11 February 2008

A credible election platform

We of the “Italia dei Valori” party not only promise support, but have thrown our full support, together with the Democratic Party, behind important programme issues such as reducing the level of public debt, such as the battle against the Caste and then the elimination of privilege, so as to set a clear example of quality and ethics in politics.
We will ask the Democratic Party to join us on this path to bring back ethics into politics and to support us in desire to get thing done, in other words, to identify a number of fundamental issues that we have included in the 10 points that we will be discussing with them, in particular a “calling card” of credibility, of refusing to put up any criminal duly convicted in the courts as candidates, and of reducing the costs of politics.
In this regard, we of the “Italia dei Valori” party will be participating in an event that will begin on 25 April, which will be driven mainly by the public and the network, namely, a referendum to eliminate the public financing of party newspapers and to review the information legislation, even as regards the problems of the information Caste.
We will ask the Democratic Party to commit itself to reduce the level of taxation, to implement and proceed with that which has essentially been a concrete undertaking made both by us and the by Democratic Party, namely, to ensure that everyone pays their taxes so as to enable us to genuinely and objectively reduce the overall tax rates.
We believe that employment flexibility could be a good thing, but should not be used as an excuse for chronic temporary employment.
We will also exercise our great political will in protecting security, because we believe that the entire country is facing security problems due, inter alia, to the influx of illegal immigrants.
We want the programme to increase the level of protection of investors and consumers, precisely because we believe that we have already taken a particular path, beginning with Class Action, which has already been approved during the current legislature.
We believe in an independent judiciary, and we are aware that a number of important draft bills have already been submitted to Parliament, aimed at reducing the length of time taken for justice to take its course and to re-establish the credibility of the justice system as a whole. These draft bills were submitted by we members of the “Italia dei Valori” Party, as well as by other experts, such as D’Ambrosio of the Democratic Party.
We also believe that there is a need for a number of the political parties to disband, and so, the new electoral law will have to make provision for two things, namely, for the voter to be able to indicate who the individual candidates should be, and to specify the quorum that should be established so as to avoid having a myriad of tiny parties and splinter groupings able to exercise veto powers and cause dissent.
We believe that the parliamentary regulations should be reformulated immediately in order to prevent any parties not participating in the elections from getting into the houses via the back door, expecting to then be able to implement a policy of holding everyone to ransom, which was one of the main reasons for the recent collapse of this Government.
We of the “Italia dei Valori” Party wish to reiterate that the issue of the conflict of interests should be addressed once and for all, especially following the much-feared return of Berlusconi, something that we sincerely hope will not occur, so as to ensure that our Country’s credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world is restored.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics