Altrove/Elsewhere – “La Festa della Repubblica”

By Daniel Leisawitz*

On Friday, June 2, Italy celebrated the Festa della Repubblica – the annual commemoration of the founding of the Republic of Italy. After the fall of the Fascist dictatorship and the end of the Second World War, Italy was faced with the choice of which form of government the state should adopt. On June 2-3, 1946, a national referendum was held in which Italians were given the choice of either retaining the Savoy monarchy, or founding a parliamentary republic. The results were closer than we might think, with 54.3% of voters favoring the republic.

It was then the work of the 556 elected members of the Assemblea Costituente to draw up and ratify a constitution. This was no easy feat, considering that it required reaching consensus among members hailing from divergent points on the political spectrum, from Communists to Conservative Liberals. Nonetheless, after a year and half of debate, wrangling, hardline stances and compromises, the Assembly approved the Constitution of the Italian Republic on December 22, 1947.

One of the members of the Assembly – a former partisan fighter who has come to be considered one of the founding fathers of the Italian Republic – was Vittorio Foa, who was born in Turin to a Jewish-Piedmontese family in 1910.

Years after the events of 1946-47, Foa reflected back on the ability of the Assemblymen to work together to construct a national legal framework, despite their deeply held political differences, whereas contemporary politicians seemed to be unable to bridge political divides in order to reach consensus on important reforms and initiatives: “Adesso si scandalizzano se vedono volare pugni. Ma anche allora succedevano queste cose: però il pomeriggio, tutti insieme, facevamo la Costituzione” (Now people are scandalized when they see punches thrown. But these things also happened back then; however, in the afternoon, everyone together made the Constitution).

This sentiment could apply equally well to the political debates at the founding of the United States, just as it accurately describes the acrimony and intransigence that define our current state of political deadlock. The key, it seems, is not for politicians to abandon their political convictions, but rather for voters to demand candidates with the intellectual acumen and social commitment necessary for cooperation. And this is especially true when the leader of the executive branch is as ill-prepared and impolitic as ours currently is.

*Daniel Leisawitz is the Director of the Italian Studies Program at Muhlenberg College (Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA). The artwork is by Abraham Cresques a 14th-century Jewish Spanish cartographer.