20 May 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."

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information