on Saturdayintervention in which she explains why she is in favour of the two-term limit for elected officials of the 5 Star Movement, like you.

The M5S has changed radically since it entered Parliament in 2013. Luckily, I would say. At the time, any alliance was rejected, waiting for Godot, that is, the moment when the Movement would have the numbers to govern alone. At the time Beppe Grillo banned candidates and elected officials from participating in talk shows. At the time, the idea was to have voters vote online for whatever choice the elected officials would make.

To state, as she does, that “shift power from citizens to the single elected representative“or would it be said to betray our soul and deny our very existence” means in my opinion to deny the very principle of representative democracywhen the M5S over the years has gradually abandoned the push towards direct democracy. The elected official, as such, must take responsibility for his choices in front of the voters. Choices that must be in line with the mandate that the citizens have entrusted to him to represent them. We have already seen that consulting the voters before making a decision is as important cumbersome how counterproductive.

The 5 Star Movement has renewed itself several times in the last eleven years and should do so also with regards to the limit of two mandates. The difference between the M5S and the other parties must be based on mode with which things are done. As with the alliances: It is wrong to reject them a priori but real convergences must be sought, not ones of interest.

As for the two-term limit, I believe we need to start from the assumption that Grillo’s old mantra “one is worth one” It does not mean that all the elected officials are equal and have the same weight within the Movement. As in all environments, there are the mediocre and the talented and the latter must be valued.

Political talent cannot concern what you call “professional competence”. Then all the “technicians” called to solve Italy’s problems would be statesmen and this, in addition to having it inherent within itself a classist vision, is clearly false. Political experience, knowledge of the mechanisms that regulate the State, the skills needed to do politics effectively and thus achieve one’s goals are factors that the constraint of two mandates destroys every ten years.

It is true that the M5S was born “to embody a new democratic season”, but removing the constraint of the two mandates, taking on the responsibility of valorising talents and getting rid of the ballast, would not lead you to transform yourselves into a “traditional party”. The other political forces are not meritocratic. There are political dinosaurs who have more legislatures behind them than underwear in their closet and certainly not because they are essential political talents. The M5S should choose (taking responsibility for it) who can go beyond two terms, in the same way that one chooses where and how to make alliances with other parties.

I understand and partly appreciate the fidelity and coherence with the founding values of the Movement. But I would like to remind you, Senator, that nothing that the M5S has achieved from 2018 to 2021 would have been done without alliances. Alliances that Grillo initially rejected a priori. Similarly, discard great political talents after two terms it means humiliating them or inducing them to turn to the “traditional parties”. And the Movement, to remain faithful to its founding principles, it damages itself.

Only choices for which we must take responsibility can free the M5S from the impasse into which it has sunk. Consistency is a valuebut it must not become an obstacle to the true objective of each political force: to achieve its own program.