Today I’ve given an interview to la Repubblica on Sposetti (Ds) and Tremonti’s (FI).proposal to have political foundations to finance the parties.

ADP: It’s a question of cleverness and self-interested thinking Not only will we of IdV vote against but we will start to ask ourselves, when we are asked to sign, where is the trick, and whether it is best to say to the current questioner “I want to see this clearly, so come back tomorrow.”

La Repubblica: The Sposetti Tremonti proposal is a surreptitious way of financing politics?
ADP: It’s another pearl that is inserted into the project that is scarcely noble and that sees all the parties across the board in agreement. Since they have to refill the coffers, they all get together to do laws that give a judicial covering to their anomalous behaviour.

La Repubblica: Is it the fact that it is a bipartisan operation what disturbs you most?
ADP: Like the pardon, it is an across the board activity, a bad operation that fortunately has been discovered, as also happened for the Fuda amendment, that cut the time limits on convictions for crimes. Behind the scenes there is a moral that is evident: apart from the arguments on TV, on the topics that relate to the survival of political personalities there is no difference between right and left. The parties find an agreement with the cunning idea to insert the regulation at the last moment in anomalous legal containers, in such a way that no one will notice.

La Repubblica: If it were to get to the vote, what would you do?ADP: We would vote against. But it will have no influence unless there is a strong protest from the citizens. Here we are risking a Bulgarian majority of 70-80 per cent. As we are a tiny party I am worried that yet again a thing like this will go unnoticed.

La Repubblica: The “Clean Hands” operation had no purpose then?
ADP: As can be clearly seen, it has been more of a hindrance than an advantage since in the end the result has been that the system has been “engineered” to get round the rules on public financing.

La Repubblica: In what way?
ADP: From the moment of the referendum, when the citizens rejected it, there has been a rush to have artificial interventions. Starting from the name. What was previously called financing, now is simply a reimbursement. Then there are the cunning points that were inserted on the way. Given that the second Republic can teach something to the first one where illegal financing was at least prosecutable as a crime. Now there’s the expedient: the parties get the State to give them money. It’s no longer illicit but it’s still immoral.

La Repubblica: What’s the basic anomaly?
ADP: Two examples: each time there’s an election, there’s a budget for expenses that covers the whole term of office even if it is interrupted before the end. It’s a cunning idea because the expense money gets summed. The expenses paid are calculated on the basis of every citizen who is eligible to vote and not on who has voted. As well as that, for each party there’s money for every group of people elected to the Houses of Parliament, to Europe and to the Regions. It’s a multiplication of the loaves and the fishes that multiplies the costs of politics by ten.