14 July 2006

22 - The Tangentopoli Commission

I’m continuing to publish some questions and answers from the book "Intervista su Tangentopoli" published by Laterza and edited by Giovanni Valentini.

GV: What about the Parliamentary Commission on Tangentopoli, that we heard so much clamour about?
ADP: In the form it was originally proposed, it was the biggest political con trick of those years. Firstly, it wasn’t easy to see what use it could have: it was said that Parliament had to study the phenomenon but in fact the phenomenon was very well understood.
The truth is that they wanted to put the trials on trial, to put on trial the magistrates that had dared to investigate politicians. They wanted to investigate (and perhaps even accuse of having committed crimes) those who had investigated them.After the Lower House had already approved a text that would have been suicidal for the credibility of the institutions, luckily in the Senate they made certain modifications that put things back in place. This was also following my very firm stand and my public statements. But then this is why nothing actually was done.
GV: So in the end nothing was done?
ADP: No, considering that for the Berlusconian troops in Parliament the only reason they wanted the Parliamentary Commission on
Tangentopoli was to put the magistrates in a position of being accused.
Once the text of the draft law no longer allowed for that tool to be used, they allowed its parliamentary progress to finish.
And while doing this, among other things, they found friends also on the benches of the Centre Left, starting from the heirs of the Socialist Party. For the Sdi {Socialisti democratici italiani} members, this blessed Commission seemed to be the conditio sine qua non to give their support to the second D’Alema government.
This is why they made an enormous noise. But then, D’Alema went and Giuliano Amato arrived and the socialists became part of the government. They too managed to fit nicely into the comfortable armchairs of power and no one has talked about the Parliamentary Commission on.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli