2024-01-12 11:38:57
I admired a lot and dared to say little about Dick Marty, a man of great political and legal culture. Some striking features nevertheless emerge, linked to his activity as a magistrate and politician. Like for example ethical rigor. Dick Marty reminds us that ethics (i.e. the link between individual attitude and collective good) must always be at the center of political action. He quoted an Italian priest who said: “We cannot correct immoral political action with speeches alone; politicians, trade unionists, ministers, mayors, artists must set an example in their own action.”
I have always perceived in Dick Marty a radical condemnation of policies which center their action – and the legal approach which accompanies it – on geopolitical considerations, national interests and exacerbated nationalisms which generate the rejection of the other, the closure and violence. Dick Marty strongly condemned policies which “ignore people”, do not aspire to respect fundamental rights and, above all, do not place the good of all above all else.
In Ticino as elsewhere, Dick Marty was not very popular with part of the political world, especially from the fringe of those who practice “political politics”, even within his own party (the PLR) where many listen to him and remain silent, or even criticize him half-heartedly.
For him, politics had only one meaning: the pursuit of the common good and social justice. He has constantly denounced the abuses of multinationals and a certain predatory capitalism as well as the excesses of migration policy, insensitive to the suffering of others and little concerned with respect for human rights. Between human rights and those of banks, it is the former which must prevail, he often said.
Let’s be clear: Dick Marty was a liberal Democrat, very attached to the concept of freedom. He often quoted an Italian philosopher, Roberto Bobbio: “There is no freedom without democracy, there is no democracy without freedom.” The common thread of all its action: a constant search for social justice and an ever stronger criticism of the current excesses of liberal democracy, accused of moving away from its fundamental and constitutional values. He did not spare his fellow citizens either, guilty of sometimes witnessing without reacting to this impoverishment and this distance from the rule of law.
Clearly, he said, “I believe that denouncing injustice, corruption and bad governance is not only a duty of every citizen, but an act of attachment to one’s country, to its population. , to the world in which we live. And he added that “democracy is a fragile construction which must be nourished, corrected, continuously supported by an active citizenry, the only one capable of preventing its excesses”.
Today, very concrete threats weigh on the democratic order: there are those who want ever stronger executives to the detriment of parliaments or other places of public debate. A certain extreme right exalts the power of the people as a form of legitimization of the power of the majority to the detriment of minorities. Dick Marty often repeated: “The people are not always right, sometimes they are wrong, there are many examples.”
Dick Marty leaves us a legacy of his reflections on the functioning of democracy, on ethics, on the essence of acting in politics, on its virtues but also on its excesses. He also leaves us the image of a courageous man, faithful to himself to the end. Today we have lost the man, let us try not to lose his ideas.
Article published in the Ticino daily The region
dated December 29, 2023, reproduced with kind permission
of the author. Translation by Florio Togni.
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