“Culture will make you free”, not “truth will make you free” as the dictators say. This is what Sergio Mattarella, elected the new president of Italy, believes in. A gentleman, as Matteo Renzi, the Italian Prime Minister, defined him. A gentleman that represents the ‘past’ but will lead the passage to a ‘new’ Italy, after 30 years of Berlusconism. It seems a contradiction but it is not. “Nani e ballerine”, dwarft and dancers, said Rino Formica, a politician of Socialist Party, referring to the new politic class of the 1990s. This has been Italy under Craxi and Berlusconi era, the so called ‘Second Republic’ of Italy. Now we go back to “giants and scholars” of the ‘First Republic’ to try to fund the third one, bringing back people’s confidence in politics. “My thoughts go first of all to the difficulties and hopes of our fellow citizens, that’s all for now” said Mattarella as soon as he has been elected, before to visit the place of the Ardeatine nazi massacre. Few words, plain and discreet, because words are important. The opposite of the Berlusconi style, talkative but of the nullity.

Besides being a politician Mattarella has been a professor of Parliamentary law and a judge of the Constitutional Court, he comes from Sicily, the land of culture and history, and is the brother of another honest politician killed by mafia. He is a champion of law and will be a guarantee for Italian Constitution and the rules of democracy 70 years after the foundation of our Republic, exactly in the moment that the Constitution will be finally reformed for the first time probably in Italy. He has been always against the degeneration of the ethic, the politics and the society that Italy experienced with the entrance in politics of a figure like Berlusconi. He is the exact opposite of Berlusconi, who with his anomaly brought its show business and private life at the government of the country. Mattarella resigned from the Italian government lead by Andreotti in the 1990 to protest against the “Mammi law”, the law that violating a legislation of the European Community would allow Berlusconi’s three private TV channels to broadcast nationally, and in this way start his influence on the public opinion and his enormous power. Mattarella did also many important reforms to help Italian society to evolve: he introduced the majoritarian representation in the electoral system of Italy to create more stable governments, introduced specialized teachers in the elementary schools to teach different topics and abolished the military draft. Mattarella comes from the left of the old DC, the “Christian democracy”, a party that officially doesn’t exist anymore but is still present in the reality of today’s Democratic Party, as it represented the social and political fabric of Italy in the second half of XX century (even if also its worst elements with corruption and bureaucracy, blocking many times the progress of the country).

We always need to go back to the past to start a new future in societies, like during Renaissance we went back to Classics after the degeneration of Middle Age. And that’s what Italy is going to do now for the next seven years, with Mattarella President of the Republic. We hope we can rebuild the political and social values lost in Berlusconi era, and in seven years Berlusconi will be dead, at least politically. Mattarella will bring back morality in the public life and this is what Italy desperately needs now: leaders with moral integrity and long-term vision. As we say in Italy: a leader with a “straight back”. http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/la-corsa-per-il-quirinale-elezione-presidente-della-repubblica-dopo-napolitano/l-intervista-a-mattarella-su-youtube-la-cultura-rende-liberi/190428/189381?ref=HREC1-2