Italian president urges reform in 2014 in New Year speech

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on Tuesday delivered a New Year speech, exhorting Italians to look at the future "with calm and courage" and calling for the implementation of "indispensable and urgent reforms" in 2014. "We are all aware of the social malaise and hardship citizens have been facing in time of crisis, and solutions must surely be given to them in 2014," Napolitano said. "Yet we are compelled to work out a wider reform agenda to give the country a long-range development." During the address, broadcast on TV at the presidential palace in Rome, Napolitano vowed to give more prominence to ordinary citizens' concerns. "Rather than comment on our current problems, I prefer to let citizens give voice to their feelings and worries," he explained, mentioning letters sent to him during 2013 from jobless people, small entrepreneurs, young students and workers. "A small entrepreneur, who is now out of business because of the economic crisis, wrote to me saying he is not afraid of making sacrifices to restore his life," Napolitano pointed out for example. "But he also said it is unfair only ordinary citizens make the sacrifices. All people should contribute their share, including the ruling class." "I totally agree with what the man suggested, because it is a fair purpose," the president said. "I have tried, within the limits of my institutional obligations, to underscore the necessity of political and social change in our country. I do believe Italy has the courage required to shake off the crisis," he said. "We need courage to raise ourselves again, to start over and to innovate." His eighth New Year address also marked an unprecedented occasion for Italy as never in the 68-year history of the republic has a president been asked to serve a second term and stayed longer than seven years in office. The veteran politician, 88, was overwhelmingly re-elected in April 2013, breaking a long deadlock among political parties who failed to agree on a new candidate in two months and failed to reach a coalition agreement after an inconclusive election in February. Napolitano reluctantly accepted the second mandate, then drove parties to agree on a coalition chosen by him, with center-leftist Enrico Letta as the prime minister. Napolitano has been very critical of any attempts to bring down or weaken the government. In his New Year address, he answered criticism from the opposition and from former comedian Beppe Grillo and his anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S). Beppe Grillo had invited all Italians to turn off their TV sets and not listen to the president's speech on Tuesday night. "I have never stepped out of line and I accepted my second term out of a sense of responsibility to my country only, given the risks of financial and political breakdown Italy faced in spring 2013," Napolitano recalled. "I would repeat now what I said then: I will remain president only as long as the country needs me and my strengths permit," he said. "I truly hope the New Year will allow us to see a recovery well underway and a reform, at least started, of our republican institutions," he added.