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.

Antonio Di Pietro: The pact with the Democratic Party? It will only be broken if they throw us out. Not on the basis of the shadow government or the chairmanship of the RAI Vigilance Committee. All we are hearing are provocative statements. I am asking myself whether Veltroni is wanting to head up only the Democratic Party or the coalition as a whole because, if this is so, the Italia dei valori party is strong enough to go it alone.

Repubblica: Marco Follini says: Di Pietro out of the alliance, the Udc in.
Antonio Di Pietro: Let’s put it this way, today is the day that the Berlusconi government has been sworn in and we of the Italia dei valori party are concerned about this, above all else. We are saying that the new executive clearly displays the personal touch of the premier himself, above all in the certain important areas such as Communications, which does not even have its own Ministry, and Justice, which has been entrusted to one of the Cavaliere’s closest allies, whose Curriculum Vitae contains little else in his favour. We will refrain from commenting any further, however, as regards certain other issues, we will not allow ourselves to be overcome by any preconceptions.

Repubblica: Are you saying that you will be voting with the Government in certain cases?
Antonio Di Pietro: If they are able to find the necessary resources in order to eliminate Local Property Taxes or to increase salaries, to name but two examples, then we will most certainly support them.

Repubblica: We were talking about Follini.
Antonio Di Pietro: Every day we read certain provocations, which we refuse to dignify with any response. We made a deal with the voters, more so than with the Democratic Party. There is a leader of the coalition, which we acknowledge, however, should he persist in considering only his own party, then he must accept accountability for these actions.

Repubblica: But was it not precisely you that broke the pact by refusing to be part of a united group in Parliament?
Antonio Di Pietro: They make the rules and we, who obtained 43 seats in Parliament, cannot be independent? Please let’s be serious... And furthermore, every step in the process regarding the groups was discussed and agreed with the Democratic Party.

Repubblica: And yet you have not been consulted as regards the shadow government, nor as regards the chairmanship of the RAI Vigilance Committee, something that is very close to your heart.
Antonio Di Pietro: We are waiting for some sign, a signal of some sort. However, we are not about to break our alliance with them, even should we be left out in the cold. We have the strength to go it alone, this is true, but we are not prepared to betray the voters. Our commitment to them remains unchanged. I am sorry if this upsets anyone who was expecting some sort of retribution against the Democratic Party.

Repubblica: So, does this mean that you are giving up the fight?
Antonio Di Pietro: Absolutely not.

Repubblica: How should the RAI Vigilance Committee be managed?
Antonio Di Pietro: Certainly not along the lines of the Petruccioli model. We have already given enough as regards the “buddy-boy” decisions that were made in the past, which left us with an information system that is skewed and with ongoing conflicts of interest. Guarantees do not imply “a piece for me and one for you”, but rather they involve complying with European Laws. We refuse to stand idly by in this regard and, in early June, we will be going to the Euro Parliament to lodge a complaint regarding the Italian regulations. We certainly cannot realistically expect Gasparri himself to resolve the problems of the Gasparri Law...

Today the Council of State, after 9 years of legal battles in Italy and in Europe, will decide the amount to be paid by the State in recompense to Europa7 for the failure to assign frequencies to them and whether to finally let them broadcast nationally. In the discussion, the government is represented by the State Advocacy Service. They have surprisingly been given the task by the Minister of Communications, Paolo Gentiloni and asked to reject the requests of the publisher Francesco Di Stefano and to defend the status quo: that is the Gasparri law and the right of Rete4 to occupy the frequencies even without a concession (lost by Mediaset and won by Europa7 in 1999).


A fact that is quite individual: the Unione had promised to repeal the Gasparri law and on 31 January the European Court of Justice gave its support to the rights of Europa7 against those of Rete4. But that’s not enough. To defend Rete4, the State Advocacy Service representing the Prodi government copied in its memo, whole pages taken from that of the Mediaset lawyers. . Not to cite their hypotheses in inverted commas. But to take them on as their own, without even giving details about where they came from. The Berlusconi group officially is not one of the parties to the discussion: Europa7, for the failure to assign the frequencies, has cited the State through the Ministry of Communications and the Authority overseeing Communications. But Mediaset intervened anyway with a memo, knowing well that, if the frequencies were to be assigned to Europa7, it would be Rete4 to lose them. And the State Advocate, Maurizio Di Carlo, what does he do? Cut and paste of the Mediaset memo, without even trying to camouflage this authentic privatization of the institution at the service of the “Biscione”. The whole thing, even before Berlusconi is back in government for the third time.

Read and compare the memo by the State Advocacy Service (55 pages) and by Mediaset (78 pages). The complete text is given on www.voglioscendere.it. It’s a tragicomic party game of “Spot the difference”. The most obvious is that the State defends Rete4 with even more passion than Mediaset does. For the rest, page after page plucked exactly as it is from the documents of the Berlusconian company. A few examples: Pagine 9 of the State Advocacy document: ten lines (from 7 to 17) copied from page 49 of the Mediaset memo (lines 1-15). Page 5 (from line 20) to Page 6 (up to line 18) of the State Advocacy are identical to pages 60 (from line 3), 61 (all the page) and 62 (up to line 11) in the Mediaset document. Pages 17 (from line 7) and 18 (up to line13) of the State Advocacy document are the same as pages 60 (from line 3), 61 (all the page) and 62 (up to line22) in the Mediaset document. Page 53 (lines 4-23) State Advocacy document is plagiarized from pages 39 (from line 9) and 40 (up to line5) in the Mediaset document. On page 35 (lines 27-31) of the State Advocacy document, there are the same words as on page 47 (lines 17-22) in the Mediaset document. And so on. Once there’s a “thus” missed out. In another place there’s a “in relation to this” instead of “firstly”. All the rest, including erroneous punctuation (many commas between the subject and the verb), is identical. The same is true for the conclusions with outcomes that are at times comical.

According to the State Advocacy Service, if Europa7 has not had the frequencies, it’s their fault: they should have “acquired them even on their own initiative” (and where? And how? With weapons in their hands?), given that the State: “didn’t have the actual availability of the frequencies” (obviously: they allowed them to be kept by Telepiù nero and Rete4, by now without the concession). And anyway – Di Carlo added – by dis-applying the Maccanico law and the Gasparri law and turning off the analogue frequencies for Rete4 would not mean the automatic transfer to Europa7 (and to whom, thank you?).

Basically the State is ignoring the recent verdict of the European Court in Luxembourg, requested by the very same Council of State, according to which the community regulations “are an obstacle to a national system of regulations whose application means that an operator that owns a concession finds it impossible to transmit because a lack of frequencies assigned on the basis of objective criteria, that are transparent, non-discriminatory and proportional.”

Thus, it’s enough that the “transitory regime set up in favour of the existing networks” to the disadvantage of Europa7, in accordance with the Maccanico law, of the “save-Rete4”, of the Gasparri law, of the Gentiloni draft law (that never became law). All the laws that should be repealed.
They are not: “the free provision of services” protected by community regulations – writes the European Court – “they need not just the concession of the authorisation to broadcast, but also the assigning of the frequencies”, otherwise, “an operator cannot make use of the rights given to it by community law for the access to the TV market”. With this verdict in their hands, the lawyers Grandinetti and Pace working for Europa7 ask the Council of State for the frequencies and recompense for the damage suffered.
The “emerging damage”, that is the money spent so far for the investments required by law for anyone who wins a concession (more than 120 million euro). And the “lucro cessante”, that is the loss of profits of the TV that was never born (more than 2 billion euro). Always assuming that the Council will give a verdict telling the State to finally assign the frequencies to them.
Otherwise Europa7 would die for ever and Di Stefano would have the right to the value of the whole company. The government of the Unione, by means of the State Advocacy Service, talks in playback: text and music from Mediaset. No reimbursement. No frequencies. Long live Gasparri. Rete4 sine die. Everything as before, as ever. Berlusconi would not have known how to do better.”

Continue reading “Open letter to Romano Prodi and Paolo Gentiloni"

I’m publishing an interview that I gave to il Corriere della Sera on the topic of immigration and security. At the end, you will find my articles on the topic, some of which are even very harsh. The election campaign was played out instrumentally on this topic, both for the national elections and for the local elections.

Antonio Di Pietro: An intervention is needed in relation to Romanians. And if Berlusconi is going to do this we will not be ashamed of supporting him.

Cds: Why?
Antonio Di Pietro: It is obvious that for the Centre Left it is easy to say that the view of the Italians has been dimmed. Too much. But it’s not with fears that you search for votes. I hope that after the drunkenness of the Centre Right, the voter will open his eyes. However…

Cds: However?
Antonio Di Pietro: However it is true that between a goody-goody approach and the pretend solidarity we have created an ungovernable situation. And now everyone finds themselves to be justice-alists.

Cds: Berlusconi is announcing measures.
Antonio Di Pietro: And we will support them. That’s always after we have read them.

Cds: Will you vote with the PDL?
Antonio Di Pietro: We will not be ashamed of giving strength to an act that we consider to be self critical: starting from the indiscriminate entry, it’s they who have created the problems. It will be the first action of a constructive opposition.

Cds: What are you hoping for?
Antonio Di Pietro: Filters on entries from Rumania. Sending back all those Rumanians without a fixed address or a job. More funding and personnel for the police and the tribunals to accelerate the trial processes and also for carrying out penalties after the first level of judgement. And above all that there are no tricks.

Cds: Are you afraid there may be some trick-amendments?
Antonio Di Pietro: Yes. Last time they had a measure to lengthen the “time out” for recidivists and they shortened the time for Berlusconi so that they never do the trials for him. But now, given that his troubles are sorted out, perhaps he can resolve them for the Italians.

Previous Articles:
Security for the citizens
Italy, the soft underbelly of the European Union
Moratorium now
Immigration and criminality