By Elisa Spiropali, former Foreign Minister
Kick me out!
Internal debates, however strong, should not turn into a public punitive spectacle.
If this happens, the problem is no longer dissent, it is fear of dissent.
This stubborn fact, this obvious observation, rather than the warning itself, compels me to speak.
When public warning becomes an instrument of intimidation, silence is no longer prudence, it is surrender.
If my attitude about the way the party, the government, the state is functioning, is considered a reason for exclusion, then I am saying it calmly and clearly: Exclude me.
Not as a personal challenge. Not as a political drama. Not as a media show. But as proof that the problem is not in the word that raises concern, but in the system that does not tolerate concern.
I did not attack the Socialist Party. I have criticized the model that in some aspects is also damaging the Socialist Party.
I spoke about the separation of the party from the state. For the risk that politics will be replaced by administration. For a control logic. Where the bureaucratic structure and administrative power risk taking the place of political representation.
If these are considered grounds for exclusion, then the question is not why I speak. The question is why these things are not allowed to be said.
Power is not weakened by criticism. Power weakens when it loses the ability to self-correct.
If in a political force that was born as a project of national emancipation, criticism is treated as deviation, then the problem is deeper than any debate. It is a crisis of political culture.
If asking that institutions not be controlled, personalized, instrumentalized is a sin, then fire me.
If you ask for competition and merit, inside and outside the party, it is a fault, expel me.
If you ask that the socialists not be replaced by a model of “directocracy”, where political contribution pales in the face of administrative control, a lack of discipline, expel me.
If you think that power should know self-limitation, and should not be identified with the structures that surround it, it is an unacceptable heresy, expel me.
I am not advocating a position. Much less an armchair. The presidency and the ministry were not left to me by my grandfather or grandmother. I am defending a principle.
In politics, disagreement is not a breach of loyalty.
Disagreement is the highest form of loyalty.
When the refusal to be part of an automatic vote in Parliament is interpreted as leaving the group, then the problem is not discipline, but the idea that obedience is demanded blindly, without reasoning, without considering the consequences.
When obedience is rejected as ritual, one is not defending unity, but demanding submission.
When conscience is treated as a breach of discipline just because it disagrees with the automatism of actions, then the problem is not dissent, but the model that confuses obedience with submission, attempting to normalize even abuse. If I’m wrong about that too, kick me out.
But at least make it clear that the expulsion is not happening because someone has betrayed the party. It is happening because someone has refused to be silent about the way the government is acting on its behalf.
And this is not a personal matter. It is a question of how politics is understood. What happens to a party when even a political act of not voting is seen as hostility? What happens to a state when opposition is treated as a threat? What happens to a society when obedience is demanded as submission?
These are not questions about my destiny, which I make myself without anyone’s help. They are questions about the way it is governed.
The threat of exclusion from the group bothers me less than the idea that it can be normalized to think that a political grouping must function through fear.
A political formation where no one opposes is not strong. It is silent and should be protected from cold.
Political silence has always been a warning of evil.
Not infrequently, the real strength of the opponent does not frighten.
The echoes of fear are frightening.
Many control structures are maintained not so much by their own strength as by the false image that others have of their strength, by mechanisms that survive on the fear they produce. If we don’t even agree on that, fire me.
If the right to speak is not respected, even to shout, when my political family starts to fear the word, there is no dilemma, the solution is 1, expel me.
