AGAINST THE GAGGING BY THE P2

Some time ago already, Licio Gelli was surprised by the extent to which the student had managed to surpass the Master.
And what he was referring to was the skill with which Berlusconi engineered the Plan for the Democratic Rebirth of the P2. Today’s youngsters know little or nothing about this plan, but what they certainly do know is that the Venerable One’s plan is diametrically opposed to that which is entrenched in our Constitution.
The P2 was, and still is a secret Freemason Lodge, established with the obvious aim of undermining this Country’s socio-political and institutional structures, which it uses solely to protect and further the interests of a very specific group of people. Today, many of the Lodge’s associates, including our current Prime Minister, hold senior positions in Government and in Parliament. Unfortunately, these are not merely statements drawn from some or other spy story, but they are undeniable facts. Indeed, they were confirmed by none other than Gelli himself in an interview he gave just a few months ago. And the proof is there for everyone to see: slowly, slowly, step by step, everything that was written in that document discovered at is coming true. Their progress has been slow, thanks to our founding fathers who were well aware of the potential traps that could be lying in wait in a democratic State and wisely chose to include a whole range of checks and balances in the Constitution in order to block any subversive temptations. However, after two years of this Berlusconi Government, the final pieces of the puzzle are now being put in place, namely, control of the media and the subjugation of judicial authority. The latter would eliminate the separation of the three types of powers and would entail a constitutional amendment, but this would require a far larger majority. So the Government has instead decided to bypass this obstacle by limiting the magistrature’s ability to do its job and by denying them the necessary resources.
It is within this scenario that the latest proposed bill on wiretapping falls. A piece of legislation that is patently contrary to the principles of legality and justice precisely because it forms part of a distinctly subversive plan.
Indeed, in addition to gagging our freedom of information and muzzling the Web, it also deprives the magistrates of an essential investigation tool and clearly violates our constitutional right to be informed and to obtain justice.
The regulations contained within this proposed bill are criminal-friendly rules that, should they be approved, would be both a disgrace and a harsh blow to the entire justice and information system in this Country.

But what would change for the magistrates and the journalists were the proposed bill to become law?

WHAT WOULD CHANGE FOR THE MAGISTRATES:

- SERIOUS EVIDENCE OF A CRIME: wiretapping would only be permitted in cases where there are serious grounds for suspecting that a crime has been committed and where surveillance is deemed to be indispensible to the investigations. The Public Prosecutor will have to have “specific evidentiary reasons”, in other words, other concrete evidence proving that the person to be placed under surveillance is indeed guilty.

- COURT AUTHORISATION: in order to get the go-ahead for wiretapping, it will no longer be enough for the Preliminary Investigations Magistrate to agree but, instead, authorisation will have to be granted by panel of Court judges.

- SURVEILLANCE OF PARLIAMENTARIANS: whenever any parliamentarian is heard talking to an individual that is under surveillance, all the related documentation will have to be sealed and stored in the archives. In order to proceed with the wiretapping, authorisation will have to be obtained from the Parliament and the Senate, even if the politician in question was using someone else’s telephone at the time.

WHAT CHANGES FOR THE JOURNALISTS:

- MEDIA BLACK-OUT ON INVESTIGATIONS: It will be prohibited for anyone to publish or broadcast any information contained in any pertinent document, even a non-confidential one, until after the preliminary hearing has been completed. For example, if this law had already been approved, the public would not have known anything about the investigations into the tender contracts relating to the G8 and the wind farms or, for that matter, the dramatic deaths of Stefano Cucchi and Federico Aldovrandi.

- NO TELEVISION CAMERAS AND RECORDERS IN THE COURTROOM: no recording whatsoever during any trial without the consent of all parties. No pictures of the Courtroom itself. Therefore, this Country’s citizens will no longer be able to watch the any of the various trial proceedings on TV.

- THE D’ADDARIO RULE: No audio or video recordings may be made without prior permission from the interested party. Anyone who is not a professional journalist and is guilty of making such so-called “fraudulent” audio or video recordings will be sentenced to 4 years in jail, without any right of appeal.

- THE WEB: websites are equated with the newspapers. Bloggers are obliged to post retractions within 48 hours. This would be tantamount to a death sentence for interactive journalism and the spreading of information via the Web.

We say “NO” to this evil piece of legislation and, in order to show our indignation regarding this so-called “gagging law”, today we joined in whole-heartedly in this day of silence promoted by the FNSI (the Italian National Press Federation).
The Italia dei Valori party will press on with its battle to defend freedom of information in this Country and, make no mistake, we will do everything in our power to ensure that this early bird and dancing-girl strategy that is so typical of obsolete regimes does not prevail.
This is a battle for democracy, a battle to defend the “state of law” and those principles that our founding fathers entrenched in our Constitution. Furthermore, should this proposed bill ever become law, we will not surrender, but instead we will call for yet another referendum in order to prove to Berlusconi that there are thousands of Italian citizens that have realised that this piece of legislation blocks criminal investigations, conceals the business affairs of mafia members and fraudsters and gags the press by patently riding roughshod over our right to inform and to be informed.