Mattarella: no restrictions in the name of the duty of government, no state absolutism

"We are helped by Bobbio when he warns that one cannot resort to simplifications of the system or restrictions of rights "in the name of the duty to govern". A democracy "of the majority" would be, by definition, an irremediable contradiction, due to the confusion between the instruments of government and the protection of the effective condition of rights and freedom". President Sergio Mattarella said this. The Head of State opened the proceedings of the 50th Social Week of Catholics in Italy, scheduled in Trieste from 3 to 7 July on the theme "At the heart of democracy. Participating between history and the future'.

"Tosato," Mattarella continued, "challenged Rousseau's assumption that the general will could find no limits of any kind in laws, because the will of the people could change any rule or regulation. He did so in very clear words: 'We all know by now that the alleged general will is in reality nothing but the will of a majority and that the will of a majority, which considers itself as representative of the will of the whole people can be, as it has often proved to be, more unjust and more oppressive than the will of a prince'. A firm no, therefore, to state absolutism, to limitless, potentially overbearing authority. Awareness of limits is an indispensable factor of loyal and inalienable democratic vitality'.

"Democracy. A word in common use, even in its declension as an adjective. It is widely used,' continued the Head of State. It suggests a value. The dictatorships of the 20th century identified it as an enemy to be beaten. Free men have made it a flag. Together an achievement and a hope that, at times, one unscrupulously tries to mortify by placing its name in support of partisan theses'. "Alexis de Tocqueville asserted that a democracy without a soul is destined to implode, not because of its formal aspects of course, but because of its lost value content".

"Speaking in Turin, at the first edition of the Biennial of Democracy, in 2009, the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, turned his gaze to the construction of our republican democracy, with the acquisition of the principles that have placed our country, since then, in the furrow of western liberal-democratic thought. After the obsessive 'constriction' of the fascist regime,' Mattarella recalled, 'the breath of freedom' was blowing, with the Constitution as a framework and guarantee of citizens' rights. The breath of freedom above all as a refusal of any obligation of social and political conformity, as the right to opposition'.

'It is the practice of democracy that makes it alive, concrete, transparent, capable of involving,' added the President of the Republic. 'What are the reasons for referring to the breath of freedom when speaking of democracy? It is not democracy without the protection of the fundamental rights of freedom, which are what gives meaning to the rule of law and democracy itself'.