25 February 2008

Clean information for a clean Parliament

Berlusconi’s “Il Giornale”, as well as “Panorama”, also from the Berlusconi stable, blares with the headline “Di Pietro under investigation”, detailing a never-ending string of crimes. It would appear that they are carrying out heaven alone knows what sort of investigation with regard to me, and heaven alone knows all the crimes I am supposedly guilty of, together with the other leaders of the “Italia dei Valori” party regarding public contributions allegedly received.
As a matter of fact, this issue relates back to a series charges laid by one of the sympathisers and members of the “Italia Dei Valori” party, who subsequently left because he could no longer support our policies and, in doing so, unleashed no less than 13 cases in civil court and one more in the criminal court. All of the civil court cases have now been heard, all of which he lost and for which he was obliged to bear the legal costs. This person has not even bothered to pay the legal costs that he was ordered to pay for all 13 cases and, precisely because of this failure to comply with the provisions of the sentence regarding the false accusations contained in his charges, his home has been seized and put up for sale.
Based on the same allegations, this person also submitted the same claims to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which, already in March of last year, requested that the claims be archived due to lack of sufficient grounds to proceed, issuing a preliminary statement that the person in question is emotionally involved in all of the claims and is not entirely clear as regards his expression of wishes. Thus, in the words of the Public Prosecution, what is being requested is archiving rather than investigation, in terms of which I was not even questioned since it was not deemed to be necessary. Today, on the eve of the elections, this is being turned around by Berlusconi’s newspapers, namely “Il Giornale” and “Panorama”, into an accusation to be spread out on the front page in an attempt to denigrate and defame an adversary.
We must think about this. In recent days, I threw down the gauntlet and proposed the need for the kind of information that is not subservient to any master’s orders, a kind of information that is independent and transparent. Democratic is that Country and population where those who govern are subjected, amongst the many controls, to a kind of information that tells the facts for what they really are.
These same facts were already used at the time of the 2006 elections, since they date back to 2004, however, they had already been dismissed and the civil decisions already handed down, which proved the total lack of grounds for the claims made by this compulsive letter-writer, who was going around laying charges left and right at all the courts. In 2006 they used this tactic in an attempt to discredit us during the electoral campaign, and only now they have once again been exhumed on a technicality, which I will explain shortly, in yet another attempt to discredit us during this electoral campaign.
The technicality is quite simple: if, when a request for archiving has been submitted, the counterpart, in this case the professional, compulsive letter-writer, lodges an objection to the archiving, a hearing has to be held in order to discuss the objection to the archiving of the case.
As far as I am aware, no criminal action has been instituted because such action has never begun and there have never been any hearings held in this regard.
The moral of the story: when, during an electoral campaign, on the very day when the “Italia dei Valori” Party and the Democratic Party countersign a very precise election programme laying out undertakings on what is to be done for the electorate, including concrete actions envisaged in the fields of legislation, employment, security and information, our opponents feel the need to resort to exploiting this kind of untruth in an attempt to undermine our electoral campaign, then it means that they are really becoming desperate.
There is also another, far more important moral: it becomes obvious that, during the election campaign, when we say that the next Government will have to address the issue of conflict of interests, this is a patent example of the problem because, as long as we have to trust the party in power to also control the flow of information, we will be faced with the continuous and effective use of this very same information apparatus to disintegrate the political opposition. It hurts and bothers me, but I have nevertheless grown accustomed to it, however, how many other people are able to withstand the current level of disinformation in our Country?
One of the topics that the “Italia dei Valori” party is re-launching during this electoral campaign is precisely this: clean information for a clean Parliament.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information