18 January 2008

No to the vote market

I would like to tell you exactly what I think regarding the Mastella case, Campania politics and much more still.
At the time of the First Republic, in order to finance its activities, politics resorted to using a system of bribery, in other words, illicit funding paid either to the parties or directly to the politicians themselves. In exchange, favours were handed out, such as for example, the awarding of tenders, favourable jobs and high-powered appointments, especially in the business environment. However, there was at least one thing wrong with this system, in that it was not always the best companies that were awarded the tenders and the parties, having funds at their disposal, were in a position to achieve greater electoral success, even though their policies were no better than those of the other parties.
During the time of the Second Republic, namely the one following the so-called “Tangentopoli” corruption scandal, the system was further refined. Crimes were no longer committed, however, the power was physically obtained by directly taking power in the public offices and various administration bodies and doling out positions and roles to cronies and friends, so that these people could then control the so-called vote market.
Bribes are no longer paid systematically as they were at one time because, if these bribes were intended at the time, to be used to finance the party, while now, by placing the right people in the right posts, they would then be able to convince all the employees that act and interact with these “right people” (chairmen of the various divisions of ASL, heads of public offices, and so on) to vote for the party that they represent. And here, therefore, we make assumptions galore.
Consider the matter of waste disposal in Campania, which has the highest number of street sweepers, as well as the highest level of dirt.
In situations such as this, the problem is not so much a judicial one. Personally, I find it very difficult to believe that Mrs. Mastella could have put the fear of God into Bassolino, but rather, I believe that, in a case of exchange of secret roles (“many places for me” complained the Udeur, many places for the Democratic Party and many places for yet another party), they became angry with each other, however, to get from here to something which is criminally significant is something that is difficult to prove.
The question we must ask ourselves is not whether Mastella, Bassolini or anyone else is guilty or innocent in a criminal sense, since this would be up to a judge to decide, but whether or not the time has come to stop playing politics by seeking consensus via the vote market, by carving up, by practicing nepotism, using family ties or practicing clientism, and whether politics is once again to become a service or whether it is to remain an opportunity for power grabbing, in this case via the vote market.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Justice