Dear politicians,

this time I’m the one sending a little letter to you. Yes, me, Santa Claus. No, don’t think that I do it on my own initiative, because I think about it every moment. In this period I have a lot to do, during the day opening envelopes sent from everywhere, then making parcels, and at night delivering everything. The reindeer sleigh, and who knows what I would pay for a van. I asked the other Santa Claus colleagues around the world but no one has taken it yet, they are all tied to tradition, they say it is our brand and woe betide anyone who undermines the brand…

Let’s get back to us. I am writing to you because in most of the letters I receive there are requests sent to me but actually addressed to you: that you work hard for peace, that you stop arguing, that you think of those who are really in need… As you can see, you are the real recipients, I can only turn around the wishes of ordinary people.

And since I also want to put my own spin on it, I asked myself what to ask you, what we would need to receive from you. The first answer that came to mind was that we would need politicians with a slightly long-sighted view of the space of a survey.

“The bad politician is the one who thinks about tomorrow, the statesman about the day after tomorrow” it was once said. Always true, very true today when in the age of speed and the ephemeral, where nothing remains and where what is today will not be there tomorrow (have you noticed: never have so many photos been taken as now but they are all photos destined within a year to dissolve into the nothingness of the next mobile phone purchased) we would need politicians who think without trying to chase the applause of the latest survey.

Politicians have the burden of making even unpopular choices

Politicians must take into account people’s moods because if you want to help people you must first listen to them, but then you must take on the burden of guiding them, even with less popular choices. The good politician is the one who deals with reality, without sugarcoating it as the citizen is inclined to do, partly by nature and partly because he has fewer tools.

People don’t want to hear about war, and instead don’t realize that we are already at war; people don’t want to hear about sacrifices on pensions, and instead don’t realize that a system that doesn’t take demographic data into account is destined to crash; people don’t want to hear that any public spend-and-spend system doesn’t hold up, and therefore rigor is needed, and above all that to distribute resources you need someone to produce those resources. Reality, this is the gift I ask of you. Get used to reality, get used to asking you to account for reality, give citizens a truthful speech.

The letter from a disappointed and very worried Santa Claus

A dream? Perhaps. Of course, in the pre-election year that is about to open, it won’t be easy, but it’s possible that if you don’t ask reality, reality will ask us. We citizens. If in the face of Putin’s aggression towards Europe we turn the other way and refuse to help Ukraine in the ways that Ukraine asks of us (money, weapons and who knows, in the future perhaps even peacekeeping forces) the bill to pay will be even more expensive.

If faced with a welfare system (of which pensions are only one aspect) we pretend that the population is not aging at a dizzying rate, in a few years we won’t have enough to pay for social security and young people will retire at 70. If we still have in mind a state welfare model of bonuses, tips and bribes and we don’t give a real boost to growth, public finances will soon start to rise again and the markets will present us with the bill that we don’t want to see.

Here, this is my little letter to you, to all of you. Majority and opposition, because in the end one reflects the other. The letter from a slightly disappointed and very worried Santa Claus. But who, precisely because he is Santa Claus, does not want to give way to the hope that something can change for the better.