In ours countries, in recent years, the slogan has become increasingly fashionable "play a normal policy administration"; slogan that summarizes a speech more or less than this type: our territory, administered for years by politicians and administrators colluding with malfeasance, has been the subject of speculation and particularisms, at best it has been left to its own devices thus remaining cut off from those conquests of civilization (schools well equipped, social and cultural services, shows, major events, sense of responsibility, civic sense and more) that most of the countries in the European Community and Northern Italy have known each other for more than thirty years.
To recover the time wasted badly then the Municipal Administrations started from broken glass in schools, from insufficient municipal employees, from waste urban areas not collected, from insufficient parking, from prostitutes on the corners of the streets, from potholes in the asphalt; they gave names to all these things of normal administration pointing with the adjective normal, however rightly, what they have achieved in the municipalities of northern Italy and Europe for a long time now.
And so far everything well, the Municipal Administrations honest they stood out for their spirit of normalization; but then the slogan is became propaganda, and in some cases, even a political choice, an ideology: that of the normal one administration.
It's true that for years there was a lack of administrators and politics had to make up for them a role that did not belong to her, because it is the politician's job to look more forward, plan, prevent the future and, using a metropolitan metaphor, redo the road entirely, thus solving the root problem by doing it last for years, and not continue to plug holes indefinitely.
We believe that i politicians who keep repeating that they can't think of anything other than the normal administration, there is so much work to do, they simply hide behind their little energy, because if it is true that the situation of ours lands is of grave emergency, then it is not necessary to only do the necessary, everyday work; you need to work 24 hours a day and the 8 or 12 they talk about is not enough, emergency situations require it greater sacrifices, and no one has asked those who don't feel like it to take care of all of us.
After all this ideology of normal administration can lead us, in the best of hypotheses, to a situation that, just as we were saying earlier, others municipalities have already reached thirty years ago, leaving us still in a deep backwardness of civilization, technology and, even worse, culture.
This one "politics" does not allow us to make the leap that is possible and necessary so that we can, in a few years, reconnect democracy and modernity, without allowing entire generations of young people to still live, which through the mass media they now know other forms of existence, in suffering from their drop-out condition, cut off from the history of century; while their American or French cousins, in universities, in cinema, in theatres, at expo, at concerts they live their time, beyond the fact that can then be as bad or beautiful, happy or unhappy as you want, but at least they live their History.
Instead the logic of normal administration cuts us off, with a vicious circle stops thirty years behind, without hope.
A circle vicious because the "best heads" of these countries could become the future ruling class of the South and accelerate its rebirth exploiting a natural phenomenon of amplification and resonance.
Instead without intellectual stimuli, without availability of resources for study and research, from here, from our cities tormented by the innumerable problems Every day, young scholars are forced to leave, spurred on also by the families who now, without pride and desire for redemption, they project onto their children the disappointments of many years of backwardness,  feeding the diaspora of the South of Italy.
This is it which is why the most common answer to the question addressed to young people about their future is that of wanting to go away in search of new ones horizons; sometimes it is a flight that underlies individual crises, often, we believe, it is instead the real lack of prospects, and this is a problem of interest general, and therefore of political interest.
Also the incinerator problem, which has been discussed so much in recent weeks, demonstrates the political crisis in our areas: we cannot continue to do this propose possible solutions from above and do nothing but criticize.
We are I perfectly agree on the dangers of the incinerator but, beyond that this, because it is not possible to understand that the role of politics is a role active, and is to formulate hypotheses, to look for solutions, and it is not a passive role that only knows how to react to the idea of the Airport first, of the Park Ecological then, of the Incinerator now and the NATO Base tomorrow?
It's not doing politics react only to immediate stimuli (and even make themselves fall the incinerator bomb on your head), defend yourself from time to time, but do politics means being ahead of the times, foreseeing situations, with courage, taking risks.
Yes this is the fundamental point: have courage. At the risk of making unpopular choices e apparently fruitless, how to invest in cultural projects that can accelerate the development process by attracting young people, who so then one day many will be able to roll out their sleeves for their cities and not for the foreign capitals, as often happens. How to propose a project to Campania Region for the development of the coast, or propose a project cutting edge also on the waste front with thirty percent recycling one hundred.
Instead this The policy of small steps catches administrations unprepared for big ones problems, unable to deal with long-term issues, disarmed in the face to the future because you are unaccustomed to planning it.
But the responsibility for all this lies not only with our political representatives, but also of civil society which, even etymologically, is necessary for politics to exist, to be able to "work".
 Polis, city, politéuo, government, and polites, citizen all have the same root polius, many, just if you want to say that politics is only done if there is the participation of many in life public, if there is a continuous effort from everyone to follow those they work for the common good and not to abandon them when choices go against the grain.
But yes confuses the politician with the administrator, which instead derives from Latin admin, servant; this is how it is committed a serious mistake, which often underlies disinterest and tiredness, the politician does not it must serve and that's it, it must represent us; it doesn't have to follow a path yet marked, but it needs our proposals and our desires for later interpret them and seek new paths.
Here's why the slogan "politics of normal administration" was born, a pact unholy between politics, which is not very energetic, and citizens, which are very tired; the two terms, politics and administration, used together weaken the great value that participation has in every democratic process, but they provide us the alibi to move forward.
Reverse the route of "delegation full stop", which then becomes "delegation to normal administration" means starting a new season of square, beyond the interests of the individuals to whom the administrator has in any case the duty to respond, to dialogue, to participate, to socialize, of cultural debate, which are ultimately the true activities that define the politics.


October 9, 1998