"Farewell to Raffaele Costa (1936-2026): the last Liberal Secretary" by Carlo Coppola
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Commemorative images created by Carlo Coppola with the help of AI |
Questo articolo dal titolo "Addio all’ex Ministro Raffaele Costa simbolo di una politica che non esiste più" di Carlo Coppola è stato pubblicato sul giornale "In Città Giovinazzo" diretto dal prof. Antonio Calisi:
Raffaele Costa, a Piedmontese and the last secretary of the Italian Liberal Party (PLI), died on 11 September, just after turning ninety. He served as a deputy for exactly thirty years, until 2006, and led the PLI from 27 May 1993 to 6 February 1994. To remember him is to remember the end of a political world, that of the last fifty years. For all its contradictions, it still held in embryo many values that today's public debate, absorbed by false problems over gender, international politics and migration, seems to have lost sight of entirely.
Even before Berlusconi's definitive rise, Costa had the profile of a man of government. Between 1979 and 1989 he served several times as undersecretary: at Justice under Cossiga, at Foreign Affairs under Spadolini and Fanfani, at the Interior under Craxi, and at Public Works under Goria and De Mita. Those were the years of the five-party and then four-party coalitions, in which the PLI, with barely 3% of the vote, carried far more weight than its numbers suggested. Alongside Zanone, Altissimo and Biondi, it was the economic conscience of the coalition.
In the Amato government he was Minister for the Coordination of European Community Policies and for Regional Affairs from June 1992. He then served briefly as Health Minister, where his surprise inspections of hospitals, some of them at night, were an unprecedented success, and not only in the media. He later became Transport Minister in the Ciampi government. All the while he was leading a party already engulfed by the Tangentopoli scandals.
The Liberals' misfortune was twofold. First, small and fragile, they were swept away by the judicial season that also tarnished their reputation for rectitude. Second, their natural electorate of productive bourgeoisie, professionals and entrepreneurs found in Silvio Berlusconi's political arrival a new champion, free of any personal baggage from the past. After the PLI was dissolved, Costa founded the Union of the Centre (Unione di Centro), allied with Forza Italia, and served as Health Minister in Berlusconi's first government.
His legacy includes his battles against waste, privilege and bureaucracy, his presidency of the Province of Cuneo, and his European commitment. Elected to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 1999, he sat on the delegation for EU-Armenia cooperation. Remembering him today is not nostalgia. It is a way of restoring its rightful place to a tradition that taught the country the value of responsibility, merit, and limits on public power.
Carlo Coppola
