ABSTRACT: An appeal to the President of the Italian Republic Francesco Cossiga to denounce himself for having attempted to overthrow the Italian Constitution. "When deep and vital reforms are urgently needed, one must take the road of respect for the law to the very end, all the more so when one considers it unjust, or its interpretation or application unjust. Violate it so that there can be law, and that it be strong law, respected and deserving respect from all."

Let him then explain why he wanted deliberately to overthrow the "Constitutions", the written one and the "de facto" one. "Let him convene this trial which perhaps, in that way, with his help, will tell us what is "just" and offer "justice". With greater probability than on the basis of our accusation alone".

(LA STAMPA, August 3, 1991)

I know that President Cossiga has deliberately attacked the Constitution - or better, the constitutions, both the written, legitimate and true one as well as the usurping "de facto" one employed by the party-ruled government.

I know that President Cossiga is literally and most humanly the incarnation, the voice, the face, the arm - like no one else, to the very end, I fear - of the desperate and possible lethal schizophrenia of Italian civil and political history in this second half of the century. He is in this sense the unprecedented image of the real Italy and a witness to the identity of the party-rule - not only Christian Democratic (anything but), but of all the political forces who chose and "elected" him to be Minister of the Interior, President of the Senate and President of the Republic.

I know what it is that President Cossiga is trying to tell us and not succeeding because it is almost inexpressible because everything turns it, as soon as it is uttered, into noise or silence. I am not a doctor but a citizen of the Republic, of this world, of this century, yes, and so I know that this schizopohrenia is a social malady and that as such it can be read, understood and overcome, as well as being thus caused and motivated. The people feel it, understand it, respect it. Sooner than they are led to fear and derision. But they are less concerned about its manifestations than they are with the sincerity and integrity of those who act them out.

I know that President Cossiga is possessed of civil and human passion. I may not share them much, but far too often. Thus I have com-passion. But passion blinds. It is different from love and wisdom, even from the wisdom of folly and of fantasy.

The President of the Republic has an ever clearer view of all this, and so that there is almost never a way out of the situation we are in or have been pushed into or in which we find ourselves. He tell us by way of Guzzanti [ a journalist ed.]: "I only wanted to show that the "king is naked"". Still this ambition, this error: to be at the same time the king and the "pazzariello" (1) of Morante (2), to be the people. Echoes, it seems to us, of the Greek tragedy and the Shakespearian kind. Who knows? Perhaps even the romanticism of a Buechner (3) in "Danton's Death". Better, in any case, than the pitiful, plebeian acting of so many bit-part actors.

I also know that a king who shows himself to be naked is an "impossible" king, he has to abdicate at once, has to leave the throne and the power, and the gold and the glitter and the uniforms (which stay around) - otherwise he has to become and to be a republican "subversive" or an anarchist. A "traitor". From love perhaps, like so many of us have been or appeared to be. But a traitor, and a thorough one, nevertheless.

But Francesco Cossiga knows all of this very well.

He is the most illustrious (the one who best illustrates) of the men of this regime. He is the elect. This regime has been and still is the Counter-reformation of the anti-Fascist and liberal-democratic Reformation written into the Constitution. Its hallmark is or has been the imperfect one-partyism of the party-power system, of the de facto constitution that imposes reasons of state (and of sides) against the sense of the State, a policy of "emergencies" against the constitutional state.

The de facto constitution and imperfect one-partyism have exacted "secrets" and "secrecy" and secret services. Crimes without end, save perhaps for the "autonomy" (Catholic and Communist, not Machiavellian) of politics. Cossiga has always been in the lead along this road where Berlinguer [the late PCI party leader], joined him in the most critical and tragic hours. But their two worlds had reached coexistence a long time ago, and they maintained it even in their quarrels.

And finally, I know that the President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga has found in himself a steel strain that by now cannot help but tie him, the (Catholic) liberal, to the Socratic, Gandhian, Radical imperative of truth and non-violence.

When deep and vital reforms are urgently needed, one must take the road of respect for the law to the very end, all the more so when one considers it unjust, or its interpretation or application unjust. Violate it so that there can be law, and that it be strong law, respected and deserving respect from all.

Let the President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga denounce himself, then, formally and at once, for having tried for at least a year to overthrow the Constitution of the Republic with so many acts and words directed entirely at accomplishing this "criminal" act.

Let him explain, not only to Guzzanti and the mass media, how and why he obsessively wanted to overthrow all rules, even the smallest, all customs, all protocol, all good manners, all institutional balances, all "respect" for himself and others.

Let him convene this trial which perhaps, in that way, with his help, will tell us what is "just" and offer "justice". With greater probability than on the basis of our accusation alone

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Pazzariello - A costumed hawker of wares in the Neapolitan tradition.

2) Morante - Elsa Morante (1912-85) novelist and poet. The pazzariello is a figure in one of her works.

3) Georg Buechner - 19th Century German dramatist.