The battle raging about the conflict of interests has for some time seen Italia dei Valori stand out. The Centre Left in the previous legislatures did very little for the freedom of information in the country. The Gentiloni law is certainly not the solution but it would represent a signal the government is aware of the issues. It is certainly “criminal” to make the electoral reform subject to the acceptance of the Gentiloni law. Many times I have underlined the position of Italia dei Valori: that it will not betray its own voters, that the location for debating this, is and will remain the Italian Parliament and that the people to be involved are the parliamentarians.

I am publishing an interview given to today’s La Stampa about both of these topics:
La Stampa: Minister Di Pietro have you heard what Berlusconi said. The Gentiloni law is “criminal”?
Antonio Di Pietro: For those of us in Italia dei Valori it’s already a baseline. When we discuss it in Parliament we will try to make it significantly stronger. Anyway the draft law of the Minister of Communications both logically and politically, had to come before the discussion of electoral reform. Then the referendum came along, but for IdV {Italia dei Valori} the themes of incompatibility, of conflict of interests and of Berlusconi’s excessive TV power are priorities. We consider it to be nonsensical to sell off the law about the TV in exchange for a “yes” from Forza Italia to electoral reform.

La Stampa:Of the two, the most important…
Antonio Di Pietro:The electoral law is for the elections; to have elections without resolving the conflict of interests and Berlusconi’s TV power, would give rise to parliamentarians who would never do that reform as it should be done. Whether we like it or not, Berlusconi’s conflict of interests exists: no one wants to take away his right to do politics and to govern, if the majority of voters are behind him. However, first of all we want to give a minimum of democratic rules: either you can be a politician, or you can be an entrepreneur in the field of communications. And in any case, let us not forget that he is abusively using a channel that has been properly assigned to Di Stefano of Europa 7.

La Stampa:For you who have been a prosecuting magistrate, what’s the meaning of “criminal”?
Antonio Di Pietro:I think of classic crimes like robbery, extortion, … but for me it is politically criminal to do false accounting in a balance sheet, a law that has halved the time limits for “prescrizione” and the "ad personam" regulations.

La Stampa:But to safeguard the fragile dialogue between the two groups wouldn’t it be worthwhile to give up something, including Gentiloni?
Antonio Di Pietro: There’s no doubt that to have a dialogue about the rules of the game is something positive. And I appreciate Veltroni’s institutional sense of responsibility. We of Italia dei Valori are willing to have a 360 degree dialogue even to write the rules of the game together, but it’s not a question of taking a step back on principles of political ethics.

La Stampa:And are you not taking sides in relation to the electoral law?
Antonio Di Pietro: We were disconcerted when we read what Veltroni said to il Corriere della Sera: he said that Italia dei Valori will disappear even if the ideas survive. Well: to have the ideas of the rule of law (after the story of refuse in Campania) represented by the Democratic Party leaves me very perplexed. The Italians must be the ones to decide if IdV is a political force whose ideas must be represented and by whom. Does he want to get rid of us? We’ll see what the Italians say: we will present ourselves with our own lists at the next elections.

La Stampa:Well it depends on the electoral law who will be there. Is that not so?
Antonio Di Pietro: We don’t stand for being classified “little dwarfs”. First of all, because we are not, both in terms of numbers and in terms of proposals. Secondly, because we have collected signatures for the referendum: we are in favour of majority voting, for bipolarism, for prior indication of coalitions and of the candidate for the premiership, for a strong reduction of the number of parties. And we won’t be going to the discussions on electoral law to “save ourselves” by keeping the quorum low. We want a referendum, and we are against the Bianco proposal. We are getting organised to overcome the threshold at the next elections. At the next elections, Italia dei Valori will be present.

La Stampa:Even if that were to bring about the defeat of the Centre Left?
Antonio Di Pietro: We will not sell off our spirit to survive. We are not asking the Democratic Party for a safe haven, by imploring them to give us a tiny space on their lists. If the PD {Democratic Party} does a law aimed at putting us out of the game, let it be known that we will present ourselves and they will loose another million ad a half of the votes. In any case, we won’t be part of a coalition with the maximalist Left or with the pseudo-environmentalists.