May 31, 2007

Russia and Human Rights

In Russia for some time now there is a worrying transformation with strong illiberal tendencies.
After the murder of Politkovskaja, of Litvinenko and of numerous dissidents abroad, numerous episodes like the attack on the computing infrastructure in Estonia, the arrest of the former chess champion Kasparov and other demonstrators in an airport, and finally the beating up and arrest of peaceful people last Sunday in Moscow, among whom were two of our parliamentarians, to the complete indifference of the authorities.
The problem of civil rights in Russia and the long-lasting presence of the military in Chechnya have to be examined with attention and severity by the European Community and by Italy that cannot underestimate what is happening for reasons of economic and energy opportunities connected to the import of gas from Siberia.
As soon as possible, our country in particular must start an energy policy connected to renewable sources, as far as possible in the short term, and to spread imports from more than one country so as not to be the victim of blackmail in the future, and so as not to be bartering energy with civil rights.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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Draghi and the Chinese Boxes

In the report he gave today, Mario Draghi, Governor of Banca d’Italia, pointed a finger at the complex organizational structures used by Italian companies quoted on the Stock Exchange, indicating pyramid structures as a cause of poor transparency.
It’s a situation to which there must be remedial action by modifying both the regulations relating to companies as well as those defining the operations of the Authority that regulates and controls the market As a Minister and as a representative of Italia dei Valori, I have emphasized in different circumstances the need to change the mechanism of the Chinese Boxes, to resolve conflicts of interest in the economy, and I like the Governor, see these always present in the mechanisms of contorted shareholdings.
For the umpteenth time, I repeat, that these are actions to be taken immediately, to avoid closing the stable door after the crafty ones have escaped. We need to supply the right protection to the market and to consumers.
It is exactly the constant reference to the protection of consumers that is an underlying theme of Draghi’s presentation.
Bank mergers will not be useful operations if the families, the clients and the small-scale shareholders don’t get the benefits.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Economy
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May 29, 2007

Local Elections

I want to thank the Italians who have given their vote to Italia dei Valori. In the Centre Left we are the only party to be rewarded by the voters and in certain cases our vote has been multiplied by 4. I believe that this has happened because of our commitment to face up to concrete topics like the development of the country and the security of citizens.
Two considerations on the local elections.
The first is that the party of abstentions is still stronger and the distance between the citizens and politics, on the right or on the left, is getting bigger, day by day.
The second is that the division between the North and South of the country, already evident in the national elections, is becoming more radicalized with autonomy pushes that could get out of control.
The government that I am part of has certain serious faults. It has not kept its promises in relation to justice, social reforms, election reforms. It has not had the courage that the voters were expecting. Basically it has not done politics.
After the Calderoli mess up, the Pardon, was the mess up of the Unione with the support of the Centre Right.
The Centre Left voters remembered that and stayed away from the polling stations. How many votes have we lost in using this law to protect administrators connected to the parties? Because that was the true objective of the pardon.
Recently there's been talk of the cost of politics all over. Italia dei Valori and specifically Franca Rame have been battling with this for years but in the past no other party has given us real support.
If we don't face up to this and other problems and if we don't change gear and direction for the country they will send us all home.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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May 24, 2007

Council of Ministers. The Visco case

Text:

"Since Friday is the last day of the election campaign, the Council of Ministers was held on Wednesday this week.
Before the Council, there was a meeting of CIPE, formed by certain Ministers who decide whether or not to finance, and thus to give the green light to, public works put forward by the various Ministries. Today I took the proposal for the Asti-Cuneo.
We resolved the agreement between public and private, the CIPE approved and therefore we have another step forward towards an infrastructure for which financing has been found and the rules of the game have been written clearly. In spite of those who accuse us of not doing infrastructure or of using unclear rules.
As you can see, we are working and acting in the interests of the citizens.
I want to talk about a draft law relating to Justice. One who has contributed to drafting it is the undersecretary Li Gotti, of Italia dei Valori. We have not merely said “no” but we have indicated the need for a series of basic regulations that therefore cost little, that can truly help the justice machinery.
Computing, the Internet, the system of notification and of recording the words, personnel for the offices, the use of practicing lawyers with the possibility to get experience and be effective help to the offices that are in need.
It’s a measure to which I add my signature willingly because it helps to unblock the current situation. Let’s hope that this time they don’t say that I’m always contrary: we are in favour of measures that help the justice system, and not those that obstruct it.
In relation to justice, allow me to talk about something that has nothing to do with the Council of Ministers but that is without a doubt provoking a certain tension in the majority.
I don’t intend to align myself with the preconceived defence of office and party lines. I’m referring to Visco and the Guardia di Finanza {Finance Police} and a fact that happened last year and that is causing discussions today at election time and that shows how it is used by the Centre Right.
Having accepted that however, the problem is different. Is the fact under discussion true of false?
Last year a few days from the installation of the government, the deputy Minister Visco, with a handwritten note, said to the General Command of the Guardia di Finanza to the Special Commander: “you must immediately transfer the Commander of the Regional Unit of Milan’s GdF, the Commander of the Income tax Regional Unit of the GdF, the Commander of the GdF Company and the Judicial Police Unit. GdF Commander”
The brains of the investigation unit of the GdF in Milan.
What were these people doing? They were collaborating in depth with the Milan Prosecutors, on such delicate investigations that fifteen days earlier they had received an award.
They were investigating Unipol, the Banca Antonveneta, the attempt to take over il Corriere and so on: the most delicate investigations in terms of finance and banking.
Why was there this request for transfers? “The request is not explained”, according to documents of the General Command at the Republic’s General Prosecutors’ Office in Milan.
In relation to this fact, we need to understand why the President of the Council was sent into Parliament to say that it was a normal happening.
It wasn’t. A normal procedure happens with the agreement of the interested parties, possibly after a series of proposals between the administrators and the people concerned.
They wanted these people to be sent away that day. The General Command, however, demonstrated its autonomy from politics and replied: “Explain why, or I will not do this” And that is what happened. Milan’s General Prosecutor of the Republic intervened and nothing was done.
After a year, during the elections, the affair has been brought up to be used. But the problem is completely political: The President of the Council was passed information to say that it was a normal happening. It could have been an error of judgement but it certainly was not normal.
In relation to all this I am saying that it was being used as an excuse and we know that, but we need to understand why they wanted to move these people. This is the question that I have asked and this is why they are putting me on trial once more. This is Italy."

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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May 23, 2007

Referendum, budging the system

I’m publishing an interview given to Il Sole 24 Ore and published today on page 17.

“Today the parties have to look beyond themselves, abandon the politics of blackmail that serves only to keep your own niche. The election referendum is the only antidote to Italy’s illness that is the partitocrazia.
The referendum is the only democratic tool, as in 1993, to give a shove to the political system. Antonio Di Pietro, leader of Italia dei Valori uses strong words to come into the ring in favour of an election referendum. He does this with a reflection on the widening feeling of hostility to politics.
And with a parallel between what is happening now and what happened in 1990, when he was the Prosecutor of Mani Pulite, the number one cause of the fall of politics. He says: “This time there will not be the judicial route: Tangentopoli is being carried on day by day. Worse than before, but there will not be another Mani Pulite because indifference is dominating.
The role of shoving the political system that the magistracy had 15 years ago can only now be taken over by the Internet.
There are blogs where hundreds of thousands of people meet up to talk about politics. A politician would not be able to get these into the streets.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Minister Di Pietro, the Italian illness is the electoral law, the return of the proportional?
Antonio Di Pietro: Yes, but let us not deceive ourselves that it will ever be changed by this political class. The election law that is changed by this Parliament can only be according to its own image and likeness.
Don’t ask a robber to give himself up to go to prison, biblical repentance has never been seen in politics.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Massimo D'Alema says that the wind of 1992 is blowing and that the political class is at risk of going home. What do you think?
Antonio Di Pietro: It’s an observation with foundation. But in these fifteen years, politics has had all the time in the world to regenerate itself at the level of the political personnel, to reconvert itself on an ethical level, to revitalize itself from the viewpoint of political action.
I have been in the government for a few months and I am in the action party. But all those who in these fifteen years have done politics on the left and on the right lament that politics has lost contact with the citizens, when they are the main cause of this landslide.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Is there still the moral issue?
Antonio Di Pietro: More serious than before. When Mani Pulite happened, it was a news item that many politicians were trapped with their hands in the marmalade and it caused indignation. Today there are still politicians with their hands in the marmalade but it no longer hits the news.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Who are you referring to?
Antonio Di Pietro: In the Lower House there are about 20 people who have been convicted and they should not have been candidates neither on the right nor on the left.
There is someone who has been convicted and has been declared out of Parliament , actually called Previti, but the President of the Lower House, called Bertinotti, hasn’t yet found a moment to say to him, “please stay outside”? Here there is transversal politics.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Are you thinking of any particular measure?
Antonio Di Pietro: I am shouting about this conflict of interests that Italia dei Valori will not vote for. We will vote NO. There’s no vote of confidence, we will not be obliged to accept anything uncomfortable.
The first article of this draft law should declare the ineligibility of the people who have been convicted.
The second article the ineligibility of those who use public goods as managers of services or concessions. It is a rigged competition if someone participates and is able to use public goods.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Are you pessimistic?
Antonio Di Pietro: Yes. Anyone who commits a crime, remains unpunished. From the citizens there is discouragement, sliding, apathy, indifference, lack of esteem. There can be only one democratic way out of all this.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Which is?
Antonio Di Pietro: The election referendum. It would change the cards on the table. It is a democratic weapon. Italia dei Valori, even though it is one of the parties that the referendum will make disappear, is in favour of this solution because in a moment that is so delicate you can no longer do a rearguard struggle to save parties and tiny parties. We need to shake off this despising of politics that is not the fault of politics but of the politicians who have spoken well and acted badly.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Examples?
Antonio Di Pietro: The other day in the meeting preparatory to the Council of Ministers a law was being discussed that reduced the sentence for bankruptcy and would send all the crimes committed by the local wide boys into the cut-off time frame.
We were talking about reducing waste and they were passing a law about the foundations of politics, if it hadn’t been for us in Italia dei Valori, it would have been another enormous cash box to milk funds from the State, and thus from the citizens, on behalf of the parties.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Will there be a new Tangentopoli?
Antonio Di Pietro: The whole of Tangentopoli is already here, but there won’t be another Mani Pulite. Because before there was a popular investigation that accompanied the investigations of the magistracy, whereas today there is acceptance and indifference from the citizens because nothing will change anyway.

Il Sole 24 Ore: So the judicial route to reform this time is excluded?
Antonio Di Pietro: The judicial route is happening every day, the magistrates are working, but it no longer hits the news. I believe that Geronzi has some problem with the justice system. But it doesn’t seem to prevent him from today being in all the newspapers with bank mergers. This is the same for the political class, the entrepreneurial class, for information.

Il Sole 24 Ore: The costs of politics are growing. Politics is even more of a job.
Antonio Di Pietro: Even this is absurd, to make politics into a job. A Local Councillor in Palermo gets 3-4 thousand a month. Politics has become a competition for a job. And these are costs for the institutions.
Then there are frightening costs of politics, starting with the financing of the parties. First there were the kick backs. Now a law has been made that makes it possible to get the same exorbitant sums of money as before
It’s enough to be in a group in the Regional Council and you get loads of money. Everywhere a justification has been created to make legal whatever is substantially immoral.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Has it become a system?
Antonio Di Pietro: This is the metamorphosis of the Tangentopoli of once upon a time, the engineering of the system. Before, crimes were committed to get immoral ends. Today acts are committed that are not crimes, but they are still immoral.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Is the Democratic Party helping political renewal?
Antonio Di Pietro: The Democratic Party is like a doctor’s scalpel. It can be used to put the citizen in contact with politics and above all to substitute the current political class.
If, however, it is only used to legitimize the current political class, it is the scalpel that the doctor uses when he wants to kill his wife.

Il Sole 24 Ore: You have created a new political grouping. Did you have difficulty in recruiting political personnel of the right level?
Antonio Di Pietro: Italia dei Valori and the Lega are the political parties that were created spontaneously by the citizens who go from protesting to responsibility. They get together and they go to the institutions. We and the Lega had a common objective: to change the generations in politics.
For a new political force, the critical thing is to avoid the recycled people and the opportunists. Up until the last elections, Italia dei Valori had to suffer this blackmail, but in the meantime we have found ourselves in the Internet world in a one to one relationship with all the citizens.
Our objective is to go beyond the traditional party to get to the virtual meeting place of the Internet that will allow us to dialogue directly and to recruit political personnel directly.

Il Sole 24 Ore: Will the Internet have a role in political renewal?
Antonio Di Pietro: It will be the end of the system of the parties. The more the Internet goes ahead the more the party system will become an empty box.
Today the citizen wants to talk directly with those they consider to be their employees: the politicians. The Internet will be the measure of bad information and it will resolve all the conflicts of interest.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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May 20, 2007

Council of Ministers. Conflict of Interests

Text:

"Council of Ministers 17 May, exactly a year from the beginning of the Prodi government; I’ve been Minister of Infrastructure for a year.
Minister Santagata handed us a document summarizing the numerous things that we have done: and I must say that collecting together all the initiatives of each Ministry, important work has been done.
Overall I am proud, even though perhaps, we have presented it badly and we have paid too much attention to what we haven’t managed to do, where we haven’t been able to agree.
In relation to this, I’ll tell you a story that happened yesterday, a delightful exchange of words between Mastella and D'Alema. Mastella warns D'Alema to be watchful on the writing of the electoral law, otherwise, you know what Mastella does every day, he would resign. D'Alema replied: “You laugh, but if the government changes it’s you, not me who won’t be here any longer.”
Poor Clemente, this time had to lower his head.
This is a joke, but it just shows how with the electoral law a great game is being played out and there’s tension and division between the parties.
The referendum supporters are doing a good thing to collect signatures, because I have the impression that without this initiative the parties will not alter the electoral law, even because it’s necessary to establish that the citizens must choose the candidates and you understand that in a parliament in which many have chosen themselves it’s difficult to get a law passed that organises their political death. Then we approved a draft law on the reform of the RAI.
A very important draft law to which I have asked for certain modifications. It was established that it would not be possible to be a member of the Board of Directors of the RAI Foundation if you are a parliamentarian, and I asked “why not also the members of the government?”
It’s a draft law that can and must be improved but that indicates a moment of discontinuity of the current situation, a great parceling out, that makes public information one sided and incomplete.
We have talked about one thing: A draft law that the Minister of Justice wanted to present but that we stopped at the pre-Council. Taking a lead from a framework law of the Berlusconi government, it would have reduced the sentences for the crime of bankruptcy.
If this proposal were to be applied, all the trials like the one for Parmalat, Cirio and other similar ones would end up out of the time frame.
You can imagine how we reacted. First we must shorten the time frame for trials, then possibly the length of the sentence.
We can’t continue to penalize the consumers and the small-scale shareholders who have already been swindled.
Furthermore, you can’t think about this law without deciding what to do about false accounting.
Berlusconi reduced the sentence and many episodes have got timed out. We want to bring back the old type of sentence and its application. Yesterday as I was saying, all that was not discussed because we managed to reject that law proposed by Mastella.
As a Minister and as a member of Italia dei Valori I am proud to have done my duty, as is my commitment to the electorate. I still have to understand if I am just the Minister of a government or also the watch dog of the coalition programme: every time they talk of justice if you don’t watch out there’s always something happening.
Finally the conflict of interests. As you know Parliament is discussing this, while the Council of Ministers doesn’t have to deal with it and thank goodness, that way they can’t ask for the vote of confidence. We in Italia dei Valori are going to take this battle to the bitter end, because we cannot vote for this law.
What we are asking Parliament to be able to vote for it, is that there are 3 articles that are absent right now: the first is the ineligibility of those who have not resolved conflict of interests 6 months before the elections.
If you have a public concession, for example in the field of information, just incompatibility does not resolve the problem as you have already used your media to get yourself elected.
Six months before the elections you have to renounce the conflict of interests and compete with your opponents on an even footing. Secondly, the ineligibility for those who have been convicted, otherwise whoever is elected can produce laws to avoid the consequences of their own crimes. In recent years we have seen a mix of everything.
Thirdly, incompatibility for government positions. If you want to be a Minister or the President of the Council, you can do so if you give up the ownership of activities that are not in line with these positions. How? Either you sell or by means of a blind trust, that cannot be an Italian-style blind trust: it’s not true that if you entrust your property to someone else that then you don’t know anything about it.
If you put it in the hands of someone you trust, they are always going to give you bits of information and you can give indications about how to manage it.
Thus the management of the activity must really be handed over to a third party. As you can see, things go on and we are managing to improve and reject things when necessary.
An extra reason I’ve found to still be here after a year: it’s worth it, because if we hadn’t been here there would have been many more actions emulating the politics of the centre right."

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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Parmalat and throwing in the sponge

Today, as a guest of Dr Bondi, I was at Parmalat. Here is the text of my speech

“Parmalat is a company that is growing in terms of profits, receipts and its net financial position that is now back in the black with profits of 87.4 million euro as reported in the most recent quarterly declaration which is very good.
Its shares have been appreciated by investors and they have reached 3.3 euro compared to 2 euro at the end of 2005, almost doubling in value.
Thanks for this situation must be given to the Administrator, Dr Enrico Bondi and to the management and to all those who have believed in the future of a company that seemed finished.
I would like to call to mind that Parmalat represented the biggest financial collapse of any company in Italy. A collapse that could be foreseen in the balance sheets, just by looking at them. The responsibilities are of the whole system.
Where were the controls of the banks that placed Parmalat bonds with their clients up until a few days before the collapse? Where was Consob and the Bank of Italy?
All they had to do was make a public denunciation with evidence to back it up, as they had all the elements of the analysis, to stop the destruction of the savings of tens of thousands of small investors.
The Parmalat scandal, together with others that have followed, has had significant effects in the loss of credibility of the country in relation to abroad.
Italy is in the last position for foreign investments and the reason is not the presumed interference of the government, as has been hurriedly affirmed by our monopolists without money, but it is due to the lack of rules, of checks, of attention to policies, to financial information that is crystal clear and understandable to citizens.
Italia dei Valori has confidence in your company and in the reform of the Stock Exchange and the Consob with the introduction of true governance rules to protect the market.
I just want to mention a series of situations that give rise to the lack of trust of investors, to bankruptcies, to income from position, to the destruction of value.
The mechanism of Chinese boxes with the possibility to control a company without having the majority shareholding and often with laughably small percentages with the transfer of dividends of 90/100%, dividends that are taken away from investments and employment.
The blatant and widespread conflict of interests in which what is controlled and what is controlling have the same people in the Boards of Directors of the companies, even present as managers.
In whose interests are they acting, these Directors? Always in the interests of the one that controls. And the small shareholders of the company being controlled just take note of their losses.
Stock options are a true means of stripping down a company in favour of the few and not in favour of all those who create the value.
The lack of governance rules to protect the small shareholders and the basic impossibility on their part to group together because of the current rules.
The political system is responsible for this situation with pardons, false accounting, decriminalization, prescrizione. With a bitter taste in my mouth I have to say that politics is more often on the side of the institutionalized thieves than on the side of the citizens.
The most recent example is the draft law that would have seen a reduction in the maximum penalty for the crime of fraudulent bankruptcy from 12 years to 6 years.
This law would have seen the absolution of people like Tanzi and Cragnotti thanks to the reduction of the system of legal time frames that came in with the ex-Cirielli law. Italia dei Valori for the moment has managed to block its passage. But we are alone.
Parmalat has still not concluded its trials but I personally want to assure Dr Bondi and the citizens who are making the civil claim, that they have my complete willingness to be available.”

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Economy
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May 17, 2007

Luigi Calabresi, 35 years on

I’m publishing a letter from Luigi Li Gotti, Undersecretary for Justice in Italia dei Valori, for the 35th anniversary of the death of the commissioner Luigi Calabresi.

“At 9:15 on 17 May 1972, in via Cherubini, Milan, the police commissioner Luigi Calabresi was killed.
The assassin attacked him by exploding two pistol shots to the neck and the back while the young commissioner was in the process of opening the door of his Fiat 500.
The people convicted for that crime were Ovidio Bompressi (the actual killer), Leonardo Marino (driving the get-away vehicle), Adriano Sofri and Giorgio Pietrostefani (the brains behind the crime).
This homicide was one of the murkiest pages of political terrorism in Italy. Luigi Calabresi had had death threats for years but he continued to perform his duties at the service of the State, the Law and the citizens.
The shameful lies written against him have a well identified source that is not denied.
In fact it was Adriano Sofri who wrote shameful and macabre texts.
The young commissioner was accused of being responsible for the death of Giuseppe Pinelli.
The magistracy ascertained that when Pinelli fell from the room on the fourth floor of the Milan Police Station, Calabresi was not even present.
In spite of that the newspaper Lotta Continua, directed by Adriano Sofri wrote that the absence o f Calabresi from that room had little importance and that the commissioner was anyway responsible to such an extent that his death was decreed.
The hate campaign did not end with the death of Luigi Calabresi because, for years and years, his name and his memory have been blurred by numerous so-called intellectuals and politicians.
Today the State and the institutions are reviving his memory and 35 years later, Milan is solemnly remembering his sacrifice.
Italia dei Valori bows when remembering an honest man, a loyal and faithful servant of the State.
Luigi Calabresi belongs to the history of our country and is an example of a great Italian.
That’s how we intend to remember and honour him.”

Luigi Li Gotti

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Justice
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May 16, 2007

Immigration Law

Today a public service bus travelling near Novara was hijacked. A police officer was injured and the bus was set on fire. The people who did this were 3 non-Europeans. It’s the umpteenth episode that can be put down to ungoverned immigration and that first damages the immigrants who have gone through all the procedures.
A foreigner who commits crimes or who comes into Italy without going through the procedures must be immediately repatriated.
They must serve their criminal sentence in their own countries. Up until now the laws that have been produced have created insecurity among the citizens, and that will continue until there is application of the principle that whoever comes into Italy must observe the laws without any discussion.
The “be nice to everyone” and “wait-and-see” attitudes of certain parties in the government and in the opposition are generating in public opinion, a refusal to accept foreigners. Rules must be changed before intolerance and racism spread more.
Every day there are news items on the front page about crimes committed by foreigners-without-papers and stories of new boatloads arriving.
It’s obvious that things can’t continue like that for long.
The law must be changed. Anyone who is stopped because they are clandestines cannot then be released with a written instruction to leave.
They should be expelled and repatriated immediately. No more and no less than happens in most western countries.
There’s no point in sending troops to Afghanistan if we cannot first guarantee our national borders.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Justice
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May 15, 2007

Speech to the Rome Conference

Text:

Conferences, party get-togethers, moments of dialogue with other political forces, are important, but only in so far as they are dealing with concrete things, discussing the priorities of the country and they take decisions in the interests of the citizens. On the side of the citizens, this is our commitment.
We would like citizens to have more money available for both development and for solidarity.
For this to happen we need more money to come into the coffers of the State, this is why the fight against tax dodging is the prime commitment that Italia dei Valori has to put in its governing plan and that it needs to be supported by its allies.
Fighting tax-dodging also means opportunity. What we are asking for and we continue to ask for is to make it possible to deduct from the taxed sum all the expenses, so as to place the buyer on a par with the seller.
It’s not possible that even today, the seller asks “with or without invoice?”. The current regulations induce crime on this point, because both parties have an advantage if there’s no invoice and they save. We must make it an advantage for the one who buys to have an invoice. The only way to do this is for them to be able to deduct it from taxes.
I have talked about economic policies, of fiscal policies, of the vitality of the entrepreneurial system, of the commitment of Italia dei Valori to regulate natural monopolies, of the need for commitment for true competition that means giving everyone the same starting basis.
I have talked to you of the need to safeguard the strategic networks so that the country functions. But there is the risk of liberal extremism that is transforming the liberal model into a feudal model in which the only ones that win are the strongest, the most arrogant and the “local wide boys”.
Where it is suggested that the market is the only way to govern the economy. And yet that is not so.
We want to start off with a fact. Once the threshold of the year 2000 passed economic liberism has won out against the Soviet communism, but from the moment it won, it risks producing even more serious anomalies if they are not corrected in time.
We believe in a free market economy, in liberal democracy and we believe that our freedom finishes where the other’s ends. However, we believe that freedom does not mean arbitrariness and above all that freedom must not kill off solidarity.
This is why Italia dei Valori is placed at a European level, and is an integral part, in that liberal democratic area that in the European Parliament sees us with other parties, in the ELDR, who want to put together a liberal economic development model and a social solidarity model that does not abandon the weakest social classes.
The Internet will do for information what Totò’s leveler did: put everyone on an equal footing.
The Internet, the global information system, will allow everyone to talk with the rest of the world and for everyone in the world to talk to everyone else.
Our children will have the capacity, the intelligence, the courage, the strength to be participants themselves in information and through that in a direct and participated democracy.
This is why, as a citizen and as a party representative I am not afraid. I challenge modernity. We are the first to do so. And we are accepting the opportunities that are available through the Internet.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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May 12, 2007

No throwing in the sponge on Bankrupts

Today the Council of Ministers, at my request, has not examined the draft law for the reform of penalties for bankruptcy.
It is a draft law to which I am firmly opposed as far as it has the reduction of the maximum penalty for certain crimes like fraudulent bankruptcy.
It would be really serious to reduce the sentences because that would mean an automatic shortening of the terms of the prescrizione {time frame for delivering judgement}.
The effect would be that trials relating to scandals like that of Cirio and Parmalat would almost certainly not take place.
This is a result that we cannot allow ourselves. Italia dei Valori wants to give back to the citizens a just, efficient and credible justice system and I will never vote for discounts on the sentences for bankrupts who have ruined thousands of families.
This is why I have formally requested the elimination of that part of the draft law that sets out lower maximum sentences than those currently in existence
The time that we have available before the text is examined by the Council of Ministers must be used to change this so that automatic “time-outs” can be avoided.
If this doesn’t happen I will express my opposition to its approval.
As well as that, there is still the problem of false accounting that was decriminalized by the previous government.
In this case as well, I have placed a formal request to the law offices in Palazzo Chigi that the draft law should have provision for restoring the regulations that punish false accounting as a crime that can be investigated automatically and with adequate sanctions and time limits.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Justice
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The new RAI

Padoa Schioppa, the Minister of the Economy has withdrawn his support from his representative on the RAI Board of Directors and he has asked for a shareholders meeting to be called.
This is a legitimate act by a legitimate representative of the Government, whatever is said by a part of the opposition that serve the interests of Mediaset.
Padoa Schioppa has expressed the wish that RAI comes out of its state of stall in which it finds itself and Italia dei Valori agrees with this position.
The reform of the RAI and of the radio and TV market can wait no longer. Innovation, efficiency, independence from political decisions, meritocracy and internationality must be the passwords of the new RAI.
The market must be removed as soon as possible from the logic of the current duopoly with advertising revenues that in fact finance the opposition.
Finally the RAI should quickly integrate TV and Internet to recover the ground lost in recent years. The RAI needs new competent and capable managers who can tackle the challenges of globalisation and of innovation.
I hope that Padoa Schioppa’s requests and the forthcoming draft law on the radio TV system to be presented by Gentiloni to the Council of Ministers can produce these results.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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May 11, 2007

True Information

It’s under the eyes of everyone, as far as information is concerned, Italy is a country that is partially free. This reality must be changed and it must be changed now.
The first right of citizens is to be correctly informed in such a way that they can judge and make choices. A right that today is often denied.
It is necessary to have a redesigning of the Italian radio and TV system to protect the principle of free information and to allow the transformation of the private broadcasters into companies with shares held by a wide shareholder base, without owners to refer to.
The Internet is the future of information. Information that comes from the grassroots, the spread of fast connections, new technology like WiMax are the areas in which the Italian System must invest to guarantee free access to knowledge.
From the month of June in Milan, Italia dei Valori is starting a series of public events with stands and seminars about True Information.
The points we put forward to start off a true change in information are:

1 Guarantee the rights of citizens to be informed correctly, so that they can judge and make choices
2 Total separation between politics and those who own information media
3 Prohibition on companies, groups or individuals to control information media at a national level.
4 Invest in innovative Internet technologies
5 Eliminate subsidies to publishing
6 Exit from the RAI-Mediaset duopoly to allow the presence of other bodies
7 Liberalisation of the TV frequencies, reviewing how they are assigned on the basis of criteria of fairness and freedom of information
8 Fair redistribution of advertising and thus eliminating the current RAI-Mediaset duopoly
9 Defining and putting into place rules to evaluate the moral and professional integrity of journalists.
10 Make the RAI independent of politics and without advertising
11 Redefine the public TV structures to guarantee the quality of the contents, and bringing Culture and Information into the early evening slot.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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May 09, 2007

Put a Stop to Political Foundations

I’m publishing a letter from Silvana Mura, of IdV, about Political Foundations.

“The attempt to create Party Foundations that failed thanks to the opposition of Italia dei Valori, is an example of how the parties try on every occasion, to increase their receipts at the expense of the State and the citizen.
In this case they tried in the worst way by inserting into a law that has nothing at all to do with foundations, an amendment to set them up. All this with the agreement of both the majority and the opposition.
The happening took place in the Lower House at the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and the draft law was 1667.
The draft law aims to move the established time frame for the request for electoral expenses that is paid to the parties after the elections. This allows all the political groupings to present their requests at the right time.
One of the amendments presented for this law established the creation of political-cultural foundations
These would have been able to get public money and use personnel of the public administration, who would then have been given leave of absence. Not just that. If these personnel were then to be promoted and get salary increases these benefits would have been valid even when they returned to their positions in the public administration. Finally, there’s a point that explains the true aim of this amendment.
On the one hand it is said that it is not possible for the foundations to transfer money to the party to which they belong. But on the other hand they are allowed to transfer goods and services to the parties. Thus it is a question of what is called in accounting language transfer of funds, and for the citizens this would have been a way of taking them for a ride.
Italia dei Valori has nothing against foundations, but it is against them if they are to be paid for by the citizens. Considering that the parties already take a mountain of money with election expenses it’s certainly not the thing to give them more. This time their game did not succeed because Italia dei Valori made the affair known to the public who very rightly were indignant.
When faced with the protests of the citizens and fearing the unpopularity that would have resulted, the parties took a step back and after freezing the examination of the law for a good two months, the amendment was definitively withdrawn.”
Silvana Mura

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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May 07, 2007

On the side of the citizens

I’m publishing a summary of a speech I gave to Italia dei Valori’s National Planning Meeting in Rome on 5 May.

“The party conferences are important, but only as long as they deal with concrete issues, discussing the priorities of the country, and are basically referring to the citizens.
“On the side of the citizens” is the slogan that Italia dei Valori has chosen to go with its political action.
The distance that today separates the voters from the parties is an abyss. The task of politics is to close up this distance that unfortunately, is growing bigger over time.
The formulae, the groupings, the new formations, the alchemies on electoral laws are not politics. They are a self-referencing exercise, a way of avoiding the real problems of the country to deflect the attention of the public.
The electoral law that is currently in place is a real expropriation of the role of the citizens. The party secretaries and not the voting public, have chosen the members of the Lower and Upper Houses.
This law should have been cancelled immediately. That didn’t happen. And if for a series of circumstances, we go back to the vote tomorrow, once more we will have a Parliament that does not mirror the country.
A Parliament that is in fact de-legitimized, an expression of the party secretaries. One reason for the decadence of the country is the partitocrazia that has occupied every possible position in the institutions, even the voting booth.
In Parliament there are 25 convicts. I believe that they are a very bad example for a nation in which you need a clean criminal record to be a school caretaker or a police officer. The new election law must make sure that such people are not eligible.
Since the elections, we have not had the strength, or perhaps the will, to immediately eliminate the previous government’s “ad personam” laws on justice.
It was a promise made to the voters who instead have had to endure even the law on pardons, voted through in great haste and during the summer period, as though it were Parliament’s absolute priority, while most of the Italians didn’t want it.
The position on justice was one of the principal points of our election campaign, of Italia dei Valori and of the Unione. A year and a half after the elections, we can say that up until now we have been playing around.
Let’s hope that we can recover in the continuation of this legislature by supply the magistracy with the means and the resources that they absolutely need and by reaffirming the certainty of the penalty of which every trace has been lost, and by abolishing the “ad personam” laws
The privatizations have not worked. I believe that economists and politicians agree on this.
It’s not an accident that in the past year there has been discussion concerning Autostrade and Telecom Italia more in financial terms than in industrial ones. These are two cases in which the State, granting the concessions, has not set down ‘a priori’ rules that protect the citizens and the market.
For Telecom, separating the telephone backbone from the services, for Autostrade, the connection between an increase in toll charges and the true investments in the network that had been agreed.
All this has been aggravated by the presence of the Chinese boxes that allow financiers without patrimony to become owners of the companies, by the possibility to buy companies by plunging them into debt, by the presence of the conflict of interests, in which the buyer and seller are the same person in two different Boards of Directors.
The reform of the Stock Exchange is an emergency which has to be tackled if we want Italian and foreign investors to come back.
The concessionaires of public goods must always remember that the one conceding the activities is the State and that their role is one of service, above all to the users and then the one of dividends and stock options.
The government, definitely as regards my Ministry, will act in such a way as to protect the citizen-users, to make sure the agreements are respected, and if necessary, to bring in improvements. Straight away or later.
In fact we can’t just stay and watch. If regulatory measures don’t work or are not there, we have to change them, create them. The State exists even for this.
In Italy, work is ever more dangerous and precarious. Italia dei Valori is committing itself from this moment, with a proposal to modify the Biagi law, to change things.
The Biagi law has been casually applied by many companies who have misused it. They have transferred the entrepreneurial risk onto the workers.
It’s not possible that there are companies with 70/80% of precarious workers and with most of the “project work” invented to get round the law.
We will propose a limit of 10% on the use of precarious workers in the companies and a greater rate of pay for the precarious workers, for the same activity, in relation to the pay of the permanent workers.
The slaughter going on in the building sites is an internal war to which we have to give maximum visibility and to tackle as a crime, even closing down those companies that put their workers in conditions of maximum risk. Today the compensation payments to the families of those who have died at work are laughable. And on this point as well, Italia dei Valori is committed to changing the situation.
Italia dei Valori has been fighting for the reduction of the cost of politics and for the efficiency of the Public Administration. And it will continue to do so. The costs of politics must go down. In some cases it’s even a matter of decency.
In fact it’s not possible to ask citizens to make sacrifices and to impose new taxes if the parliamentarians have salaries that are the highest in Europe. It’s not possible to talk of increasing the pension age with members of the Lower House that get the right to a pension after 2 and a half years.
It’s a question of credibility of politics. Information in Italy has been defined as “semi-free”
Certainly there are problems of concentration, of conflict of interests and of public financing. Without independent information it’s not possible to talk of complete democracy.
The current TV duopoly prevents the development of a real debate and blocks the advertising market. A really serious situation if you consider that the leader of the opposition controls the private TV channels.
This is an anomaly that the current majority promised to tackle immediately and on which we all, including Italia dei Valori, are waiting for true responses and not warm flannels.
Finally, it is our intention to abolish public financing of newspapers. This will mean a saving for the citizens and information that flows slightly more freely.
“On the side of the citizens” must not be a slogan, but a continuous visible political action, in contact with people.
This is why we have started two initiatives with the support of the IdV structures throughout the territory: one for Citizen Health and one for Freedom of Information.
They are initiatives that start in Milan and that will travel to the main cities of Italy, with stands, surveys and online interaction through our site and through my Blog.”

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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Council of Ministers. European Expropriation

Text:

"Today an important decision was taken by the President of the Council. Having heard the opinion of the Council of Ministers, he gave the authority to the Minister of Justice to make sure that the reasons of the Italian State and of the Italian Magistracy are given value against the attempt by some members of the European Parliament to go against the decisions of our justice system.
What I am saying is delicate, but it is what is happening, when political battles are carried out on the head of the people with the laws being trodden underfoot, it can happen that two important institutions like the Italian State and the European Parliament come into conflict.
I’ll tell you the story.
Two years ago, there were the European elections and Italia dei Valori was one of the parties presented. We gained two seats. I was elected and I had to choose which area to opt for. I chose the South and the seat for the North went to Giulietto Chiesa.
As well as myself, Achille Occhetto was elected and at that time he was a member of the Upper House. The law does not allow you to sit in the European Parliament and in the Italian Parliament and obliges the interested person to opt for one of the two positions.
Occhetto chose the Italian Parliament.
After the last national elections, I too had to choose and I decided to leave the European Parliament. To whom should my seat go?
Occhetto put himself forward, forgetting that he had already decided differently. Another person had the right to come in in my place, Beniamino Donnici. An argument followed and this gave rise to a trial.
Now the trial has come to an end and what does everyone say? We must respect the decisions. The decision of the Council of State, in Italy, decided in favour of Donnici and Italia dei Valori, not Occhetto and the Cassation Court definitively confirmed the decision.
The Italian electoral office took note of the decision and Donnici took his place in the European Parliament last week.
Yesterday the Judicial Commission of the European Parliament, whose leader, notice, is the Honourable Gargani of Forza Italia, decides to not accept the credentials of Donnici saying that the electors chose Occhetto, thus treading on the decision of the Italian judges and the Italian Institutions.
Can you understand what an enormous problem has been created? There are two institutions in conflict.
A European body cannot annul the decision of a judge. The decisions are to be made by the Italian institutions.
If it were to happen it would be really serious because it could create a short circuit between two important institutions, the Italian State and the European Parliament.
And thus it is obvious that the President of the Council and the Minister of Justice have the duty to intervene with the European institutions to denounce that they are treading on the rights of a Member State because of a political battle.
In fact, this gentleman from Forza Italia has put the issue to the vote and do you know who voted with him? The DS, or rather that part of the Democratic Party that makes reference to the DS. Do you know who voted against? The Margherita.
The moral is: the technical rehearsal of common activity for the Democratic Party have seen the DS and Margherita. accusing each other, in particular the European Parliamentarians of the DS have made an agreement with Forza Italia to exclude Italia dei Valori in violation of the decision of the Italian judiciary and the sovereignty of the Italian State. The political fact is serious and very delicate.
I brought the issue to the Council of Ministers as the issue relates to the whole country, not my party.
After a full discussion, the President of the Council authorised Minister Mastella to claim the rights and the sovereignty of Italy.
By 10 May an official note must arrive at the European Parliament defending the rights of sovereignty, of jurisdiction, of the rights of Italy against the intrigues and the transversal agreements of politics that in certain cases, overturn the decisions of the judges, not for the good of justice but for the interests of the groups."

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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May 04, 2007

The law on intercepts

I’m responding to the many emails I’ve received about the approval of the Mastella decree relating to telephone intercepts.
We considered it necessary to take this measure to regulate the use and what is often mis-use of intercepts.
Our vote in favour of the measure was out of a sense of responsibility since it is very evident that there is the need to protect anyone who is involved in intercepts but completely unconnected to the investigation.
Just as we considered the issue of safeguarding the use of intercepts as a necessary method of investigation and one that has no substitute.
We believe that the measure is substantially good in the general structure and that in specific parts there are margins for improvement.
We hope that modification can still be made in the Upper House so that there is a greater balance between the protection of the right to information and the protection of Privacy.
Italia dei Valori has fought mainly to avoid the measure moving in a direction of excessive penalties, as regards penalties for journalists and we opposed a term of imprisonment of up to 3 years as was requested in an amendment by AN and FI.
Another battle that the party has taken ahead is about the so-called “illicit” intercepts which will not be destroyed if they are part of the forensic evidence, considered useful to the investigation, they will be kept in a reserved archive that can be accessed by the leader of the investigation.
And finally, still on the norms relating to the profession of journalists, we have tried to protect people who live in definitely worse physical or social conditions.
Thus for these people if a news item is published about them and it is not useful to the investigation, the authorities can oblige the newspaper to repair the damage with an explicit admission in their publication of the gratuitous and unfounded fact about which they gave out information.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Justice
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May 02, 2007

May Day

Today is the feast of the workers. This event, rather than to be celebrated is an occasion for reflecting on the conditions in which the world of work finds itself.
There are at least two problems to be tackled: those who have died at work and those with precarious contracts.
The government is committed to reducing the number of accidents at work with more resources, a more effective measure would be to have laws that are more severe.
The entrepreneurs, however, have to do their bit.
The widespread use of precarious contracts, due to a free and easy application of the Biagi law by many companies, has not had, for now, the same attention with adequate legal proposals.
The Biagi law, was created to make it easier fro young people to enter the world of work but it has often been used to increase the company’s profits and reduce the costs and the risks associated with taking on a permanent employee.
In fact, how is it possible that there are companies with 90% of their workforce on precarious contracts and with work projects that are simply invented?
It’s a situation that exploits and marginalizes people and has an impact on the economy. In fact who would give credit to a precarious worker?
And with what spirit can a precarious worker invest in their future?
It’s not possible to form families without a minimum of social security.
Italia dei Valori, as we have already promised, will do what is possible to get the government to improve the Biagi law and make it more balanced in favour of the worker.
Furthermore, during the month of May, Parliament will put forward a proposal to modify the law.
The idea of precarious working has come into the world of work like an illness. It has to be stopped before it becomes endemic.

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Work
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May 01, 2007

The SME Trial

The SME trial decision shows that the judiciary is not getting tough in relation to Berlusconi. The action of the Milan prosecutors has been legitimate and dutiful because the fact is true, considering that for the same episode other people, intimate connections with the defendant who has been acquitted, have been convicted, even though not in a definitive way because of a last-minute decision to send the case to the Cassation Court.
I’m referring to Cesare Previti. If there is someone who has used the investigation for political motives, I want to understand who that is.
In recent years, the true victim of instrumentalisation has been the magistracy, and in particular the Milan magistrates. They have been subject to political pressure from other institutions, particularly from Parliament who in past years has created “ad personam” laws each time they were of use to their members.
As regards an evaluation of the merits we are talking about a fact which turns out to be true because on appeal Previti was convicted for having carried out that crime in the name of and on behalf of Berlusconi. But in effect it has been admitted that on the right and on the left, this case has been made use of, even though it should have remained a judicial case.
But in this way only Berlusconi’s game has been played. He managed to do what he had in mind from the beginning. And that was to throw the affair into the political arena making out that the judicial case was a political battle, while in fact it was only a personal confrontation with the justice system.
Once he was under investigation, Berlusconi had two options open: run to the magistrates to prove his innocence, and the case would have been closed in a few months. Otherwise fight with them and try to put off the decision for as long as possible. He chose the second route.
Leaving the trial documents to the history books, the moral is that the institutions have come out of it defeated. They are because, when there are acquittals, as in the case of Berlusconi, the investigating magistracy becomes criminalized.
And when, on the other hand, there are convictions, as in the parallel case of IMI-SIR, the one who is convicted, and here I’m talking once more of Previti, he’s not paying the consequences. Considering that he should no longer be a member of the Lower House, and yet, almost a year after his conviction, he is still in Parliament.

(*) text of an interview with il Corriere della Sera

Postato da Antonio Di Pietro in Justice
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