These are fascinating but dramatic times says Mattarella

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 20 - These are fascinating times of great change but they are also difficult and troubled, especially for the youngest, President Sergio Mattarella said on Wednesday.
    "In one way, the times we are living through are fascinating, of great change; but they are also difficult, troubled, in many ways dramatic," said Mattarella during the traditional exchange of greetings with top public officials at the Quirinale Palace in Rome, citing the "post-pandemic, with the effects produced at all levels in our communities, from the human to the economic, social and psychological, especially on the youngest".
    "Meanwhile, social gaps are widening: new inequalities are being added to the old ones, in the fields of digital and knowledge," he continued.
    "And the huge wealth of the few jars against the hardship of the many, with a gap never before recorded in Italy or elsewhere.
    "If this is the present scenario, on what assumptions can we together look to tomorrow without giving in to anxiety but rather recovering a feeling of confidence in the future?" he asked.
    The distorted use of technology is a phenomenon that "must be regulated, necessarily and urgently, in the interest of the people, of citizens, but we know that this fundamental requirement encounters difficulties due to the size and power of conditioning of sector operators, whose presumption of becoming protagonists that dictate the rules, instead of being recipients of regulation, has already manifested itself on several occasions", continued Mattarella.
    "Never as at this particular turning point in human history has the boundary between good and evil, between justice and injustice, between true and false, depended on our choices, on our ability to read the change taking place in order to direct it ... under the guidance of the inalienable principles of our civilisation," said the head of state.
    "Nothing can be taken for granted. Peace above all. But also democracy, the values on which it is founded. Starting with the idea of freedom," he said.
    "It is to politics, to democratic representative institutions that choices and decisions affecting the social life and freedom of citizens must be entrusted, not to the strategies of large financial groups based on their interests, which must be respected, but within the framework of the rules they must observe in order to protect the fundamental values of civil coexistence," added Mattarella.
    "The Western cultural model, particularly the European one that has been built to safeguard these values, appears to be challenged.
    Therefore, countering that which can undermine our freedoms is, today, the priority task before us," he continued.
    "The ethical and civic foundations of democracy reside in the feelings of the community.
    "Fears can dampen the sense of solidarity and hence the desire for participation, they can weaken the trust needed for people to make themselves the architects of the future.
    "We cannot overlook the current worrying decline in voting participation, which is essential for the legitimacy of institutions," added Mattarella.
    The president also spoke out against gender-based violence.
    "The violence of men against women is intolerable," he said, adding that the "message of example" provided by "the many, widespread and valuable forms and initiatives of solidarity" is a "strong, effective contrast" but "often ends up being obscured in the media and social narrative". (ANSA).