“Yesterday was a delicate and important day because, before the Council of Ministers, there was a meeting between the Secretaries of the Parties in the Majority Coalition that is a check on the coalition. After the local elections, even though some pretend that it’s not true, in fact, many things have changed.
For us in Italia dei Valori, they’ve changed in our favour: we have tripled our votes, a demonstration that the politics of action has been appreciated.
From the viewpoint of the coalition, it was a Caporetto, especially for the Democratic Party that has halved the votes. Yesterday morning there was a discussion about how to go about relaunching the credibility of the coalition.
We also talked about the Visco affair: at the beginning it seemed as though the defendant was me.
You know the facts: After the national elections Visco asked for the transfer of four of the top officials in the Guardia di Finanza working on delicate investigations like Antonveneta, the attempt to take over il Corriere, Parmalat.
The polemics all came out now with the elections, but anyway we need to understand the motive for this transfer request. There’s need for an explanation. Not everything can be left in the dark.
We presented an motion to Parliament in which we asked for explanations or the resignation of the Deputy Minister Visco. At the beginning they derided us, then they got angry: yesterday morning that pointed out to us that it would have been possible for the Government to fall. I pointed out that the whole point is the credibility of the Government.
Thus the President f the Council was given the task of considering a solution and evidently, the arguments that I put forward were convincing if it is true, and it is true, that he accepted Visco’s resignation from responsibility for the Guardia di Finanza.
Then the Council of Ministers decided to remove the Commander of the Guardia di Finanza. Is the concept clear?
There’s a body, the Guardia di Finanza that feels it has been wronged and it denounces this, there’s an inquiry, everything is suspended and the person responsible for what was wrong resigns from that responsibility. But the Commander of that body is also transferred.
If it were a matter due to the break down in relations between the top level of the political structures and the top level of the Guardia di Finanza, you could understand it. But if it was a vendetta?
It wasn’t possible to transfer the people reporting to Commander Speciale so he himself was removed. We’ll wait and see. Italia dei Valori will be vigilant in relation to this affair.
In general, there’s another question: we in Italia dei Valori are loyal but we will not stay there just looking. We want total discontinuity with the politics of Berlusconi in relation to the Justice System.
Instead, the pardon was done; every day in the last 2 weeks, authorization to proceed against parliamentarians on the right or on the left, is denied; if we hadn’t noticed it they would have cut the penalty for bankruptcy in half, the measures on telephone intercepts have become censorship, in the conflict of interests there’s a regulation inserted to forbid the candidacy to convicts; false accounting has not been restored. The “ad personam” laws done by the Berlusconi Government are still there.
Basically we need to check up on things. Italia dei Valori can’t wait much longer for measures on these topics.
The Visco case is the latest in the area of a more delicate problem about the relationship between the magistracy and politics that the Centre Left has not changed in any way from that of the Centre Right. Do you remember the Abu Omar case?
The Milan magistracy is investigating that abduction, the Government says that it has declared State Secrecy when it’s not true, and at the Constitutional Court they accuse the magistracy of putting the pressure on!!!
Yesterday I made my voice heard and I said that I’m waiting for responses to understand if the path that Italia dei Valori wants to take is compatible with the coalition.
As I said, an initial response has come, and while we are waiting for the clarification which must come, Visco’s resignation from responsibility for the Guardia di Finanza, shows that he is a responsible person. We have withdrawn the motion in Parliament. We are now waiting for the motivation for the removal of Commander Speciale: we can’t accept a vendetta against him.”