14 May 2008

Silvio Berlusconi’s speech

The speech of Silvio Berlusconi, the President of the Council to Parliament to ask for their trust in his government, in a pure “papist” and pseudo-moralistic style, reminds me of the fable of the spider that invites the fly into his web. I don’t know whether the Democratic Party will be a fool and fall in but it is certain that we of Italia dei Valori will not do so.

He has described the country of dreams and toy people that he would like to see, but he has not given an indication of how he is going to do that. His speech – full of “but also” seemed to be just an exercise of balance to fit everything as well as its contrary, in the hope of ingratiating himself with the majority and the opposition. North and South, workers and employers, entrepreneurs and Trades Unions, vulnerable social groups and strong ones, pacifists and warmongers, rigourists and wasters.

He says he wants dialogue with a single voice: his own! And that anyone who doesn’t think like him: “let him be struck down by the plague”: is just an indifferent, an advocate of violence, a populist, basically a person that disturbs the manoevres, to be isolated and condemned.

To get an idea, just read over his speech, full not of proposals for government but of “glaring omissions” on key questions, like the relaunch of the fight against tax evasion, the possibility for the justice system to function, the transparency of markets, the plurality of information, the fight against the “Caste”, the waste in the public administration, the slowness and the confusion of bureaucracy, the issue of the RAI as a public service, the scandalous affair Europa7-Rete4 and the associated respect for the directives and the verdict against the controlling bodies.

In his speech, Berlusconi placed the accent on the verb, “to grow”. He should have used the verb “to change”. Without change, growth cannot happen. The right verb is “change”.

To start again, it’s necessary to eliminate at the roots the causes that are blocking the country right now. Among these are the lack of the freedom of information, the widespread existence of organised crime, and the lack of the certainty of being punished.

Economics and ethics are two sides of the same coin. A strong economy cannot be separated from the “ethics of behaviour” and this is not the case in Italy with “ad personam” laws, with elected convicts in Parliament as the precise choice of the leader of the PDL.

A country that wants to attract foreign investments cannot allow itself to have shadows on those who have the primary responsibility in the banking system, as in the case of Cesare Geronzi.

Freedom of information is the basis of democracy. The recent verdict of the European Court of Justice says that Rete 4, owned by the President of the Council, must give up its frequencies to Europa 7, otherwise Italian citizens will pay, retroactively from 1 January 2006, each day, the sum of 300,000 euro in fines.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics