9 July 2009

Appeal to the International Community

The G8 started off unlucky, and it still is unlucky. Before it started, I, a citizen and a politician, would like to have read in the newspapers the agenda of the topics tackled in the meeting and not have to wait for each hour to discover them from the press agencies. Just as I would have liked there to be prior discussions in Parliament and with the citizens, discussion of the topics and the proposals that Italy is bringing to the attention of the world leaders.

What is the G8? A meeting behind closed doors where the citizens have to hope that decisions that compromise their future are not taken? An outing to Rome for the first ladies led by Ms Carfagna? A folksy tour in the middle of the destruction and the big tents in a city transformed into the Truman Show? It should be the moment when the developed countries discuss global solutions that are shared with the citizens that they represent.

And which of you knows what the Premier is concentrating on? What is he buying and what “Italianity” is he selling off? No one knows, or rather, we know something that we are not pleased with: more soldiers in Afghanistan, a few prisoners from Guantanamo and the amplification of the Vicenza military base. Great!

From a formal point of view, the meeting at this G8 has succeeded well. It has exploited millions of euro taken from the pockets o f the tax-payers. But as to its content, it has failed.

I have had to buy a page in The Herald Tribune to send out an appeal to the International Community and denounce the anti-constitutional drift of the “Bel Paese”. I have done this because the Italian press talks about the form but it deals with nothing.

Let the G8 leaders ask for the Constitution to be respected, if they believe that Italy is crucial in world equilibria, or otherwise they will let us resolve domestic problems without interfering.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics