The bicycle, Veltroni and the crisis in politics

Living in Rome without being harassed with politics is almost impossible. Yet there is a multitude that is learning to do so, organising its time regardless. They feel a kind of indifference for anyone who governs them. Examples? They are numerous. Take the Critical Mass gatherings. They are spontaneous and transversal. You will find the boy from the community centre to a mother and a father with their child. The bicycle ties them together and the will to give an example of true support. Many do not understand and continue to think that the road is blocked because of a demonstration and not because an improbable number of persons have decided, perhaps, to go to Ostia seashore by bicycle. In respect to these initiatives politics shows an alternating indifference if not straight out bother. It protects itself from being contaminated, taken as it is from logic borrowed from the economy. If you think about the debate that has developed around the Democratic Party which today expects to endorse Walter Veltroni as future secretary. In the last few days the indiscretions were sufficient to increase the consensus, bringing a swell of optimism in the depressed environment of the left. Equal to an announcement of an imminent financial transaction, all the circumstance has been commented in accordance with the same criterions of anyone who follows the market, the stock market and the majority shareholders . The capability of the mayor of Rome to warm hearts is famous. We expect this from him. Even if it’s not understood why he would be able to perform “the miracle” that Prodi has not been able to complete. But it would seem blasphemous to try and explain the supernatural. If it’s true that the isolation between politics and ample sectors of the civil society is experienced as a real phase of decolonization, it’s probable that neither will Veltroni succeed in the attempt.