By ‘participating’ I mean that yesterday I went to vote. Why did I go? Because I think that parties have not to be destroyed but just reformed. I think that primary elections are a right mean, even if not the only one, for increasing the capability of the citizens to control their representatives, so I thought that punishing the only party which is currently keeping this kind of elections in Italy wasn’t a good idea.

Few weeks ago I went to sign the law of popular initiative proposed by Beppe Grillo, and I also explained here why I think his idea of creating a standard for civic lists seems to me a good idea. However I do not agreed with him when he wrote on October 10th that the yesterday primaries would have been the primaries of the dead bodies.

The main criticism pointed out by Grillo is that the winner of the primaries was already decided before the competition took place. Honestly we all knew it from the beginning, but this is not a sufficient reason for rejecting the whole system of parties together with primary elections. Primaries elections has just been introduced in Italy and it not all parties use them… only one party, the Democratic Party use them. So I think it is quite normal that they need time to become more efficient.

Lastly, one more remark. Grillo said he will not create a new party while he just set a standard for the civic lists that will be approved by him. However it is clear that he will at least root for them and saying they fit his standard he is in some way backing them. This put him in the middle of political battle field. When he was just a comedian his criticisms to the political class where part of his duties, because the satire has to be critical toward the power and the comedian being outside of the political field can fire against the faults of the political system. But Grillo is no more a mere comedian, he is a public political man. He is part of the game even if is playing it with his own style.