Giulio Andreotti, who was in charge of the Italian Council of Ministers on seven occasions, is the author of the phrase “power wears out, especially when you don’t have it”, which has excessively internalized the PP, which usually lacks finesse when he doesn’t have it and, instead, he has too much haste. Andreotti was a cynic and with his sarcasms he could write a book of political quotes. Only he could think of saying this sentence in public: “Governing does not consist in solving problems, but in silencing those who cause them”.
It is not the first time it has happened to the popular people. What’s more, they seem to have an excessively patrimonial conception of power and when they lose at the polls, they have the feeling that they have been kicked out of the house. It happened to them when José María Aznar lost the elections to Felipe González in 1993, despite the fact that the polls showed them as winners and it happened to them again thirty years later, when Alberto Núñez Feijóo was on the verge of victory when nothing predicted it. And in both cases, his opposition was immediately relentless, often flouting the rules of parliamentary respect.
It seems that it is difficult for them to be opposition, when their function is very important in a democracy, which is embodied in the Constitution. The opposition is a counterweight, a controller of the Executive, an alternative. The good opposition is not the one that seeks to hinder, put sticks in the wheels or slow down positive initiatives for the country, but the one that provides constructive criticism, proposes other options and is transparent in its will to do politics.
But the PP confuses – and we are seeing it these days – doing politics with overthrowing the Government. And they haven’t quite found the tone. You can’t be asking for Pedro Sánchez’s head every day the first minute a problem appears. Politics is not a hunt. These days they are shooting at the president of the Spanish Government, at the president of Congress or at the minister of the interior. Sometimes Sánchez could paraphrase Andreotti when he proclaimed: “I have been accused of everything but the Punic Wars because I was too young.”