We are out in the streets again today. This time at the side of the journalists with straight backs and the citizens who want to protect the right laid down in the Constitution: press freedom. Because defending a right out in the streets and with the streets is one of the last weapons left in this country.
It’s an Italy that is imploding. From industries in crisis to those who have been laid off, from the security services without funds, to cuts to the culture sector, to research that has been forgotten and the school that has been mortified. A few days ago, we were out in the streets to demonstrate together with the “precarious workers”. Today we are together with the information workers.
At 5:00pm we will be at the side of the National Press Federation, of “Popolo Viola” and “Articolo 21” to defend democracy. The DDL {government bill} on wiretapping , rechristened “gagging law” is a low blow to the history and the freedom of this nation. The democracy obtained by our “constituent fathers” is about to be entombed by the policies taken forward by this Government. An executive that will be remembered for the “ad personam” laws that guarantee impunity to the usual well known ones and for the memoranda dictated in the rooms of Palazzo Grazioli. In fact, the old fascist era “Mattinale” has been dusted off, that’s the one that indicates and imposes the line to be taken by the family newspapers as well as by all those journalists that have decided to sell off our democracy for a dish of lentils. That is to anaesthetize consciences and hide the misdeeds of the government from the citizens.
Battling against this havoc there are only a few newspapers, the internet and the last few TV stations not managed by Berlusconi. It’s not by chance that the wiretapping ddl is actually attempting to gag the internet and free information, to block citizens from having the right to be informed and to have justice and to take away from the magistrates a fundamental tool to fight the mafias and organised crime.
Berlusconi wants to approve this ddl as soon as possible and he has imposed the discussion in the Lower House on 29 July. The President of the Council is willing to do anything as long as he gets a “yes” for the gagging law before the autumn. Italia dei Valori will continue its battle inside and outside parliament to stop this little dictator from destroying the State based on the rule of law and to turn the Constitution into waste paper.