2 July 2009

The abandoned Court

Notwithstanding the fact that a hundred or so constitutionalists have spoken out against the Alfano Bill, notwithstanding the extreme embarrassment of the fifteen members of the Constitutional Council due to the actions of two of their colleagues, notwithstanding the fact that the dinner in question was anything but recreational, as proven by the draft constitutional reform that appeared in the Senate offices a mere two days after the date of that dinner, notwithstanding all of this, the President of the Constitutional Court, Francesco Amirante, has done absolutely nothing at all to safeguard the independence of the institution that he represents.
I would like to remind President Amirante that amongst the members of the Court are at least two members that are definitely not independent and that his reticence in issuing a statement, should it continue for much longer, could well be interpreted as an obscure message.
All we are asking of Mr. Amirante is to do his duty as guarantor of the impartiality, independence and autonomy of the Constitutional Court.
The negligence and superficiality with which the two judges in question dismissed that dinner in May, together with their obstinacy they have displayed by refusing to recuse themselves from the voting scheduled for 6 October clearly demonstrates the extent of the bad faith that permeates whatever they do.
Mr. Mazzella’s open letter addressed to the corruptor in fact reveals a level of reverence, mixed with servility, which rings alarm bells regarding the actual independence of the members of the Constitutional Council.
I would like to remind Mr. Mazzella about that what Law students are taught during the first few months of their studies, namely that, while ordinary judges are required to recuse themselves or be officially relieved of their duties in a situation such as this, these provisions have not been made applicable to the Constitutional Court, for the simple reason that, at least prior to May this year, it was deemed to be inconceivable for any Constitutional Court judge to use his personal friendship with an individual who has a vested interest in a particular Council decision to justify his invitation for said individual to visit his home on the eve of a Council ruling that affects the individual in question. Then, to make matters worse, also present is none other than the Minister of Justice who originally drafted and tabled the “tailor-made” law in question.
We will not be moved as regards this ongoing battle over the autonomy of the Constitutional Council and the decision that the Court itself will be called on to make on 6 October regarding Law No. 128 (also known as the Alfano Bill), in terms of which Silvio Berlusconi has been the sole beneficiary to date.

	"Follow the G8 on Idvstaff on Twitter"
During the G8 summit scheduled to take place on the 8th, 9th and 10 July, I will make use of Twitter to keep you informed, in real time, on the events unfolding in L’Aquila. You can be fairly certain that, if it is left up to the Prime Minister’s 6 television networks to report on the proceedings, there will be no such thing as a truthful and complete picture of what will be going on at the summit. You will be able to view my comments by simply accessing Twitter and registering yourself and then adding account Idvstaff as one of those to be tracked. Alternatively, you can simply go to the homepage of this Blog from the 8th to the 10th July, where you will find that day’s news flashes.
Antonio Di Pietro

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Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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RESIGN V: undercover dinner

Here is the content of my address today in the Chamber regarding what I have called the “Undercover dinner”, which was attended by two Constitutional Council Judges, namely Mr. Mazzella and Mr. Napolitano, an unimpeachable corruptor thanks to the Alfano Bill, namely Silvio Berlusconi, the signatory of the Bill, namely Angelino Alfano, an undersecretary, namely Gianni Letta, and the Chairman of the Senate Constitutional Affairs Committees, namely Carlo Vizzini. Very carefully chosen dinner guests that the Minister for Parliamentary Relations, Elio Vito, would have us believe are simply close friends who discussed all sorts of things other than the Bill in question.

The Italians are waking up to the truth, dear sirs of the Government, and they will call you to account for every morsel that you “ate”.

Let Messrs. Alfano, Mazzella and Napolitano at least have the decency to resign.

THE QUESTION

Antonio Di Pietro: Mr. President, Mr. Minister of Justice – even though I have noted that he is absent -, what we would like to know from you is the reason why you attended a very exclusive and top secret dinner with the Prime Minister and two Constitutional Court Judges, namely Luigi Mazzella, also the host of the jailbird dinner, and Paolo Maria Napolitano. You, Sir, are well aware that the Prime Minister has been the subject of a number of criminal investigations, with which the Italian judges are unable to proceed precisely because you, Minister Alfano, proposed and pushed through Parliament a law that guarantees Mr. Berlusconi total impunity for the entire duration of his mandate. You of all people should understand that by attending this dinner you have undermined the credibility of the Constitutional Court, which is due to issue a ruling regarding the Alfano Bill on 6 October. In the light of this, we would like to know the following: do you realise the seriousness and the institutional impropriety of your actions? Precisely why did you organise and arrange that dinner? Do you not believe that, at this point in time when the entire issue has come out into the open, you are duty bound to resign from your post in order to restore some sense of dignity to your office and that of the Constitutional Court? (Applause from the Italia dei Valori group members).

THE RESPONSE

Elio Vito: Mister President, in the interest of propriety and the profound respect that the Government has for Parliament, I will naturally refer to the written text tabled by the Honourable Mr. Di Pietro and the other members of the Italia dei Valori group rather than to the verbal statements made just a short while ago here in the House.
The honourable members have picked up on an article published in the weekly publication “L'Espresso” and are now asking questions regarding a gathering held at the private residence of a Constitutional Court Judge, namely Judge Luigi Mazzella, the venue where, in May of this year – according to the members and the quoted press article – and I quote, «one of the most disconcerting and politically embarrassing meetings ever organised by the Berlusconi Government » was held.
The quoted article, according to what has been tabled and highlighted by the members, specifically as regards the section that deals with the supposed content of the meeting organised by the Berlusconi Government, makes frequent and generic references to expressions such as «various sources agree», «it would appear that» and to questions contained in this same text, which, upon closer examination, consists of mere conjecture and desperate claims.
As regards the content of the text – as I have already stated – one particular quote presented as fact, namely «one of the most disconcerting and politically embarrassing meetings ever organised by the Berlusconi Government» requires immediate clarification, Honourable Mr. Di Pietro, in that the Berlusconi Government, which I am proud to represent in this House, did not in fact organise any meeting whatsoever at the home of Judge Mazzella. Many weeks prior to May of this year, Prime Minister Berlusconi, together with the Undersecretary in the Prime Minister’s Office, Dr. Gianni Letta, The Minister of Justice, the Honourable Angelino Alfano, Senator Carlo Vizzini and Constitutional Court Judge Paolo Maria Napolitano and their respective wives (therefore long before the dates indicated by your good selves and many weeks prior to May of this year) received invitations to attend a dinner organised at the private residence of Constitutional Court Judge Professor Luigi Mazzella. This convivial dinner, which is a natural consequence of the relationship of friendship and esteem that has existed for a long time (even acknowledged in the article quoted by the members) and that binds the master of the house and his guests, only took place during the first half of May this year.
Therefore, the gathering in question took place, Honourable Mr. Di Pietro, at least as far as it concerns the conjectures and widespread speculation, at a time well before the 26th June this year, the date on which the Judge President of the Constitutional Court set down the date of 6 October as the date of commencement of the discussions regarding the Alfano Bill and delegated Judge Gallo to chair said discussions. If I may, Mr President, given the sensitive nature of this matter, I would ask that you grant me only a few seconds longer.
As regards that which, between all of the «it would appear that” and the «it is said that», was allegedly discussed that evening, it is important to note that the aim of the gathering was certainly not to discuss anything related to the agenda of the Constitutional Court, nor any potential amendment to Heading IV of the Constitution, a matter that – as we would trust that the Honourable members are well aware – lies exclusively within the jurisdiction of Parliament, on request by the Government, as the body charged with this duty by the Constitutional Law and by the people, whereas the Constitutional Court is charged with dealing with any potential disputes. I would like to conclude by setting the Honourable members’ minds at peace by stating that the Government’s legislative initiatives concerning the justice system will be in keeping with the Programme presented to the voters at the time of the elections and that received widespread public support.

THE COUNTER-RESPONSE

Antonio Di Pietro: Mr President, the response provided is both unsatisfactory and unacceptable and I trust that you will equally grant me a few more seconds as you did just now to the Government representative.
The Constitutional Court – just to remind myself as well – is a constitutional body whose total independence is such that it should in no way be subject to any interference, neither by the Government nor by any of the other constitutional institutions. In May last year, the Alfano Bill was already there and an application had already been lodged by the judges in Milan and in Rome for the Constitutional Court to make a ruling regarding the constitutionality of the law.
Any Minister of Justice that, together with the Prime Minister who is himself under investigation on charges relating precisely to the matters on which the judges of the Constitutional Court are being called upon to make a ruling, acts as promoter of such a gathering undermines the credibility of the Constitutional Court itself. Your involvement and that of those two unscrupulous judges has violated the sacredness of the Court and today we are extremely concerned about the Constitutional Court’s impartiality and its independence, which we believe are been completely undermined. We will never know whether any decision taken on the 6th October is the result of a totally independent assessment or the result of an undercover P2-ist dinner held on that evening. (Comments from the members of the Popolo della Libertà group).
The only option remaining to us, therefore, is to reiterate the following: firstly, our total lack of confidence in this Government; secondly, the deplorable nature of this behaviour; thirdly, an official request for the resignations of not only the two Constitutional Court Judges that were willing participants in the event, or at the very least their recusal, but also your own resignation Mr. Minister of Justice because a person in your position should never have allowed, indeed never accept and never be seen to encourage any gathering involving the discussion of a law on which the judges concerned will be required to make a ruling and a law that you yourself originally proposed. We, as the Italia dei Valori party, are left no other option but to reiterate our commitment to the referendum and the validity of that referendum, to ensure that the signatures already gathered, those million signatures, will eventually lead to a referendum aimed at erasing that deceiving law that you, Minister Alfano, and you, Mr. Prime Minister have sponsored. Now you have gone as far as sullying even the Constitutional Court and the ruling that it is being called upon to make (Applause from the members of the Italia dei Valori group – Comments from the members of the Popolo della Libertà group).

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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1 July 2009

Gagging the Web: closing the loop

Firstly I would like to express my condolences to the families of the victims of the tragedy that occurred in Viareggio. Before making any comment regarding this event, I want to wait to see the outcome of the inquiry into the accident. Should it be confirmed that the accident was the result of structural failure, then we will have to take a close look at Trenitalia’s management of the Government Railways Company’s budget allocation for refurbishing the train tracks and performing maintenance on the rolling stock. The facts show that railway accidents are on the increase, because just eight days ago, another goods train derailed near Prato, paralysing the entire peninsula’s train links.

My article today consists of this video, which reveals yet another attack on the Internet and the citizens’ right to information. This time the obscenity is the work of the empty weapons Party and bears the signature of party deputy Carolina Lussana. While her colleague Alfano is in the process of trying to prevent the reporting of electronic surveillance information prior to the end of the associated court proceedings, the lady in question has now come up with a bright idea to close the loop, namely to erase all information, images and data relating to her own colleagues’ past run-ins with the law. To put it bluntly, we can say goodbye to being able to any longer access any important information concerning many of our public officials on Wikipedia! Whatever happened to the old-school Lega members of long ago?

Text of the address

Beware all friends of the Web, there is yet another “bullshit law” on the way. This time, the person tabling the bill was none other than the Honourable Mrs. Lussana of the Lega Nord Party. They are calling it the “Right to Oblivion”, in other words, if any parliamentarian (wonder why them, specifically?) is convicted of an offence, after a certain number of years all references to their conviction must be expunged from the Internet and the newspaper archives because, apparently, there is a legal right by which, after a number of years have passed, the convicted criminal may no longer be deemed to be a convicted criminal. It is absurd and nothing more than yet another attempt to suppress the freedom of information. People have a need to know precisely who has committed any crimes and whether or not he/she was convicted of those crimes. This is a proposal that is obviously important to someone at the “Palace” in order to hide what he has done from the eyesy of the public, so that they can perhaps make a comeback at some later stage, maybe under a different banner and in a different party, but nevertheless with the same face. We want a Palace filled with new faces, clean faces and so we demand that the information in question remain accessible to the public, particularly on the Web. Especially considering the fact that the so-called “normal” media, namely the public service or “Minzoni-olian” media, never tells you about the men of the “Palace” that are intent on taking care of their own affairs rather than the interests of this Country’s citizens. Beware, beware ye citizens of the Web.

	"RESIGN IV: THE MESSAGE OF SILENCE "
Tomorrow, Wednesday 1 July, I will be putting an official question to Parliament regarding the recent shameful dinner involving two judges of the Constitutional Council and a corruptor from the office of the Prime Minister. The State President has yet to respond to the appeal I made to him yesterday for him to demand the resignation of Constitutional Court Judges Mazzella and Napolitano. By apparently underestimating the serious implications of the dinner in question and by failing to take the necessary action, he has begun to sow the seeds of doubt as to whether the Alfano Bill could perhaps turn out to be exceptionally useful not only to Silvio Berlusconi. Not to mention the message that his silence is sending out to the colleagues of these two judges, a silence that could be interpreted as official and tacit approval by the institutions of the event that occurred. So let’s drop the mask and let’s not wait to see what happens on 6 October. Also read: RESIGN I, II, III
Antonio Di Pietro

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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29 June 2009

RESIGN III: not merely controversy, but facts

That dinner held in May at the home of Council Judge Mazzella is not mere controversy but a fact.
The fact that the dinner guests on that occasion included another Council Judge as well as Silvio Berlusconi, Gianni Letta, Angelino Alfano and Carlo Vizzini is also not mere controversy but a fact. The fact that on the 6th October the same Council is will be issuing its ruling regarding the constitutionality of the Alfano Bill is again not mere controversy but a fact.

I could well accept the recent call made by the State President for everyone to stop creating controversy in the light of the upcoming meeting of the G8, on condition that he makes a statement regarding one specific issue, namely that shameful dinner in May involving six institutional men displaying a serious conflict of interests.

In the interest of the readers, I am attaching a few lines from the life story of these two judges, downloaded from Wikipedia, containing certain details that I am sure you are undoubtedly and fully aware of Mr. State President, and I ask you:

"Precisely how do you think the two judges will rule on 6 October regarding the constitutionality of the Alfano Bill after the pressure that was undoubtedly applied at that dinner, notwithstanding any denials? "

I am not expecting an answer from you because then we would be risking yet another controversy, so all I’m asking for is their resignations.

From Wikipedia

Luigi Mazzella: from 14 November 2002 until 2 December 2004 he was Public Services Minister in the Berlusconi II Government. He was subsequently appointed by Parliament on 15 June 2005 as Constitutional Court Judge.

Paolo Maria Napolitano: initially called to serve as a member of Gianfranco Fini’s Cabinet in the early days of the first Berlusconi government, he was subsequently appointed as State Legal Advisor in 2003. He continued his working relationship with Deputy Prime Minister Fini and later joined the “Farnesina” (Foreign Affairs Department) as Head of the Legal Department.

Also read RESIGN I & RESIGN II

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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24 June 2009

The new breed of Pontius Pilates

A year has now passed since the start of Berlusconi’s term of office in Government and we have now also held both European elections and local elections, so the time has come to stand back and begin to take stock: this really has been a terrible year!

It has been a terrible year in terms of the economy, in terms of the justice system, in terms of media information, in terms of employment and jobs and, finally, also in terms of transparency as regards the actions of our Public Administration.
A terrible year because the current government and its subservient parliamentary majority have thought of nothing other than promulgating legislative provisions that are designed solely to serve their own purposes and those of their caste, while basing everything that they do on the old P2-ist “re-birth” project.

"We will take everything for ourselves and, to this end, we will use all of the State’s structures entirely for our own ends ", and indeed, "we will even make use of the State’s aircraft and the State’s Top Guns to transport midgets, dancing girls and minstrels to our private homes for our own entertainment".

I must insist: The Italia dei Valori party has no uncontrollable desire to “peep through the keyhole” of the Prime Minister’s private bedroom door. The problem, if we continue to pursue this same metaphor, does not lie in the Prime Minister’s private bedroom, but in the “dining rooms and kitchens” of the Italian citizens, which are, in most cases, about as bare as the proverbial “Mother Hubbard’s cupboard” right about now. And all because our current Parliament, the one from which I am speaking at the moment, is still currently discussing issues such as telephone wiretapping, living wills, “angel sex” and the gagging of the press, both in the Cabinet and in the Senate, yet no one seems to be the least bit concerned about dealing with the problems of the economy and the issue of unemployment.

That is why we have decided to ask for a vote of no confidence in our current Prime Minister. We are doing so because he is busy making us all look absolutely ridiculous in the eyes of the rest of the world, because he is busy impoverishing the real economy of this Country and because he is busy creating a two-tier system of justice whereby zero-tolerance is exercised in the case of the normal man in the street and limitless-tolerance is exercised in the case of the powers that be within the Government.

The Director of Tg1, namely Mr. Minzolini, is a man that I have come to know very well, mainly because I have instituted legal proceedings against him for defamation on three separate occasions. He most certainly didn’t pay the legal costs involved in these defamation cases out of his own pocket, but simply got Berlusconi’s publishing house, namely Mondadori, to pay them on his behalf! And just look where that got him, he is now Director of Tg1.

The sooner we can rid ourselves of this government the better! Even more so now that they are in the process of promulgating this squalid new law that they’re calling the “wiretapping law” when instead it is a law aimed at gagging the media and that was designed specifically to ensure that you would no longer be able to find out what is going on around you. From now on, we will only be able to get the information that we need via the Web, and even that will only continue for so long, because the official national television broadcasters will no longer be able to tell you about the misdeeds that our politicians get up to. With the excuse of the surveillance regulations, from now on no one will any longer be able to pass on any news via the newspapers.

So, how do we rid ourselves of this dead weight that is our current Government? By means of a motion of no confidence, that’s how. Did you know that in our Parliament, you must have at least 63 signatures before a motion of no confidence may even be mentioned? Only the Italia dei Valori party has signed up so far. None of the other opposition parties have bothered to do the same. These cowards! These spineless people that are totally lacking in courage! This bunch of "Pontius Pilates" that don’t have the courage to stand up and object about what is happening with actions and not just with words. They say "But you have no hope of getting the necessary majority for a vote in of no confidence to be adopted in Parliament". Maybe so, but we have to start somewhere, and at least this way the public will find out precisely what is going on behind their backs.

In conclusion, this is why the people of the Italia dei Valori party have already begun gathering signatures calling for referendum to be held on this “media gagging law”. Also because this is the only way we get to speak to the almost one million people that we believe will come along to join us in signing for this referendum. It will give us an opportunity to discuss this issue in the town squares and in the cities and it is a way for us to let the truth be known, as opposed to the lies that are spread by the official media. The time has come to make a choice: either you must stand behind us so that we may become the voice of freedom in this Country, or the regime will trample us all.

Also read about:

- Motion of no confidence

- All together passionately, against the Idv’s motion

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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23 June 2009

It's true: "the man is unwell"

The interview that Mrs. Patrizia D’Addario gave to the Sunday Times has certainly done untold damage to the dignity of our Country and de-legitimised one of the key figures of our political institutions, namely our Prime Minister.
We can’t afford to carry on like this any longer and I believe that there are now additional grounds for re-tabling the motion of no confidence that was initially tabled at the time that Attorney David Mills was convicted, this time for serious consideration.
I am asking for a gesture of pride and a sense of belief in our political institutions, from the majority as well as from everyone else. A desire to maintain a sense of unity in Parliament, resulting from the fear that one won’t be re-elected, is the only plausible explanation for denying the reality of a Premier that has become absolutely unpresentable.
Let the Pdl prove that it is worthy of being called a political party rather than simply a group of mercenaries living at the Court of the King.

Mrs. Lario was dead right when she said that her husband was “an unwell man”.

What this Country needs is a strong man, backed up by a complex social and economic framework, who will be able to concentrate on governing this country and the capacity to re-establish the social and international equilibrium of our Country, which instead finds itself hamstrung by a man that is being blackmailed, a clown and a sex maniac in the worst possible sense of the term.

What we’re talking about here is no longer simply a “Minzolini-style” disjointedness between that which is public and that which is private, but rather a colossal and regrettable indecent reality that, while it may not have any legal implications, certainly has a number of serious ethical implications.

Being stuck with this Prime Minister until 2013 would entail picking up the ruins of the Country and having to wait another twenty years before being able to get back on to the path towards development.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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20 June 2009

The end of the line

Silvio Berlusconi’s speech at Cinisello Balsamo will be remembered as the beginning of the end. A ranting speech delivered by a man who is in decline and coming to the end of the line.

The news broadcasts on his television channels now only manage to save his image in the eyes of Emilio Fede’s public. A slice of the population that is still relatively large, but fortunately under threat of extinction by the Web.

For any politician, people that disagree are a normal part of public life and cannot be suppressed. Indeed they should be drawn into dialogue.

When we get to the point of having closed door meetings guarded by the forces of law and order used by the Government to suppress manifestations of democracy such as protests, then we really have reached the end of the road and the time has come to “get off the train”, before we start seeing subversive acts occurring in the Country due to public intolerance against the people in Government.

Silvio Berlusconi is no longer a politician, nor is he any longer a man of the people or a man of the institutions.

He is man surrounded by fear and paranoia, one minute regarding alleged journalist spies, then regarding his own attorney, then regarding his lackeys conspiring against him and then regarding the communist citizens.

What we are seeing is the unavoidable downfall of a man whose power is based entirely on a mixture of economic and sexual patronism and who therefore inevitably owes too much to too many people.

A man who is subject to blackmail and is being blackmailed, who has built a political framework that is fragile and lacking in content and who is too far removed from the population and from Italy’s problems.

We cannot tolerate a Prime Minister who, for a night of sex for payment, keeps 500 guests of the Italy-USA Foundation, as well as American Ambassador Ronald Spogli waiting in vain for his arrival on the day of the election of the new President of the United States of America.

Mister Berlusconi’s private affairs are no longer private, but are now hurting the Italian population.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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Never entrust your future to an executioner

I will be going to cast my vote because it is every citizen’s duty and inalienable right to do so.
I will be voting “NO” because this referendum, which I have believed all along to be a master key for forcing the Government to review the review this electoral law that has been described as “hogwash” by its creator Calderoli is, in reality, about to turn into a check-mate against democracy, thanks to the Prime Minister’s despicable personal objectives.

Should the “YES” vote win in this referendum, our current political leaders would transform the will of the people into “the feeding trough to beat all feeding troughs” by amending the electoral law with rules that are even worse than those annulled by the citizens in the first place. The referendum only indicates “what” must be amended, and then leaves it up to none other than the executioner himself to decide “how” it should be amended.

The final outcome would be devastating and would leave the current parliamentary majority firmly and perpetually in charge, with very little consensus from the Country’s citizens. All it would take is a handful of buddies and mercenaries in order for the party to obtain the kind of parliamentary majority that the “Lingerie Party”, the Pdl (Partito Delle Lingerie) is currently obliged to negotiate with the unarmed weapons party, namely the Lega.

Putting such a weak and blackmailable man to lead a party that runs on Dell’Ultri-type principles is tantamount to permanently extinguishing any hope there may be of Italy ever again returning to true democracy.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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19 June 2009

A weak and blackmailable Prime Minister

It is unacceptable for a man to be allowed to continue governing a country when every choice or decision that he makes on a daily basis raises the public’s suspicions that there is some sort of voyeuristic or self-serving motive behind it.

I refrained from commenting on the Noemi affair, or on the photographs of Zapaddu’s little parties at Villa Certosa and I am certainly not about to pass any comment on the matter of Patrizia D’Addario, because I believe that it is a private matter.
Nor will I bother to comment on the words uttered by Parliamentarian and Attorney Ghedini when he said that even if there were any “truth” to that which Ms. D’Addario filmed and recorded, his Client, namely Silvio Berlusconi, would be deemed to be “the end-user and therefore not criminally liable...”.

While I continue to believe that the aforementioned affairs are a private matter, I also believe that the private lives of public personalities and politicians serving in the institutions have a certain moral and ethical impact on the Country’s citizens.
Silvio Berlusconi’s private affairs, which result in him being a target of scandals and gossip on a daily basis, also all have one common denominator, namely that a key figure in the country’s political institutions is open to blackmail.

These scandals raise a number of disturbing questions, for example, how many people, including young girls, directors, friends and relations are in a position to blackmail the Prime Minister should they wish to do so?
How many of these people have already blackmailed him in the past?
What did they receive in return for shutting up, and at whose expense?
What are the public consequences of this weakness of his?
How many people has he been forced to place in the institutions in order to redeem his debt or return a favour, and where exactly are these people now?
What has he been forced to leave on the table in order to regain any sort of credibility on the international front? Perhaps agree to deploy more troops in Afghanistan? Or perhaps agree to accept murderers released from Guantanamo Bay?
What costs have the Italians already paid and what will they still be obliged to pay in the future as a result of the Prime Minister’s choices and his blackmailability?

At a point in time when the unemployment level is fluctuating between 10% and heaven alone knows what figure, when the Country’s GDP is in free-fall and there is little hope of any sort of “quick and easy” recovery anytime before 2010, what we really need is a Prime Minister that is strong and present in Parliament.

The last thing that we ever needed during a crisis such as this is a Premier such as Berlusconi and he is certainly the last thing we need at the moment.
Let’s send him packing as soon as possible.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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17 June 2009

Ever wealthier

For those of us who are still lucky enough to get one, salaries are now standing still while inflation is running at 2%. This means that thousands of families are becoming poorer with each passing day. Compared to all the other parts of the European community, the Campania region holds the record as regards the unemployment rate and the drop in GDP. Abruzzo, where the residents have lost not only their jobs, but also family members and homes, is in a state of revolt because of the reconstruction decree. Workers continue to die on the job on a daily basis due to the lack of rules and controls. Meanwhile, today will be the umpteenth lost day for working on urgent solutions aimed at pulling the Country out of the current economic crisis. Yet, notwithstanding everything that is going on in our Country, Silvio Berlusconi and his entourage continue to increase their own wealth by making us of their positions to, for example, increase government subsidies to the private TV broadcasters by 237% in a matter of only three months. However, the party cannot and must not be allowed to continue.

The Prime Minister is facing his political sunset, you can feel it in the air. Yesterday he spent the entire day closeted in a suite in Washington, thinking about Massimo D’Alema’s insinuations. He has so many swords of Damocles hanging over his head that he and his trusted menservants Ghedini, Cicchitto and Gasparri are trying to figure out which on of these swords will be the first to fall. A man such as this, who has only ever known the best things in life and now spends his time peering over his shoulder and fearing the hundred devils to which he sold his soul in order to get to where he is now, deserves our compassion.

The Italia dei Valori party wants to stand as a viable alternative to the present government, with a plan to re-launch the Country and with men and women whose objective is to work hard as opposed to appearing on television shows and the front pages of the newspapers. A new way of dealing with the interests of the rest of the Country’s population and a “roll up the sleeves” kind of politics, where the choices we make are explained in the streets, discussed with the social partners and then approved in Parliament.

When a government can no longer risk taking to the streets because the whistles drown out the applause, when it is obliged to hold meetings behind closed doors with a handful of power and where the security force members outnumber the delegates, then it means that the government no longer represents the population and has become little more than a revolutionary government.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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14 June 2009

The Web equals freedom

Photo courtesy of Oneras

Here is one of my interviews as published in the weekly “L'espresso”, concerning the results that the Italia dei Valori party achieved in the recent European elections.

L'espresso: How do you intend to make use of all the votes that the Italia dei Valori party gathered?
Antonio Di Pietro: I am changing from being the opposition to being an alternative in order to bring about change in this Country. Let me explain: these votes are an expression of the citizens’ faith in us, and were given on the basis of a certain undertaking that I gave them, namely, to oppose Berlusconi and to highlight the impropriety of his government, which, ever since its first day in power, based all of its activities on taking care of private business instead of public business.

L'espresso: What does this mean in terms of everyday politics, given that you don’t have enough votes to change the political power balance?
Antonio Di Pietro: What we want to do is to promote the establishment of a new alliance and a new coalition that will draw together our civil society, the world of the associations and all of those parties that wish to contribute to the drafting of a programme whose main objective will be to bring about change in Italy’s ruling class.

L'espresso: What role will the Italia dei Valori’ party’s seven new European parliamentarians play in this project that you have defined as being alternative?
Antonio Di Pietro: They will be in Strasburg and in Brussels on a full-time basis, where they will attempt to make our programme become a reality. Firstly there are the problems of the economy: we must return to a free market system and a system that is based on competition, respect for the rules and transparency rather than one that is based on uncertainty, corruption, monopolies and sidestepping labour regulations. It is essential that we re-establish a relationship of trust between business and employment. Within Italy, instead, the Italia dei Valori Parliamentary deputees and senators will continue to oppose Berlusconi’s power base in unequivocal terms and with absolute determination.

L'espresso: You have announced that, with effect from 22 June, a political process will begin that will culminate in an Idv Congress. Why a Congress?
Antonio Di Pietro: Since the 7th July we are new people, but we won’t be turfing out any of our political history. However, the time has come to draft the necessary rules so that in one year we can set up a congress whose objective will be to draft a programme that we can take to the next general election in order to win these elections and become the new government. This won’t be only an Idv programme, but the programme of a coalition that is focussed on building an alternative to Berlusconi.

L'espresso: And who will be part of this coalition?
Antonio Di Pietro: It certainly won’t be a simple repetition of the formula used to create the “Ulivo”. We of the Idv will draft the programme in conjunction with the people of the society in which we move on a daily basis and with any parties, beginning with the Democratic Party, that wish to join us in creating this alternative. The main issue being that we must introduce a new ruling class to replace that of the first Republic.

L'espresso: But what kind of party do you envisage? You speak of replacing the ruling class, but at the local level the Idv is largely based on the former Christian Democrats.
Antonio Di Pietro: This is no longer the case. These days, very few of them are former Christian Democrats. Proof of this is the fact that of the 72 candidates whose names appeared on our election lists for the recent European elections, 67 candidates were members of the public with no previous political experience. The Idv as a party is not founded on a list of well-known local personalities but is rather a party for the masses. Furthermore, we have been obliged to change because, whereas as a party that held 2% of the vote we could live with a class of leaders that included a few lesser personalities, now that we have 8% of the vote we need to build a new group of leaders.

L'espresso: But the party still includes these personalities and, in this regard, it is enough to look at the problems that you encountered in Campania in recent months...
Antonio Di Pietro: Campania is the area where this change in the ruling class is most clearly visible. The people elected there were former magistrate Luigi De Magistris and former regional official and trade unionist Sonia Alfano, whom I don’t believe can exactly be classified as personalities.

L'espresso: The votes garnered by the Idv appear to have come from the Democratic Party’s voter base. In other words, nothing has been added to the hypothetical grouping that is supposedly an alternative to Berlusconi and this has been nothing more than a transfer of votes...
Antonio Di Pietro: It is not true that the votes came from former Democratic Party supporters. Those votes could well have gone to the left-wing parties, the radicals or the Udc. The votes for the Idv came from across the board and we gathered votes from everywhere.

L'espresso: Irrespective of where the votes came from, adding up all of the opposition votes we find that you are still far away from any real possibility of becoming the majority.
Antonio Di Pietro: The problem has nothing to do with adding up the votes and seeing what the total is. The issue today is to build a programme that is more attractive than that of Berlusconi, who only thinks of himself and about remaining in power. If we manage to do this, then the votes will come of their own accord.

L'espresso: Do you believe that the most important future ally has to be the Democratic Party?
Antonio Di Pietro: We have no intention of sidelining ourselves in alliances that do little other than look at party symbols, nor will we go into any alliance with our eyes closed purely for election purposes. The main issue is the programme and the ruling class that we wish to propose to the Country. The old ruling class, which has already given much and taken much more, has now reached the end of the road.

L'espresso: In addition to being the 8% party, the Idv is also extremely wealthy. In addition to the more than 20 million Euro of reimbursements for the European elections, the party has large amounts of money in its coffers and has no debts. How do you intend to use these public funds?
Antonio Di Pietro: In the same way as we have done to date, without wasting and without creating any positions of power. The reimbursed money will be used for political purposes, to create new structures around the country and to set up a presence in areas where the party was not represented.

L'espresso: What specific investments will you be making?
Antonio Di Pietro: We need to establish our party countrywide, which involves creating points of reference for the Idv wherever there are none at present, in other words open new offices, employ top-notch administrative staff and arrange meetings with people from the various professions. All in all, to increasingly root the Idv in Italian life. We currently have one thousand offices in all of the Regions and Provinces: from tomorrow we need to be represented everywhere.

L'espresso: How many offices do you hope to have by the time the Congress is due to be held?
Antonio Di Pietro: Ten thousand.

L'espresso: And then? How else do you envisage spending the millions of Euro that you have in the party coffers?
Antonio Di Pietro: We have already established a study centre that is open to anyone, irrespective of whether or not they are members of our party but who wish to contribute towards finding solutions to problems, where the final objective is to defeat the centre-right. Therefore, we intend to invest more in the Web, which we already use extensively in order to communicate directly with the Country’s citizens. We also want to establish an online television channel on the Internet, which is a way for us to respond to the centre-right’s monopolisation of the Italian media, including the television.

L'espresso: Is it true that the Idv will back the daily newspaper that the former editor of “l'Unità”, Antonio Padellaro, is intending to set up after the summer?
Antonio Di Pietro: I have the greatest respect for Padellaro, but our intention is to develop our communications and our relationship with the voting public via the Web, from the social networks through to online television and the Blogs. We firmly believe that, in the light of the Berlusconi’s shameless conflict of interests and his control over the media, the Web is the only tool we have at our disposal to ensure political freedom.

L'espresso: With the Idv at 8%, don’t you perhaps regret having stayed out of RAI after not having been given the Chairmanship of the Oversight Committee?
Antonio Di Pietro: I would do precisely the same thing again. If I had accepted a jump seat on the train of the sharing out of this country’s public television broadcaster, I would now not have the freedom of movement and freedom to act that I have today.

L'espresso: Ever since its establishment, the Idv has always been Di Pietro’s party. Will it continue to be so in the future?
Antonio Di Pietro: All political parties are born as a result of a certain individual or a very small group of people. As they grow, they become de-personalised. The same thing will happen with the Italia dei Valori party.

L'espresso: Does that mean that your name will disappear from the party logo?
Antonio Di Pietro: The Idv will continue to exist irrespective of Di Pietro. We are currently the party with the best record as regards changes within the leadership group.

Also read: The gagging law also affects the Web (www.italiadeivalori.it)

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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12 June 2009

Clowns understand each other

While other countries host Barack Obama, who is considered to be this Century’s JFK because of his “enlightened” politics, Berlusconi instead receives a terrorist supporter and distances Italy from the Countries that really matter, namely those that are developing.

Berlusconi is harming Italy by welcoming a man such as Gheddafi and by his actions he proves that he doesn’t have a clue about the state of our economy: in 2008, Italy’s exports to the USA amounted to 36.1 billion US Dollars, a 3% increase on the 2007 figure. The more than 800 American companies based in Italy, amongst them some well-known names, generate this Country’s GDP and the jobs that the Government is unable to create, but has only been able to destroy.

Meanwhile, what precisely has Gheddafi come here to do, dressed up like a clown, other than to meet his fellow magnate who wastes the taxpayer’s money? To all intents and purposes it would appear that he came here to insult certain Countries with which we had friendly relations, until yesterday that is. He has branded Italy as a terrorist friendly Country in which it is possible to come and hide out, especially now that wiretapping has effectively been officially outlawed. He came to eulogise Bin Laden, whom he obviously considers to be a colleague following the 1988 Lockerbie attack. He came to blackmail us, asking for money, lots of money, if we want him to stop sending over Government sanctioned boatloads of desperate people.

He gave a marketing lecture on dictatorships, suggesting that it is a valid alternative to democracy, a topic on which he probably received some lessons from our very own clown. He came to claim his applause from politicians such as “the Gladiator” Cossiga and “Uncle Giulio” Andreotti who probably, at some time in their past, perhaps dreamt of introducing some or other political system other than democracy. He came to enter into agreements with Eni and a number of other parastatal companies, blackmailing them with promises of black gold. He came to flatter a thousand or so women at the meeting at the Equal Opportunities “henhouse”, humiliating the entire female gender, which he recognises solely and exclusively as members of a harem.

We support the students, especially those that were prevented from demonstrating against yesterday’s Italo-Libyan visit to the 'La Sapienza' University in Rome. We stand by the Italians. WE don’t want Gheddafi and other dictators like him on our Country’s soil.

	"GIORGIO NAPOLITANO DON’T SIGN"
"Within the next few days we will be asking the Italian citizens to join us in front of Palazzo Madama for a sit-in in an attempt to convince our State President not to sign this law, and to protest against the people who use the institutions to safeguard the interests of Comorra members, criminals and corrupt businessmen and politicians instead of the interests of our Country and its honest citizens.".
Antonio Di Pietro

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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11 June 2009

I am not turning my back on Carlo Vulpio

I’ve read on the blog that many supporters are upset because of the exclusion of the journalist Carlo Vulpio from the European Parliament and they have been asking for an explanation. It’s simple.

The fact that Carlo Vulpio has not been elected is not due to decisions taken by the party, but can be explained in the light of truly technical reasons and associated mechanisms of the preference votes. Vulpio was a candidate in four constituencies: North West, North East, Centre and South. In the latter three he couldn’t be elected because other candidates in the IdV list got more votes.

It seems that he could have been elected in the North West if Luigi de Magistris and Sonia Alfano were to have opted for election in another constituency. However, unfortunately, the technicality of the election law presented us with another reality.

In accordance with article 12 of the election law for the European elections (24 January 1979, n.18) before the elections, Italia dei Valori created a partnership agreement with the list of the Aosta Valley called “Autonomie Libertè Democratie”. The partnership agreement is a mechanism that is set out in the law, in the situation when the list that represents a linguistic minority does not manage to elect their own deputy with at least 50,000 preference votes. The votes gained by this list are attributed to those with whom they have the partnership agreement.

Thus 27,086 votes gained by the list of the Aosta Valley, also known as the “Alleanza Galletto” were all attributed to Italia dei Valori in the counting of the votes and thus offered an important contribution to the election of our Euro-deputies. In fact without the partnership agreement we would have had one less deputy. According to the law, the partnership agreement also sets out that if the list representing linguistic minorities does not automatically elect any deputy autonomously, the candidates of this list are inserted into a single ranking with the candidates of the list with which it has a partnership agreement (art. 22 law 24 January 1979, Number 18)
In other words, so as to assign the two seats for the IdV, in the North West constituency, a single ranking was created with the candidates of IdV and of Galletto.
Having eliminated myself, de Magistris and Sonia Alfano, the first one elected would have been Gianni Vattimo and the second Louvin Roberto with 9,028 preference votes, the third would have been Carlo Vulpio with 8,716. Thus Carlo would not have been elected even if Sonia Alfano e de Magistris had opted for another constituency.

There was not and there could not have been any possibility of Vulpio being elected.

Having said that, I am not turning my back on Carlo, as I said even yesterday when I referred to all the candidates of 6 and 7 June. He will be involved in the renewal of the party and in the institutions as soon as there is an opportunity if he wants to continue to support a project that saw his candidacy as part of a wider plan. To Carlo I repeat that I hold him in high esteem and I invite him not to allow himself to be dragged into a trick with interviews by bodies that are dedicated to systematic disinformation and to search for dialogue with the ones who believe in him, without offering himself to those who exploit his disillusionment to denigrate the values that he himself believes in.

In fact just today, before I wrote this article, I had a long discussion with Luigi de Magistris and other Italia dei Valori leaders about the need to create internally, a new source of information, in print format and for broadcasting even via the Web. And this already represents the first occasion when Carlo’s contribution would be decisive for the success of the initiative.

Ranking of people and the votes they gained in the North West Constituency:

de Magistris Luigi 85,771
Di Pietro Antonio 81,276
Alfano Sonia 27,891
Vattimo Gianni 14,853
Louvin Roberto (Galletto) 9,028
Vulpio Carlo 8,716
Fusco Marylin 8,093
Zipponi Maurizio 4,091
Schltze Giorgio 4,193
Bardi Gloria 2,863
Rocchi Emanuela 2,677
Muttillo Giovanni 2,246
Beretta Ilaria 2,188
Piredda Maruska 2,106
Cusati Aniello 1,091
Ferrante Luigi 1,515
Vezza Lorella 1,485
Bernacconi Massimo 608
Farina Corrado 490
Paladini Manuela 454

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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10 June 2009

7 pillars to get back to Europe

In Europe, Italia dei Valori will have seven parliamentarians, all people of value. The names and the profiles are given below in this blog. Their objective is to restore dignity to the role of politics in the institutions, to restore the reputation of the country that has drastically collapsed after a year of the Berlusconi government, to promote the 12-point programme presented during the election campaign. I am taking the opportunity to thank the election candidates, especially those that will not go to Strasbourg, for their contribution. Each has brought their experience to achieve the exceptional result of 6 and 7 June. All, as I had promised, will be involved in the renewal that was put in motion in this election campaign that will continue with the meeting of the National Executive on 22 June right up until the IDV Conference. The process of change, I would like to reaffirm, continues in relation to all the candidates, the people elected, the citizens, the supporters of Italia dei Valori, and it is to them that I send out an invitation to keep up an active participation during the current renewal.

Sonia Alfano

Born: Messina, 15 October 1971

Profession: Functionary in the Region of Sicily

My website	Presenting myself	Curriculum
Contact me	Facebook	My video

Pino Arlacchi

Born: Gioia Tauro, 21 February 1951

Profession: Sociologist

My website	Presenting myself	Curriculum
Contact me	Facebook	My video

Luigi de Magistris

Born: Naples, 20 June 1967

Profession: Magistrate

My website	Presenting myself	Curriculum
Contact me	Facebook	My video

Vincenzo Iovine

Born: Francolise (Ce), 28 December 1955

Profession: Company Director

My website	Presenting myself	Curriculum
Contact me	Facebook	My video

Niccolò Rinaldi

Born: Florence, 03 December 1962

Profession: Adjunct General Secretary with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe at the European Parliament

My website	Presenting myself	Curriculum
Contact me	Facebook	My video

Giommaria Uggias

Born: Villanova Monteleone (SS), 29 March 1961

Profession: Lawyer

My website	Presenting myself	Curriculum
Contact me	Facebook	My video

Gianteresio Vattimo (detto Gianni)

Born: Turin, 04 January 1936

Profession: Philosopher

My website	Presenting myself	Curriculum
Contact me	Facebook	My video

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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9 June 2009

A new beginning

Internet friends, we have done it. We are turning round the trends of the Italian electorate. We are managing to open up the eyes of the Italians and make them understand that this model of government that Berlusconi wanted to take forward is a model that ends. Thank you. Thank you for your vote. Thank you for your solidarity and your trust. We will respond with new oomph, new passion and new responsibility.

We are convinced that the message is held within one word: “change”. Italia dei Valori is a political formation that is a “container” of that civil society that does not want to stay and watch but that wants to participate in change.

We will take to Europe really high quality people who represent the best Italy. There’ll definitely be de Magistris and Sonia Alfano together with another 5 people making a total of seven Italia dei Valori euro-parliamentarians. who will deal with all the issues relating to information, to renewable energy, to the hidden economy, to the fight against “seigniorage” and the profiteering in the banking system, to a system of companies that respects the rules of the game, to solidarity with the most vulnerable segments of society and to a culture that has more respect for human rights.

We will make our voice heard. From today we feel that we have been given so much responsibility that we want to define ourselves no longer as “a party that is in Opposition” but rather as “a party that wants to bring about a change” an alternative to the fascist, P2-ist, racist, Berlusconian model. Obviously we are well aware that to make this happen we have to go way beyond today’s result and construct alliances and occasions for coming together, that we are not going to look for in the parties but with you, in the civil society. We will try to find them by constructing a programme that we want to share with you via the Internet.

On 22 June we will start on this journey with a national conference when we will establish a programme guide, a widespread listening operation to hear what programme you want and together we will construct this new class of leaders that starting from the Italia dei Valori structure, will construct tomorrow’s new politics.

In the system of alliances we are going to put you in “pole position”. You, the people of the Internet who have given us your trust. We feel we have even greater responsibility, and right from today we are starting back to work: no day off is possible when we are “at the front” against this Berlusconian regime.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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8 June 2009

Citizens, hold your head high!

For those who have not already done so, even today I am renewing my appeal to go out and vote.
It may be that your vote is not enough, so use SMS text messages to invite your contacts to do the same. Call your friends. Take your family members to the voting station. Today I have read that the voting turnout has dropped. Don’t trade in an hour of relaxation with the future of the next five years. You can do both. Before going off to vote make a note on a piece of paper of the preferences of your constituency that you find here below for the European elections.

Citizens, hold your head high. It’s the moment for claiming back the country.

Print out and take with you to the voting station the list of IdV candidates for your constituency
Your name Your email  Friend's email

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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7 June 2009

My vote for democracy

The Web.
The Web is our last remaining hope for democracy.
In the next 24-hours, the Web could make the difference.
That is why I am launching my appeal right here on the Internet for you to go and vote. Let’s not be like that shipwreck victim, floating in the middle of the ocean, who stops swimming because he doesn’t think he will make it to the shore.
We are also floating in the middle of the ocean and we must reach the beach of democracy.
Those of you who don’t go and vote denies us the chance to mount any sort of active resistance, before it’s too late, against this xenophobic, fascist, racist, P2-ist regime represented by Berlusconi. Let’s send worthy Italians out into Europe, people that we can be proud of, people of which we don’t need to be ashamed and that won’t make us the laughing stock of the whole of Europe. I truly invite you to go and cast your vote. I invite you to vote for the Italia dei Valori party and for the principle of personal preference. Look on this site and at the foot of this posting.
Every one of our candidates is a worthy individual with experience and professionalism and with life experience on which they can count, people that represent the best of Italy.
I ask and indeed I beseech you – go and cast your vote.

These are the final 24 hours, after which the lights may go out on our democracy.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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5 June 2009

Bullets and democracy

Today I closed off my election campaign amongst the people of Naples at a market in Vomero. I received many words of esteem and a worker yelled to me at the top of his voice that politicians must deal with the issue of employment. I am not afraid of discussing the issues with the people and indeed I seek dialogue.

Two further events occurred simultaneously while I was closing off my campaign for these elections. The first made me feel good, namely the support I have received from Marco Travaglio and Peter Gomez, who have publicly lent me their support by stating on the “Voglioscendere” Blog that they will be voting for me and for the Italia dei Valori party in the upcoming European elections.

The second event was less pleasant, although I am not in the least bit intimidated and it proves to me that I am indeed on the right road. I received an envelope containing an intimidatory letter and a large calibre bullet, addressed to me and one of the Italia dei Valori’s Senators, namely Stefano Pedica. I would also like to lend my support to Michele Santoro, a journalist who also received a similar envelope with similar contents and the same message: "You’re going to die".

Two signs with completely different meanings, but that give me the strength and the urge to redeem this Country.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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3 June 2009

your vote for an Italy that is honest and strong in Europe

On Monday 1 June, I participated in the programme "Tribuna elettorale, elezioni politiche europee" on Rai 2. I talked about Europe, about work, the economy and information, four topics on which Italia dei Valori, in recent months, has taken up clear positions and has made concrete proposals that represent in the context of national politics, the only alternative to the inadequacy of this government.

Below, there’s an appeal-invitation to the blog supporters to make Saturday 6 June and Sunday 7 June the time for deciding between dictatorship and democracy. You will thus have the opportunity, and it might be the last one, to snatch from the corruptor and statute-barred Silvio Berlusconi, ‘The Clown’s Mask’ as London’s The Times, has put it.

There’s voting for local elections and for Europe. The results of the vote will deliver the destiny of our country for the next few years.

Italia dei Valori is the only party, in the Italian political panorama, that has made important choices that are an alternative to those of the Berlusconi government in terms of the economy, renewable energy, freedom of information, the right to work, by promoting actions that support unemployed people and families and it has been fighting for the equality of citizens before the law.

Italia dei Valori has been the only party to choose its candidates by appealing to civil society. They are candidates of value and I invite you to have a good look at their profiles in the area dedicated to them at www.europee2009.it

You can help me now with simple actions:

-distribute Italia dei Valori’s twelve point plan for Europe and the lists of the candidates for each constituency for which three preferences can be expressed;

- print out and give out the election material to friends and family, in the university and in public places;

- extend this invitation to your blogs or in the newsgroups that you participate in, or by means of social networking sites like Facebook;

- on your blogs, publish an appeal to vote for an Italia dei Valori candidate who you would like to go to Europe;

Together, we can change Italy. Your contribution will be decisive.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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1 June 2009

With no regard for the citizens

This President of the Council is selling off Italy and he is telling the Italians lies. Leaving aside the degradation into which Silvio Berlusconi has now plunged the country at an international level making us Europe’s laughing stock.
Leaving aside the scores and scores of other lies that have demonstrated the inadequacy of the President of the Council in resolving the economic crisis, that for the moment see us with the other countries of Europe, but that very soon the Italians will understand to be deeper, a crisis from which we will see the other States getting out of, but that in Italy will certainly last a lot longer.

However, I would like to stop and talk about the personal use of State flights, that in certain aspects, given the extreme banality, when compared to the serious facts with which Berlusconi has sullied himself in this legislature, are the demonstration that today in government there is a really terrible President of the Council
During the Prodi Government, the Ministers at that time Mastella and Rutelli were the authors of an affair that ended up in all the newspapers: they used State flights to go off to the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Monza. It was not a great example, and Italia dei Valori condemned that action with no half measures.
After that event, there was a tightening of the screw concerning access to State flights that put an end to “government embezzlement” and in 2 years halved the expenses from 50 to 28 million euro.
As soon as he was installed, Silvio Berlusconi brought back casual access to the State flights with the awareness and the premeditation of wanting to make wide use for friends, show-girls, hopefuls to appear on Big Brother, singers, friends and VIPs to be transported anywhere needed for a personal favour or for a party in Sardinia, towards what now seems more like a sexual tourism destination rather than a summer residence of a President of the Council.

Italy is plummeting with GDP at -5% and an unemployment rate of 10% and they are toasting each other to the disrespect of the citizens.

Today, Italia dei Valori has deposited a parliamentary question to ask for explanations on the government embezzlement in relation to State flights. The question is in front of the House in Parliament, the top body in which a State man should go and refer, But we already know that the responses will arrive either from the TV programme ‘Porta a Porta’ in a specially devised edition, or in a public conference that Berlusconi will exploit for the occasion.

One thing we can be certain of, if there is a response, it will be a lie.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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29 May 2009

I would rather swim than drown

Here is the text of an interview I gave to the daily newspaper the "Eco di Bergamo".

Eco di Bergamo: Mr Di Pietro, are you a democrat or a populist?
Antonio Di Pietro: «The Idv is a public party that was born spontaneously and that refuses to be bound to specific ideologies. At the moment the party is playing the role of opposition to the Berlusconi Government for obvious reasons, namely their economic, institutional and judicial policy».

Eco di Bergamo: This motion of no confidence in the Government, what good will it do?
Antonio Di Pietro: «We know full well that the motion of no-confidence is a minority issue, but it serves a purpose, which is to open the debate regarding the Prime Minister’s moral and political compatibility».

Eco di Bergamo: The only thing that has happened so far is that two no-confidence motions have now been submitted by the opposition, each following its own path and with reciprocal exchanges of insults. I’m sure the Pdl must be thrilled.
Antonio Di Pietro: «The Pd has resigned itself to the fact of losing and is attempting to regain the votes it is losing to the Idv. They would do far better to take a critical look at themselves rather than to criticise their allies».

Eco di Bergamo: D'Alema has said that Di Pietro is seeking the limelight and Casini has said that Di Pietro has scored an own-goal. Franceschini has stated that Berlusconi is the adversary, but the tit-for-tat continues. What is the poor centre-left voter supposed to think?
Antonio Di Pietro: «There are two aspects to the Pd. The one aspect is out in the field where, together with the Idv, they are busy building up an alternative nucleus to that of the political leaders, which consists of jealousy and dissatisfaction. We are busy selling our political policies and we cannot be blamed if the voters reward us for this».

Eco di Bergamo: Are you sure that the end result will be positive? Certain people are calling it Berlusconi’s shoulder to lean on.
Antonio Di Pietro: «A shoulder to lean on is someone who votes against his/her conscience simply in order to keep his/her cushy job. Every vote for the Idv remains within a reformist coalition that demands respect for the law, solidarity and freedom.»

Eco di Bergamo: What do you have to say about the Noemi case?
Antonio Di Pietro: «The Idv disapproves of public decisions. The current lack of any form of credible economic policy places numerous companies as well as thousands of individuals in difficulty. The people are concerned about their own families, not the Premier’s family».

Eco di Bergamo: The sentence in the Mills case dates back to February, so why did you wait until after the sentence was made public prior to beginning with your protest? Did you not perhaps leave it too late?
Antonio Di Pietro: «You must talk to the Pd about that. As regards the Alfano Bill, we have already gathered a million signatures, and that in a time period that is not in any way suspect».

Eco di Bergamo: The voters may think that, given the fact that the fights are continuing, perhaps it would be better to vote for the other side.
Antonio Di Pietro: «The other side fights even more. The Pdl-Lega battle for power in Lombardy is very clear as regards the Expo and Malpensa airport. All that Lombardy has left are the Brebemi and the Pedemontana, both of which I originally set up».

Eco di Bergamo: Has Berlusconi simply copied your Bill for the reduction of the number of Parliamentarians?
Antonio Di Pietro: «We submitted the plan last year and resubmitted it again last Tuesday, but the majority decided not to put it on the agenda of items for discussion. In other words, Berlusconi is once again busy taking the Italians for a ride».

Eco di Bergamo: Are you saying that the Idv is a post-ideological party?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Which we assess on a case-by-case basis. We said yes to federalism and the return of illegal immigrants».

Eco di Bergamo: What does your voter profile look like?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Across the board, young and skilled. People that get their information from the Internet because the official channels are otherwise occupied».

Eco di Bergamo: But Di Pietro has not gone on a thirst strike like Pannella has.
Antonio Di Pietro: «I hold eight meetings a day, 600 in all. I would prefer to swim rather than drown».

Eco di Bergamo: The British newspapers are claiming that democracy is under threat in Italy.
Antonio Di Pietro: «They are dead right. The justice department’s hands are tied, Parliament is simply following orders and the media is totally one-sided».

Eco di Bergamo: The very same thing that Berlusconi is saying...
Antonio Di Pietro: «Yes, but he owns the television stations and he appoints the members of the RAI Executive Committee from the comfort of his own home».

Eco di Bergamo: Is it true that Di Pietro says one thing and then does something totally different?
Antonio Di Pietro: «It is true that we pushed for the referendum, however, the situation has changed in the meantime. I was taught to watch my step».

Eco di Bergamo: And what about the matter of your endless list of real estate holdings?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Already in the hands of the judges. I will fight all inferences that are made».

Eco di Bergamo: No changes to the Constitution then?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Certainly not changes made by people that seek to sideline the tools of democracy, such as the Constitutional Court, the Council of State and, above all, the National Audit Office».

Eco di Bergamo: Why the National Audit Office above all?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Because, although no one says much about it, the National Audit Office castigates the Government on a daily basis because of its misuse of public funds».

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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28 May 2009

All together with passion, against the IDV motion

The “no confidence” motion presented in Parliament against the President of the Council, has up until now, only been signed by Italia dei Valori parliamentarians. It has not gained the number of signatures needed for it to be discussed in the Chamber. On this issue, the other parliamentarians are maintaining silence and are keeping their tails between their legs.

In this country there is a government, a governing opposition and an alternative Opposition to this government molasses: Italia dei Valori. To be clear, a vote for the PD and the UDC is a vote that is useful and functional for the Berlusconi government, given that it doesn’t disturb and it consolidates a vague “sense of democracy” with which to keep the conscience of the citizens in a comatose state.

The UDC, in the person of Pier Fendinando Casini, has defined the “no confidence” motion to be a “load of rubbish”. Said by a party that has Totò Cuffaro as its top man, the one who offers delicious Sicilian pastries just because he was “only” convicted of “simple aiding and abetting” and not of “mafia aiding and abetting”, is the confirmation that the motion had to be presented, and it is good that he has not given his support.

To respond to Dario Franceschini, who accuses me of attacking the PD (forgetting that he defined as “a useless vote” a vote given to Italia dei Valori and who continues to repeat that in every situation, even in a stupid way), I respond that in order to do Opposition, it’s necessary to do it every day, by looking at the contents and the values that inspire it. You cannot do Opposition by boycotting piazza Navona and piazza Farnese, the collection of signatures for the referendum against the Lodo Alfano, simply because it is not an initiative that is fruit of your own party.

Furthermore, I ask Massimo D’Alema, the second spirit of the PD who has spent the last 2 months in an election campaign against Italia dei Valori, having defined our motion as “una sfida all'Ok Corral” {Gunfight at the O.K. Corral} to explain, the point of a motion, that is the one presented in such a hurry by the PD to get an equal count with the IDV, that asks a corruptor to renounce the Lodo Alfano, that was tailor-made to escape from the trial for which he is asking for him to renounce it.

Even this motion will not have the majority in Parliament. So with what criterion does he define one motion to be “a boomerang” and another “an act of genius”?

The PD motion has no sense, neither technically nor politically because Berlusconi, the corruptor, has already taken advantage of the Lodo Alfano in situations that are much more straightforward (one case lost a few weeks ago with myself, which I talked about on 22 April in the article “Unpunished defamer”) and for which, to repeal it one million signatures have been collected for a referendum.

And yet we will sign the motion presented by the PD, because as we will be told off for, we are not “hypercritical” and because it is a formal action that has to stay in the live documents of this nasty page in the history of democracy.

Some battles have to be engaged even though we know they can be lost, but in the overall plan, they are essential to win the war.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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27 May 2009

Expo 2015 - Mafia: 0-1

The PDL and Letizia Moratti have said “no” to the Antimafia commission for the control of the contracts for the supply chain worth millions and millions of euro that will be invested on the occasion of Expo 2015 taking place in Milan.

To perform such an action after the worrying words of the substitute prosecutor of the national Antimafia directorate, Vincenzo Macrì, who in June of last year defined Milan as the “true capital of the clans”, is an unexplainable action that raises the suspicion about the fact that there is a wish to have a free hand in managing contracts awarded in a dubious way.

There is no reason to not want to have the presence of a further controlling organisation that watches out for the infiltration of organised crime and over the flows of money that will be assigned into the hands of politicians, local cabinet members, superintendents, committees, and groupings of an organisation as complex as that of the Milan Expo. If the problem is the lack of power of the commission, let them hand over more power, if it’s a matter of its members, then let them be substituted, if it’s a question of overlap, then let the tasks be shared out, if it is a matter of illegitimacy, then let things be made legitimate. But the solution of doing without the commission chosen by mayor Moratti is not adequate, and it arrived on the very day which saw the assassination as a vendetta, in a bar in Quarto Oggiaro, of Franco Crisafulli. He was a 57 year old man with previous convictions belonging to the well known Crisafulli mafia clan.

The invitation that I offer Mayor Moratti is to bring back the Antimafia committee immediately. Its elimination would become a boomerang for the credibility of the country and of the city of Milan if it should happen to come out, and there’s a real danger of this, that there is the presence of infiltrations of organised crime in the destination of financing and the contracts, especially in the light of the big projects going on in the Expo building site.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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Moving “No confidence”

Yesterday I sent a letter to the Secretaries of the PD and of the UDC containing an invitation to support Italia dei Valori‘s motion of “No confidence” against Silvio Berlusconi that was presented this morning in a press conference in Verona. Not being “certain” of the result and as the initiative is not “theirs”, they decided to accept defeat. A way of behaving already seen with the collection of signatures for the referendum against the Lodo Alfano and before that the Lodo Previti. The Opposition of the day after is of little interest. Nor can we accept the advice of those who tell us that “the No confidence motion against Berlusconi is useless because you are a minority”, apart from then presenting the request for the repeal of the Lodo Alfano that is super-imposed on an Italia dei Valori initiative, that is much more credible, that has collected 1,000,000 signatures for the referendum that asks to repeal it.

The motivation for the no confidence motion are clear and visible to all citizens. Many Italians undervalue the seriousness and the damage to the image and to the economy brought about by the conviction of David Mills. In the grounds for the verdict of the Berlusconi-Mills trial, (that then became just the Mills trial, because of the non-trialability of Silvio Berlusconi thanks to the Lodo Alfano), really serious facts and crimes are revealed about the persons involved in the affairs that were reconstructed through the evidence and the statements of the witnesses. The seriousness of the verdict, that in Italy was heralded with a disgraceful speech pronounced and applauded at the Confindustria meeting by a man who believes himself to be above the law, in the world has been described as an unprecedented event in the history of western democracies.

Here is the concluding sentence of Italia dei Valori’s motion: “To that end, the Chamber, while fully respecting the prerogative of the Head of State, expresses no confidence in the Government led by the Honourable Silvio Berlusconi and calls for him to submit his resignation into the hands of the Head of State.”

As I wrote yesterday, there is no use in trying to deflect the attention with a renewed sensibility about the cost of politics, that has been raised by the President of the Council and talk of halving the number of parliamentarians, a sensitive issue that we have already dealt with in the last few months, by presenting a number of draft laws proposed by Italia dei Valori, but never taken into consideration by this government and its majority.

Even this “lie” is destined to stay as an election advert that will end on 8 June when, after the elections, on the spot, every promise will be ignored.

This is why today, Italia dei Valori is presenting a challenge to Parliament by means of two legal projects (ordinary and constitutional) that contain some improvements in relation to the ones already presented, for the reduction of the costs of the public administration. Reforms are done with actions and not with adverts. We would like to have the evidence.

Below I am giving a summary of the two legal projects.

The constitutional legal project (read the document) contains various arrangements that have already been presented by deputies of the IDV Group during the current legislature.

The draft law sets out:

1) reduction in the number of parliamentarians: there’s a reduction in the number of deputies from 615 to 300 people, and the number of senators from 315 to 150 people.

2) abolition of the provinces

3) reduction in the components in the councils and the regional cabinets

The ordinary legal project (read the document) contains:

1) suppression of the outlying constituencies of the towns

2) suppression of the mountain communities

3) reduction in the number of the components in the councils and the town and provincial cabinets

4) reduction in the components in the bodies of the public participation companies

5) reduction in the expenses that can be claimed

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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22 May 2009

Despicable applause

Within Confindustria, the body that represents large companies countrywide, two different worlds live side by side. The one wants to re-launch the Country while the other, instead, wants to scupper the Country and, in the past fifty years, the latter has proceeded to privatise the profits and pin any losses on the public. They think they can resolve the current crisis via the politician that happens to be on shift, they applaud when attacks are launched on the institutions or the magistrature, which is not prepared to do any shady deals because justice is their business rather than easy profits. The applause lavished on Mister Berlusconi yesterday is ample proof that the culture of bribery and corruption is still alive and well in our economy thanks to a large number of rotten apples.

Yesterday’s applause and the Prime Minister’s pantomime regarding the extremist judges that are accusing him of corruption are a sign of the negative side of this Country. The big business lobby showed that they are far closer to the political caste than what they are to the traditional model of healthy entrepreneurship and, at the same time, that they are way removed from the Country, from the problems facing small to medium size companies and from the workers that are the backbone of this Country’s economic system.

I would like to suggest to Emma Marcegaglia to distance herself from the “Applauding Confindustria” in the interests of that healthy entrepreneurial world that she herself represents, and not to barter this organisation’s dignity with a show of obsequiousness aimed at obtaining new money and economic benefits. The dignity and ethics of a Country, a company or a businessman (an honest one that is) are not for sale.

As for the Prime Minister, after his full dress rehearsal on ‘Porta a Porta’ with his attorney present and at the Confindustria conference, he can now quite happily face the courts, where he will be able to rant to his heart’s content before being sentenced.

I want to repeat that Silvio Berlusconi doesn’t deserve to represent the Italian population.

PS: Tomorrow, Saturday 23 May, I will be at the Palapartenope in Naples to attend the “Battle for rights” demonstration and to lend my support to Luigi de Magistris and Sonia Alfano, both of whom are standing as candidates in the upcoming European elections under the banner of the Italia dei Valori party.

The day’s proceedings will be shown via direct streaming on this blog, as well as on the websites www.italiadeivalori.it and www.carlocostantini.it.

Schedule of events:

With effect from 17h30, videos covering the main topics to be addressed during the evening will be projected on the screens.

18h15 – Beppe Grillo

18h40 – Sonia Alfano, independent Italia dei Valori party candidate for the European elections

19h05 – Luigi de Magistris, independent Italia dei Valori party candidate for the European elections

19h20 – Antonio Di Pietro, President of the Italia dei Valori party

19h40 – Enzo Avitabile e Cisco – musical interlude

20h00 – Clementina Forleo – by video link

20h10 – Carlo Vulpio - Italia dei Valori party candidate for the European elections

20h25 – Libero De Rienzo

20h35 – Peppe Lanzetta & Joe Amoroso – musical interlude

20h55 – Tara Gandhi – via telephone link

21h05 – E’ Zezi - musical interlude

21h25 - Abel Ferrara

21h35 – Maurzio Honorato

21h45 – Salvatore Borsellino

21h55 - Gaetano di Vaio

22h05 – Antonio Marfella

22h15 – Ulderico Dardano

22h25 – Conclusion - Beppe Grillo, Luigi de Magistris and Sonia Alfano

22h45 – Bandabardò Concert

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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19 May 2009

Unworthy

”The English lawyer David Mills certainly acted as a false witness to allow Silvio Berlusconi and Fininvest to have impunity from the accusations or at least to keep hefty profits realised by the action of illegal company and financial operations carried out by Berlusconi himself up to that date.” This is now a verified fact, as you can read in the grounds for the verdict, published today. This is the reasoning behind the verdict convicting the English lawyer for having pocketed in 1997, a wad of money equal to 600 thousand dollars. The sum of money, received from the one who corrupted him, Silvio Berlusconi, was used to buy his false testimony in two legal trials connected with the undocumented funding of the President of the Council’s “off-shore” companies.

In any other country, with a verdict like that, the Prime Minister would have immediately resigned. For example, today there is news of the resignation of Michael Martin, the Speaker in the British House of Commons, for an affair that is of lower importance connected to the expense claims of the parliamentarians. But we are in Italy and we are living under a dictatorial democracy. The President of the Council made himself a law that makes him immune (he and another three positions in the State) from any crime: the Lodo Alfano.
This law was made and approved by himself, as he knew what would be the result of this trial that would have seen him as a defendant for corruption and that as a reflection, would also have confirmed crimes of tax evasion and fraud that he committed in relation to the State.
Berlusconi will not renounce his “save-the-trials” shield. He cannot do so or he would be tried and convicted.
Furthermore, he will not pay anything for the massive sums of money taken away from the State through tax evasion. It has also been taken from the citizens of whom he is today the representative in the institutions.
The most he can do, is to come to Parliament and try to get a political-media absolution where his governing “claque” will have the order to applaud louder than the whistles of the Opposition of Italia dei Valori.

This gentleman now only represents his segment of Parliament and a vast group of friends and hangers-on to whom he has distributed public money and power in a private way. Furthermore, the TV stations and the newspapers that he controls, proclaim a consensus based on a systematic lie, taking their example in such a suitable way from the owner.
Silvio Berlusconi must resign as he is not worthy to represent the State and the Italian people.

PS: On 23 May live streaming from the event called "LOTTA PER I DIRITTI" {fight for rights} in Naples. Sign up to the event on Facebook and promote it through the Internet and by telling your friends.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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14 May 2009

You will not transform Italy into a country that is intolerant, fascist, xenophobic and P2-ist

I’m publishing the declaration of the final vote this morning on the draft security law. Shortly, there’ll also be the video of the speech in the Chamber.

Text of the speech:

Signor President of the Council who is not present,

Italia dei Valori will vote against this measure because it is not a “security package” but a “package of insecurity and mystification of the reality”.

One more time, your regime propaganda is trying to muddy the waters with measures that are clearly propaganda, as they did at the time of fascism, a fascism that you are so keen on and that you want to palm off on us once more.

This sort of behaviour is not new for you: you did it with the Alitalia case, giving us to believe that you had saved the company while it failed. You did it with the rubbish in Naples, simply by moving it to the outskirts. You are doing it with the tragedy of the earthquake in Abruzzo, getting the people of Abruzzo to believe that it’s possible to do reconstruction today with funding that will arrive in 2032.
You are doing it with the multiple times that you are moving the same money from one account to another to have us believe that you are making provision for everyone and everything, just like your predecessor did when he moved 4 rusty cannons from one place to another to magnify the non-existing military power of fascism.

You are doing it even today, giving us to believe that with today’s provision it will be possible to guarantee greater security in our country, while in reality it’s just a question of measures that in a practical way will not make any difference to the state of things.

An example?
Let’s take the case of the crime of being a clandestine. As it has been thought up, it is useless from a practical point of view, and it still is in itself an odious measure as it provides a penalty on a subjective reality of a person and not on his behaviour. Right now, already, the penalty for being a “clandestine” is expulsion. To lay down that for every clandestine, there has to be criminal expulsion and not just the administrative expulsion, means clogging up the Tribunals and the Prosecutors Offices with hundreds of thousands of dossiers and trials that will keep the magistrates busy as well as their auxiliaries and the police forces in never-ending trials that in fact are of no use given that no clandestine will ever pay the 10,000 euro fine laid down and you certainly can’t put them all in prison if they don’t pay or if they return after expulsion. Already now there are more than 60,000 people in prison even though there are less than 40,000 bed-places in Italian prisons. Where would we put the hundreds of thousands of people that we would have to throw into prison just because they are clandestines?
The truth is that it is simply a “manifesto regulation” or rather just an “election regulation” good for tricking the citizens but that in no way resolves the problem.
Another empty task for the magistrates and the police forces, therefore, that, in addition to the enormous quantity of useless work that they are already doing today, for example as a result of the new reduced time frame for “prescrizione” {Statute of Limitations} on crimes that you Signor President of the Council has been so keen to get, to ensure your personal impunity. You know that because of your disgraceful personal choice, every year more than 200,000 criminal trials fall into “prescrizione” and therefore the consequence is that 200,000 potential delinquents are out and about and the same number of victims thus have no justice and it’s all your fault.
And do you realize how much useless work you are obliging the police and the magistrates to do just because of your personal interests?

It is you and your majority that is stirring up insecurity Signor President of the Council, and certainly not “let’s attack the negro” as you want to make it seem.

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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11 May 2009

We will resist

If Franceschini truly wants to block the authoritarian drift of this government, then he has to rethink his “yes” that definitively hands over the whole of Italy and all the institutions to “il ducetto Berlusconi”

If the leader of the PD truly wants to do something useful for the democracy of this country, let him commit himself together with us to prevent Berlusconi from claiming for himself the result of the referendum on 21 June.

We of Italia dei Valori, even though we have promoted that referendum and collected signatures with the noble intention of changing this fraudulent law, today we have the courage to say to the citizens to vote “no”. In fact, the referendum was thought up as the tool needed to change the current law, the so-called "porcellum". The intention was to get the political powers to sit down in Parliament and to act responsibly to create another law to give back to the citizens the possibility of choosing their own candidates and to send away those that no longer have their trust.

But today the position is different: the referendum question is not seen as a tool to change a law that is unjust and absurd, but as an opportunity to crystallise iniquity and to give absolute power to Berlusconi.

We of Italia dei Valori will not go with that and we will resist.

What is the response on this topic from the Secretary of the PD, given that just recently, he too has said that he recognizes the advent of this dictatorship?

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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Electoral desperation

Today Dario Franceschini has demonstrated all his electoral desperation by stating that a vote for Italia dei Valori is a “protest vote” and therefore it would not be a “useful vote”.
The opposite is true. Today, the only real “useful vote” is the one in favour of those people who are opposing the racist, fascist, xenophobic government of Silvio Berlusconi. Certainly not for the party that hypocritically remembers only at election times and for purposes of the election. Its leader has less and less the right to ask for the “useful vote”, to combat Berlusconi. The one who has not had the courage to challenge him directly nor to position the party as a resistance party. Italia dei Valori, from the first day of this legislature, has been the only Opposition and has been representing the truly useful vote because it bears witness to the fight of those who, over the years have fought in all ways in defence of the democracy of this country and of its institutions. Starting with the million signatures collected to promote the referendum to block the Lodo Alfano and the impunity that Berlusconi has created for himself. A collection of signatures at which the PD has turned its nose up, choosing not to support this battle for democracy.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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10 May 2009

Point one: transparency regarding funding

As I am wont to do from time to time, here is an article drawn from the foreign press. Today I have chosen El Pais and the topic is as follows: the "eco-Mafia and the mafia’s infiltration of the public tender process".

The term "eco-mafia" indicates the infiltration of the “ecology” business by organised crime. When this type of infiltration occurs, the term "ecology" loses its meaning entirely and indeed becomes nothing more than the privatisation of public health and welfare. It is enough to consider the refuse scandal in the Campania region and the damage done to both the health of the local residents and the local economy.

Amongst the various issues addressed in the article, El Pais also talks about the attempts being made by organised crime organisations to infiltrate the tender process for the construction of the Messina Straits Bridge, which I never doubted for a moment. In addition to being totally useless, this bridge that is so wanted by the government runs the risk of becoming yet another example of financing organised crime, just as the Cosa Nostra has already infiltrated the wind power business.

The first of the 12 points that the Italia dei Valori party has proposed for its candidates for Strasburg is as follows:

"ENSURING TRANSPARENCY AS REGARDS THE POLICIES SURROUNDING THE ALLOCATION OF EUROPEAN UNION FUNDING BY OFFERING THE POSSIBILITY OF VERIFYING THE PROGRESS AND THE ALLOCATION PROCEDURES ONLINE, BY REVIEWING THE ALLOCATION CRITERIA AND MAKING THE MINISTRIES RESPONSIBLE FOR SUPERVISION."

Only by ensuring control and transparency in the process of managing public funding will it be possible to break the links between organised crime, colluding politicians and business lobbies.

Text of the article:

"An environmentalist dossier presented with the support of the State President has shed some light on the flourishing business being done by organised crime groups in the trafficking of refuse.

In Naples they say that: “la monnezza è ricchezza” (refuse is money). Even if the world were to crash down around us, this phrase, drawn from the book entitled “Gomorra”, would nevertheless remain true. In 2008 the eco-mafia’s turnover from the illegal disposal of refuse amounted to some 20,5 billion Euro.

This is confirmed in the annual dossier published by the environmental association “Legambiente”, which was presented yesterday in Rome with the backing of the State President. This is the highest turnover ever recorded. With this much refuse, we could build a mountain as large as Etna, a base spanning three hectares and a height of 3100 metres.

In 2008, in Italy, some 25,776 environment-related crimes were committed, which equates to 71 such crimes each day, or 3 every hour. The good news is that, in 2007, a greater number of such crimes were recorded, namely 30,124. Legambiente has calculated that 31 million tons of refuse has been buried on Italian soil, which is equivalent to half a million truckloads. The study claims that: “we know where the refuse comes from, but we don’t know where it is being dumped”. Almost half of these crimes are committed in the four regions where the mafia presence has traditionally been at its highest (Campania, Calabria, Sicily and Puglia), while the rest are spread throughout the rest of the country. And the wealthy North is also coming strongly to the fore, with Piedmont leading the field. “The mafia groups have extended their tentacles across a large part of the North”, claims the President of Legambiente, Vittorio Cogliati.

Clear proof of this fact is constituted by the recent arrest of Mario Chiesa, a major player in cases of corruption in the past, who “has recently been focusing his efforts on the illegal trafficking in refuse via a network of white collar workers, businessmen and corrupt public officials”.

In an official note, State President Giorgio Napolitano offered his congratulations because the investigations have shown that the institutions are starting to win the battle. Since 2002, the year in which the illegal disposal of refuse was recognised as being a crime, the judges instituted criminal actions in 123 cases involving the “poison bosses”. Last year alone, some 25 investigations were carried out, resulting in 2,328 charges being laid against individuals and a further 564 against companies: they managed some 7 billion Euro of business. This was an absolute record.

The environmentalists maintain that hundreds of mafia clans are living off the proceeds of refuse disposal. According to national anti-mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso, “what we are lacking are the necessary means and a national observatory. Behind the eco-mafia groups there is a complex criminal system with laboratory technicians, carriers and others and we need more legal tools in order to deal with them”. Grasso has asked the government to allow the use of wiretapping.

The industrial waste products are poisoning the soil and killing animals, woodland and people. The money is being laundered via the illegal construction of houses, a business activity that has not been affected in the least by the current economic crisis. Last year alone, some 28,000 illegally built new houses shot up in Italy. At the top of the list is Campania, followed by Calabria, two regions that are caught in the grip of the economic recession. In the former region, the clans have built on an area of some 300,000 square metres, and this within an area (fertile former agricultural land) of 158 square kilometres.

The Anti-mafia Investigations Department reiterates that in Calabria, the ‘Ndrangheta “continues to expand its operations in the area of public works”, such as for example the Salerno-Reggio Calabria and the Jonica motorways. A bridge across the Straits of Messina would be a dream for them. But worse is yet to come, because the Court of Palermo has just recently commenced with a new investigation: the Cosa Nostra has allegedly infiltrated public works contracts for the construction of wind farms for energy provision."

Text translated by Italiadallestero.info

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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9 May 2009

Europe's view of Italy

Today I am making way for a video contribution by Niccolo' Rinaldi, Italia dei Valori party candidate for the European elections scheduled for 6 and 7 June. Niccolo has been living and working all over Europe for the past twenty years notwithstanding the fact that he has 3 children in Italy, and he is assistant secretary general in the European Parliament. He has an intimate knowledge of our continent and equally of our Country, so he knows what he is talking about when he discusses “how we are viewed from abroad”.

The Italia dei Valori party has chosen to adopt “Returning to Europe” as our slogan because we are currently distant from the other member Countries in terms of the actions taken and the choices made by this government on a daily basis.

In order to engineer an “about turn”, we need some new faces, people that are professional and a suitable programme to take to Strasburg. To date, no other party has put forward a programme for your approval during in its election campaign, but have limited themselves to asking you to choose a candidate, sight unseen. What they intend to do if elected is something that you will, in all probability, only discover after the fact and, be warned, they will use the position exclusively to promote their own interests.

The Italia dei Valori party has a concrete 12-point programme, which the party’s candidates undertake to adhere to once elected. A programme that you are invited to read, print out, circulate and comment on in this Blog.

Text of the address

I am often asked how Italy is viewed by Brussels, by Europe, and how the country is viewed by foreigners. What I am able tell you is that, for many years, the foreigner’s impression of our Country has focussed on two issues. Much instability and governments that change continuously: this is what many foreigners believe as regards politics and the institutions.

Even in Europe, where the European Parliament plays an important role, Italy’s presence as regards participation in official statistics of this institution, Italy is in 27th place out of 27. In other words, we are in last place as regards participation in voting in plenary sessions and participation in the discussions of the parliamentary committees, which is where all of the European debates and laws originate.

This has naturally always weighed upon the opinion that foreigners have of the Italians, even those that are then designated and elected by the population to represent them, with a whole range of exceptions because, as always, there is a certain number of people who somehow manage to keep the boat afloat on behalf of all the others.

Nevertheless, the opinion of this Italy of institutions, of multiple governments and of endless policies has always been somewhat negative, although the opinion of the Italian people has been very positive. Italy is seen as a nation of entrepreneurs, of resourcefulness, of people that know how to live well, that are warm and supportive and that have taught Europe about almost everything: arte, science, legal culture and the ability to keep smiling and to travel the world for our work with our head always held high. But even this latter aspect, this benevolent opinion of the Italian people is busy changing in Europe because what we are seeing is a society that, after decades of bad politics and great difficulties for our institutions, is beginning to show signs of resignation.

Now for something that would have been unheard of until just a few years ago. The European Parliament has already sent more than one delegation to Italy to study the problems related to racism, violence and the fingerprinting of children. We live in a society that is showing signs of increasing violence in our schools, namely the problem of bullying, and in our apartment blocks, something that is emerging in Europe too.

Let’s talk about the issue of drug taking, which is no longer simply a phenomenon resulting from marginalisation or lawlessness but has almost become a kind of social costume, a phenomenon of trivial drug use, from cocaine to synthesised drugs, for which our Country has gone to the top of the list as regards levels of consumption.

I also think about another issue that has created a stir in Europe, namely the failure to provide assistance following road accidents. Once upon a time, this behaviour was the exception to the rule and it was an extremely rare occurrence. If you drove into someone on the road, you immediately stopped to help. Nowadays, instead, there are many cases where people fail to stop and provide assistance, where victims are simply left lying in the street to die in this manner.

Naturally I also think about the problem of corruption, which is on the increase notwithstanding the “Mani Pulite” inquiry and notwithstanding the efforts that have been made in terms of raising awareness. This is also why we need to start again in Europe.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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6 May 2009

I want to speak about the regime

I’m publishing an interview I gave yesterday to the daily paper called il Riformista. In the interview, I repeat my wish to talk about solid things like the economic crisis, the assault on the Justice System by this government, the propaganda-style handling of the earthquake in Abruzzo and apart from for Silvio Berlusconi, I do not speculate on facts that involve family members and third parties. However, I want to remind people that the President of the Council is a public personality and the net separation of public and “private” is not possible for a man of the institutions. He himself, right up to yesterday, has always mixed up the two spheres as he pleases to get political advantage from them. Unfortunately, when you show off your own private life to generate consensus, then it’s not possible to use the filters and censorship on what relates to your conduct even in this sphere.

il Riformista: Does Berlusconi have to take Veronica’s accusations to Parliament?
Antonio Di Pietro: I have no intention to exploit this story. It’s a private matter.

il Riformista: His deputy group leader, armed with the criminal code, has asked the premier to clarify his relationship with the young girl.
Antonio Di Pietro: I repeat: it’s a private matter that involves, exactly, a young girl who is not an adult. I’m interested in talking about Berlusconi’s public actions starting with the attack that he is carrying out against democracy.

il Riformista: Where is the boundary between public and private?
Antonio Di Pietro: I’ll tell you for the last time. The President of the Council is a public figure and thus it is legitimate to go over the boundary into the private sphere. Having said that, given that there are third parties in this story, I do not intend exploiting it. We are talking about a young girl and her future. Thus I will not use arguments that can involve the third parties to attack Berlusconi.

il Riformista: Would you offer a position as candidate to Veronica?
Antonio Di Pietro: What kind of a question is this? I want to talk about politics.

il Riformista: Veltroni did.
Antonio Di Pietro: But I am Di Pietro. You are talking to me.

il Riformista: Have we gone from talking about a moral question to a sexual issue?
Antonio Di Pietro: For me there is a political and moral issue that relates to the conflict of interests of the premier and his P2-ist political project that is emptying out the role of Parliament, the role of the magistracy and is enslaving the information system. This is what we have to talk about: the crisis, Abruzzo.

il Riformista: Abruzzo . What’s your view now that a month has gone by since the earthquake?
Antonio Di Pietro: We are faced with a gigantic media speculation for election purposes. The government acted badly even before the earthquake, just look at how it behaved in relation to the “Major Risks Committee”. And now Berlusconi is aiming to confuse the extraordinary work done by volunteers with the action of the government. Thus claiming the merit that is not due to him.

il Riformista: And the G8. The so-called « Abruzzo decree»?
Antonio Di Pietro: It’s all play-acting. The G8 would just cause confusion. Anyway, now that a month has gone by since the earthquake, there is no idea of reconstruction on the ground. Go and ask the people of Abruzzo what they think of this play-acting. And there’s not even the money, given that according to this decree, the money won’t arrive until 2033.

...

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5 May 2009

Referendum equation

The referendum on 21 June is born with a destiny of failure. Even the Lega, the PD and the PDL know this. Unfortunately, the referendum will almost certainly fail because of a low turnout at the voting stations, due to the closeness of the two voting dates, wanted by the Lega.

The polemics of “yes but” and “yes if” that they are putting together about the fact of going to have a referendum without altering the election law, can appear to be a political virtuosity that has nothing to do with the citizens, but this time it is of fundamental importance. We cannot say “yes” to a referendum that repeals a law without knowing how they intend to redo the law. For us what is valid is the equation: Yes to the referendum = elimination of the current election law, that I would remind you even the ones who created it have defined to be “porcellum” ….

On the other hand, it makes you smile that the Lega, agrees with Calderoli about the “porcellum” with which they are denying the Italians the right to express their preference and they are now “closed in the cellar” rewriting a new election law to take forward with “those that are in favour”.

I reaffirm the “yes” to the referendum questions, given that I respect the 850 thousand citizens who signed, but I would like to know from the other political forces what their intentions are on the current election law. If the intention is to start with the referendum to change the “porcellum”, Italia dei Valori is ready to vote “yes”. If the intention is to exploit the signatures of the citizens to start a revision programme that finishes up with a “porcellum mark II, the final solution” and with the elimination of Opposition parties, then we will not accept that.”

The referendum is an essential starting point to sit down within the Chamber of Parliament with the other political forces and work out another election law.

A “yes” to the referendum without a correct revision of the election law would hand over the keys of the system of the country to a single party with a fascist design.

To sum up, a “yes” to the referendum to further an objective wanted by the citizens: to construct a new election law that really gives them the possibility to express their preferences, without having to make do with lists of names chosen by the Party Secretaries, and that protects those political forces that express widespread representation of the population in Parliament.

PS: I invite you to comment on the 12 points of the proposed programme, presented in yesterday’s article and that Italia dei Valori will take to Europe. I invite you to comment and to offer your contribution to the points that you will find by clicking on the image below.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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4 May 2009

12 points for going back to Europe

Let’s get back to Europe. It’s the slogan that Italia dei Valori has chosen to give an idea of the distance of the current activity and the strategic choices that our country is making in terms of economic, environmental and social development.

We must get back to Europe because the issue of nuclear, the Lodo Alfano, the reform of the Justice system, public financing of publishing, the information system in the country and many other aspects have taken us a long way away from the development choices that the other countries have made without hesitation.

Let’s get back to Europe with a 12 point programme and with candidates who are worthy of representingi our citizens in Strasbourg. I invite you to comment and to offer your contribution to the points that you will find by clicking on the image below.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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3 May 2009

A new kind of enthusiasm

Today in Bologna, the Italia dei Valori party presented its candidates who are to represent the Northeast constituency in the European elections scheduled for 6 and 7 June. As I did in the case of the other constituencies, today too I invite you to visit the website www.europee2009.it in order to view the candidate profiles.

As in the previous cases, in the northeast we have also made room for members of civil society and new faces in the world of politics. As far as Europe is concerned, what we want to do is to send in people with a new kind of enthusiasm who, if they are elected, will be committed to involving the citizens in the political life of the continent, because Europe closely affects us.
During this election campaign, none of the parties have bothered to talk about any sort of programme, in fact they have spoken about everything other than content and proposals to be taken to Strasburg. The politicians and their media are currently counting exclusively on exploitation, emergencies, slander and their appearances in Abruzzo in order to attract votes.
This is not true of the Italia dei Valori party. We want to "return to Europe", because we are moving further away from it as each day passes. And we want to do so with a proposed programme consisting of twelve points. This is what we will ask the Italians to vote on, not on chitchat.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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1 May 2009

In Europe with people who are beautiful inside

This morning, in Milan at the “Camera del Lavoro” I presented the candidates of the North west voting area that groups together the regions of Lombardy, Liguria, Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta. So that you can see biographical profiles of each candidate, we have set up a special area for them. I invite you to have a look at the profiles and check the quality of their candidacy by going through the material that is made available.

I am publishing the video of some of my declarations given this morning to journalists during a press conference about the European elections.

Text of the presentation

Antonio Di Pietro: Italia dei Valori reaffirms that the referendum is a constitutional right that cannot and must not be removed. It is a mistake not to have decided to have the voting on 7 June. We will go and vote and we will vote so that the citizens will one day be allowed to have the possibility of choosing their own candidates and above all, until convicts can no longer enter Parliament. We’ve had enough.

Journalist: Italia dei Valori is going it alone in the European elections. In the last few days, D'Alema has used really harsh words thus closing the door on any possible alliance. How do you respond?
Antonio Di Pietro: I’ll tell you, because I think that like yourself, many citizens are misinformed. At the European elections, coalitions do not exist. Every party goes on its own, even the Partito democratico (PD), the Popolo delle libertà (PDL) and the others. Italia dei Valori will present itself at the European elections in accordance with the election law.

Journalist: Talking of the future, it seems that a possible alliance with Franceschini is ever more difficult.
Antonio Di Pietro: We of Italia dei Valori repeat the need to be a strong and clear Opposition to the Berlusconi Government that takes from the weak to give to the strong and the arrogant, that has two different yardsticks on justice and the economy and we restate the need to construct a future that is reformist in which solidarity, the rule of law, and liberty can all live side by side. In this reformist future we believe that it is necessary to have an alliance, because alone you go nowhere.

Journalist: With what team and with what ideas are you going to Europe?
Antonio Di Pietro: In Europe, Italia dei Valori is presenting people who are good and beautiful on the inside, independently of how many remodelled hairstyles they have or not. This is why I am inviting all the citizens to use the internet to have a look on our site www.europee2009.it, and look at the CV, the personal history, the life they have lived, and the contribution that our candidates have given for the institutions throughout their lives. Here at my side, there’s Luigi de Magistris, who in recent years has tried to apply the laws for everyone. He too, like me, tried to apply the law even in relation to the powerful, and he has had to pay the consequences. This week he has obtained justice, because all the accusations against him have been dismissed, just as happened to me. Now, like me, he wants to contribute to a generational change of the political class in Italy and in Europe, because if you don’t change the faces, politics will never change.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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29 April 2009

Protecting the rights of disabled people

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, of whom there are about 650 million in the world, signed in New York on 13 December 2006 and coming into force on 8 May 2008, is the first treaty on human rights in the third millennium and it was approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2006.

The Convention, with its 50 articles, sets out in detail, the rights of disabled people. Among other things, it deals with civil and political rights, accessibility, participation, the right to education, to health, to work and to social security. And, above all, the Convention recognises that a change in attitude by society is indispensable to allow people with disabilities to reach full equality.

In fact, the Convention forbids any form of discrimination towards disabled people, in every sector of social life. It commits the 192 nations that make up the General Assembly to adopt the laws that prohibit discrimination based on any form of disability, of blindness, of mental illness. The Convention finally devotes particular attention to the protection of disabled children.

At a national level, the draft law to ratify it was approved unanimously and thus, with the vote of the IdV, in the sitting on 24 February 2009 in the Chamber of Deputies.

Now we have to pass from words to facts. And we of Italia dei Valori are doing this in the most direct way possible, by putting forward as a candidate for the European elections, Carlo Rossetti, a disabled person who is a historical personality in the world of associations, a person who is competent and sensitive, who, if elected, will represent the issues of a world that is asking for protection and rights. To reflect and to find out more, I propose that you listen to the presentation by Mario De Luca, the IdV person with responsibility for welfare and in turn, a disabled person, who is also a supporter of the idea of associations.

It’s worth the effort: to understand their needs, to admire their commitment, to respect their dignity, to reflect on the distance of the institutions, to provide a concrete renewal to the commitment to remove every barrier.

Today, during the conference “The value of integration: the UN Convention on the rights of disabled people” held in Rome, at the Hotel Nazionale, I gave my official commitment to my full support to the Manifesto for the European elections 2009: “Nothing about people with disabilities without the people with disabilities” about the rights of disabled people.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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27 April 2009

L'Aquila doesn’t need the G8

On 25 April, the President of the Council went to L'Aquila, then it’ll be the G8’s turn. L'Aquila is more of a tourist venue today than it has ever been before 6 April. It’s a great coming and going of walk ways, scaffolding, staging, gangways, platforms, VIP enclosures, ribbons and streamers. Meanwhile the fire fighters and the Civil Protection are running around all over to put a gloss on the reality, to construct the “The Truman show”, first for one powerful entity and then for another. Meanwhile, the days go by and the displaced people are spectators in this great manoeuvre of tents, where the rains of recent days have made the conditions ever more critical. Some people are starting to get worried about the aid: the risk is that this finishes up in helicopters to transport the VIPs, for the associations, the co-operatives, for the community groups and whoever has the most gives the most, apart from for the houses of the people of Abruzzo, for the basic public structures, that for the moment are being provided by the Civil Protection with emergency facilities, but at a standard that is way off what is required for a dignified everyday life.

I am thus asking Silvio Berlusconi to take a step back and not hold the G8 in Abruzzo.

The people of Abruzzo need solid actions. They need swift help, reconstruction without mafia infiltration, without inefficiency, so that they can get back to normal as soon as possible. The people of Abruzzo don’t want to become a freak show and see a cat walk of thousands of people in dark suits followed by journalists, lackeys, security guys, and an unending stream of flunkeys who look at them with compassion. Abruzzo wants to get back to normal, and to do that it doesn’t need Silvio Berlusconi, but people willing to work and money that the State must guarantee. Everything that the government can now do , apart from finding the courage to provide justice, is to guarantee the funding and the speed of reconstruction. All the rest is election campaigning.

A greeting to the person from L'Aquila who had contrary opinions, who appeared in Acerra and caused our Premier to flee. It was a praiseworthy attempt to make his opinions heard, but he must know that Silvio Berlusconi has no love for those who contradict him, especially if they are with the citizens, with whom he has discussions only through a TV screen in the most democratic of models: ”I speak and you listen and then obey”.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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20 April 2009

Allergies and crocodile tears

The President of the Council’s allergy to the magistracy is not seasonal, it’s permanent. The spotlights on the information earthquake, obviously the alternative information, and the investigations set under way by the magistracy are disturbing Silvio Berlusconi’s permanent election campaign in Abruzzo.
Apart from the photos with children and older people used as the objects of the best propaganda of the past twenty years and the active deployment of “Civil Protection”, apart from this, the facts are at zero.
And this embarrassment is encouraging him to visit Abruzzo continuously to attract the photographers to him but also to cover up the clear responsibilities that are becoming ever more evident, that are coming out day by day about the tragedy that has sacrificed 294 human lives. Responsibility that evidently he is afraid can be put down directly to the work of his government, rather than to “sponsorised” companies like Impregilo.
Abruzzo does not need a pat on the back, photos with older people and children, or crocodile tears. It needs actions, money and justice.

The first of these, the actions, up until today are being done by the imposing machinery of solidarity that depends only partly on the government.

The second, the money, is needed for reconstruction and it is needed straight away and without putting a hand in the pockets of the Italians who are already under severe stress, simply by moving the date of the referendum to that of the election day and perhaps renouncing the construction of the useless Bridge over the Straits of Messina.

The third, justice, is needed by all Italians, so that they can continue to believe in the State. The responsibilities involved in this tragedy have to be identified straight away out of respect for the victims and their families. And don’t let signor Silvio Berlusconi come to us to say that he prefers actions to investigations by the magistracy, that there is no guilt and there are no omissions, that it is only a question of fate, that that telegram with declarations about the State of Emergency, that was ignored and found under the rubble and sent by the L'Aquila’s mayor, Massimo Cialente on 01 April 2009 to the Office of the President of the Council, to the Governor of the Region, to the Regional Cabinet Member for Civil Protection and to the Prefecture of L'Aquila bears witness that there were omissions, and by more than one person.

Signor Berlusconi, come and take part in a discussion in one of your six TV channels, rather than censoring a cartoonist. As moderator, choose any one of your lackeys of the early evening shows or any one of the “new faces” of the RAI chosen in Palazzo Grazioli. I’ll be there.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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18 April 2009

Abruzzo: more could have been done

Here is an interview that was held with Giampaolo Giuliani regarding the Abruzzo earthquake. After the tears shed by Silvio Berlusconi and the parade by various government ministers that was worthy of the best electoral opportunism, all of the good intentions have suddenly come to an end. All that remains is the office set up on site for the Premier’s courtesy visits. As usual, the real help will be provided by the Italians via a once-off tax, which will go towards offsetting the tax that Berlusconi has been obliged to cede to Umberto Bossi in order to avert a Government crisis. The Italian citizens will also have to pick up the tab for the 400 million, give or take a few cents, resulting from the fact that the referendum will not be incorporated with the administrative and European elections scheduled for 6 and 7 June. In addition to the financial waste, there is also the far more serious issue that the Government should act in a manner that ensures the necessary quorum is reached for any referendum, something that won’t happen should the referendum not be held on election day.

On the 5th June, in Piazza Navona, we will be defending the right to free and independent information, from that regarding the earthquake in Abruzzo through to information concerning the referendum, the requirements for which very few citizens even know.

Text of the interview

IDV Interviewer: "Giampaolo Giuliani, assistant with the Research Institute. A number of Authorities have stated that even with some prior information indicating that there was an imminent danger of an earthquake, it would nevertheless have been virtually impossible to evacuate the whole of Abruzzo. Do you agree with this statement or do you think that it would perhaps have been possible to do a little more than what was (not) done?"
Giampaolo Giuliani: "Most certainly it would have been possible to save a few more lives, of this I am convinced, especially in view of the kind of information that we can get from our warning system and in the light of what actually occurred in reality. Many people that had the chance to see our graphics online proceeded to spontaneously leave their dwellings. Today they are thanking me, because even they were able to realise that something truly dangerous was busy brewing.
I believe that when issuing an earthquake warning, it is not necessary to immediately begin with a full-scale evacuation, with all of the potentially unpleasant consequences that this type of operation involves, as do the kind of alarms issued in the case of landslides, floods and any other type of natural catastrophe, or even such as a dam that is in imminent danger of bursting and flooding the entire countryside down the valley, but something can and must be done nonetheless. I think that in the case of an alarm that is triggered by a dynamic, Radon-based system, such as this one, a message could have been circulated around town suggesting to residents that they should spend the night outdoors. Without spreading any panic but using a safe and simple procedure to prepare the population."

IDV Interviewer: "Even taking into account the fact that the “seismic swarm”, as it is now being called, had been occurring for some time already, a little prior warning would perhaps have been helpful. Perhaps certain public buildings such as the schools and the apartment building where the student lived, which was one of those that collapsed, could have been evacuated."
Giampaolo Giuliani: "Certainly. Let’s say that the seismic swarm had been going on since 15 January, without any major quakes registering on the instruments, but the population realised that these shocks were becoming increasingly stronger. We could have used this seismic swarm as a reason to organise a major practice run, especially since everyone was already afraid and wondering what was going to happen. We could have evacuated the public buildings, certainly, and even the student’s apartment block. These were young lives... Let’s just say that we had a two-month grace period, from 15 January through to April. Given that this kind of situation had not arisen in the area around L’Aquila for ten years, perhaps something could have been done."

IDV Interviewer: "In the technical procedure, which deals with everything from the scientists warning of a potentially dangerous event, through to the warning being issued to the local population, what are the designated structures charged with spreading the alarm?"
Giampaolo Giuliani: "Most certainly the civil defence units! It is the duty of the civil defence units to alert the local population and then to control and direct any necessary operations. Then there is the institute that studies earthquakes, which could have realised that this seismic swarm was different from all of the others. The progression of this major sequence of events that occurred would perhaps have justified a full-scale practice run."

IDV Interviewer: "Also because, if we look back through the annals of history, and please correct me if I am wrong, we see that major earthquakes have historically occurred in this region once in every three hundred years, with the last one having occurred in the year 1700."
Giampaolo Giuliani: "Yes, that is the approximate cycle. In addition, in the past ten years we have not experienced this kind of event frequency, nor any seismic swarms of this intensity. The figure of 6.3 that has been mentioned by certain people and that we ourselves have observed, or even the 6.0 observed by the INGV are no joke. Something should also be said about the buildings that were not up to the task. Many of these were new buildings that should have been earthquake resistant, in other words built using reinforced concrete, instead collapsed, while we have noticed that other buildings built in the 1200’s, the 1500’s, the 1700’s and the 1800’s remained standing."

IDV Interviewer: "But were they using anti-earthquake technology way back in the 1200’s?"
Giampaolo Giuliani: "Apparently yes, considering that those buildings are still standing!"

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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14 April 2009

Government alternative

Today Il Corriere della Sera, has an article on page 17 with the heading: “Di Pietro’s «operaista» turning point. In the same article Pier Paolo Baretta, a PD parliamentarian, comments on the closeness of Italia dei Valori to the working class, and states that “it would be a mistake to set about chasing Di Pietro and trying to occupy the space of the dispute <>> … The Democratic Party cannot be a simple container of dissent, unlike Italia dei Valori”.

Italia dei Valori has growing consensus because its programmes and its people are close to the citizens and their problems. In March the “cassa integrazione ordinaria” {the fund for laid off workers} has gone up by 925% in relation to the same period last year. What has been the government’s response?
Without considering the acceptance of the fact that a “country crisis” that is in existence right now, an awareness that has been accepted after 6 months that Parliament has been immobilised with voting and discussions connected to Silvio Berlusconi’s personal problems with the justice system.
Let’s go on to the anti-crisis measures, all of which, or almost all, have failed. The government has launched the “housing plan” to increase the size of villas. It has restarted the building work for the Bridge over the Straits of Messina and it has distributed a “social card” without the necessary funding, and no one is talking about it anymore.

The Lega has done its bit. It has accepted financial grants for the towns of Catania, Palermo and Rome, the dismantling of Malpensa and the relative supply chains, in exchange for the patrols and a declaration of intent on federalism.

The Democratic Party (PD) in a state of governing hypnosis, is presenting Opposition in alternating phases, in the conviction that diplomacy is possible with a man who possesses three private TV networks, that has decided the composition of the Board of Directors of the public TV networks, that has at his disposal two economic groups that control information and a part of the country’s economy, who is living in the most colossal conflict of interests in a western democracy. Well, with this man, the PD is thinking of using diplomacy. I would define this to be behaviour of political masochism.

Italia dei Valori is a party that represents an alternative to the government. In its ranks, it incorporates professionalism, programmes, ideas and it lives among the people, in the streets, in the factories meeting citizens, associations, workers, industrialists, so as not to be living in an abstract world of political ideology and the government’s golden clientelism.

Italia dei Valori is different from those it talks to and it will not sit down at the table of a corruptor, and neither will it make convenient alliances to search for individual advantages. A way of doing politics that is different from that of the last 50 years, is possible, and it is not called “dispute”, but “realistic alternative”.
If then, the PD wants to continue to play the part of Pontius Pilate, it’s up to them, but they must allow us to get on with our work.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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13 April 2009

The uselessness of weapons

I am publishing an interview with Giorgio Schultze, an independent candidate for the forthcoming European elections in the lists of Italia dei Valori. It’s an interview focused on the world economic crisis, on a comparison of the two American administrations of Bush and Obama and on the uselessness of nuclear weapons.
What’s more, Schultze mentions the need for a common European defence policy that makes the continent credible, more united and with a central role in the ambit of world policy. Italia dei Valori has a 12 point plan for Europe, and point 9 is proposing a single European defence unit.

IDV correspondent: Recently declarations have been made about Turkey in the European Union. We know that there are a number of American military bases on Turkish soil. How is this role of Turkey in Europe to be reconciled?
G.Schultze: One of the requests made under pressure from the Bush administration is exactly this one. But this was done in relation to Poland, and the Czech Republic, basically: if you want to come into the union of the West, a price has to be a military base, possibly and not really a NATO base, as much as actually a United States base. What mustn’t be forgotten is the bilateral agreement that was signed last summer by Condoleezza Rice and the Czech government for the installation of a functional radar base as part of the American defence system, placed right in Europe on the borders with Russia, that has set off that cold war and that new arms race that only now, with the new Obama administration, is tending to slow down or even to come to a stop.
The fact that Turkey is asked to be the launch pad, almost as a threat to the Middle East, is for us a destabilizing factor.
We are thinking of a peaceful Europe, not of an aggressive Europe that is ready to threaten surrounding areas. Anyway, from many points of view, we have celebrated in Palermo a Forum that is considered to be for “Peace in the Mediterranean”, actually with the nations that border the Mediterranean, including Turkey, Palestine, Israel, with the necessity to move towards strong integration of the areas around the Mediterranean, considered to be a strategic element for peace and cooperation amongst peoples.
Thus to set up new bases that are threatening the Middle East is not in this direction, and anyway that does not correspond to what is a strategy said to be, in inverted commas, in defence of the area of Europe.

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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11 April 2009

Interview with Graham Watson

On the 6th and 7th of June we will be going to the vote for the renewal of the European Parliament. These elections are important, notwithstanding the fact that, in the collective perception, Strasburg is a place where little or nothing is ever decided and where they talk about things that are far removed from the problems in each of the member countries. This perception needs to be eradicated because, in reality, the European Parliament directs the entire continent’s development policies. The Italia dei Valori party will be sending people from a civilised society to Strasburg (view our candidates' profiles).

Here is an interview held with Graham Watson, President of the ALDE (Alliance of Democrats and Liberals for Europe) political grouping in the European Parliament, established by the “European Liberals, Democrats and Reformists Party” (ELDR), of which the Italia dei Valori is a member, and the European Democratic Party (PDE). I thank Graham Watson for his kind words of appreciation for me personally and for the Italia dei Valori Party.

Text of the interview

IDV Representative: Welcome to the European Parliament, a body whose members are elected directly by the citizens and that is made up of 785 representatives who remain in office for a period of 5 years. These representatives are elected by means of the preferential votes of 342 million voters and represent almost half a billion European citizens.
The European Parliament meets in Strasburg, but plenary sessions are often held in Brussels, the preferred location for the Parliamentary Committees, which are the heart and soul of the political discussion. Each Committee has a minimum of 28 and a maximum of 86 members and the fruits of their labour are submitted to the political grouping who then draft the necessary amendments before submitting the final proposals to a vote in a plenary session.
The European Parliament is organised in a groups, to which the parliamentarians subscribe depending on their political orientation. Each group must have at least 20 members and must be representative of at least one fifth of the member countries.
One of the most important of these groupings is known as ADLE, or the Alliance of Democrats and Liberals for Europe, which currently holds more than 100 seats. The Alliance’s President is an Englishman by the name of Graham Watson, the gentleman who, inter alia, is responsible for having brought the Europa7 case to the fore in Brussels, exerting the necessary political pressure in order to ensure that media freedom and plurality be protected in Italy as well.
President Watson, what does it mean to be a Liberal in Europe? Why liberal rather than social democrat, for example?

Graham Watson: Being a liberal means fighting for the kind of society that is just, open and free. A society in which no one is obliged to live in slavery, ignorance, poverty or subjection. Being a liberal means seeking a specific kind of society that recognises the power of free markets, but also recognises the need for the Government to intervene in the interests of protecting certain social and environmental assets that the market is unable to produce. And this, in my opinion, is the challenge facing liberals, even in Italy. It is a challenge that has been accepted and taken up by the Italia dei Valori Party.

IDV Representative: What does this liberal grouping intend to do today in Europe? In other words, what are your plans?

Graham Watson: Our plan, at the European level, is to continue with the construction of Europe. Not with the kind of haste exhibited previously, however, because even Europe needs to recognise the importance of good governance for a union of 27 members. We must work in a calm and determined manner in order to highlight and strengthen that which Europe has given to us: security, meaning not only the absence of war, but also security against organised crime, as well as the prosperity that the common market has provided, which we now need to re-establish by means of regulations to ensure the proper functioning of the banks. Not only security and prosperity, but also liberty, because today’s threats are very different from those of yesterday.

IDV Representative: What about the Italia dei Valori Party. How do you view the party’s consistent growth in recent years, something that could well be confirmed in the upcoming European elections to be held in June?

Graham Watson: I think that the Italia dei Valori’s campaigns have been great. I think, for example, of the Party’s campaign against tax evasion, something that is important not only for Italy, but also fir Europe and elsewhere. I think of the campaign against the privileges afforded to the political class, which has no concept of an open and modern society. I think of the battle for the independence of the judiciary, which is essential for the proper functioning of the market and for the freedom of the individual, or the battle against this prehistoric bureaucracy that still exists in Italy as well as other countries. These are the campaigns of the Italia dei Valori Party, which are essentially liberal campaigns. That is why the Italia dei Valori party represents current liberal politics in Italy.

IDV Representative: Mr. President, have you ever met Antonio Di Pietro personally? What kind of relationship do you have with him? What is your opinion of his actions in recent years?

Graham Watson: I have known him for many years and we met just a month ago, right here in Brussels. I think that Antonio has shown great courage, during a very difficult period in Italian history, establishing this party and creating something important and meaningful in terms of the Italian political scenario. He is also someone that understands the fact that a party cannot exist on its own, and he was the one that brought the Italia dei Valori party into the fold of the European liberals. I sincerely hope that Antonio Di Pietro becomes even more successful in terms of Italian politics because Italy has a great need for liberal thought and the actions of a party such as Italia dei Valori. This is important because we need to put a stop to the past, which has only brought destruction to Italy and other countries in the same boat. The time has come to break ranks with the partisan attitudes in Italy, which do not help anyone and that destroy people’s respect for human rights and civil rights. This is the challenge, and I believe that the Italia dei Valori Party is up to it.

ACTION FOR THE EUROPEAN ELECTIONS:

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8 April 2009

Public Water

Water cannot be a market good. Water is a right. We have said that and we repeat it.

Today there has been a meeting between representatives of the “Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua” {Italian Forum of Water Campaign Groups} and a delegation from Italia dei Valori.

During that meeting the political approach of the party was stated once more with the idea of changing the current regulations, to reach the objective of putting back into public hands the management of the water resources.

As regards the possible merger of Enia and Iride that risks consolidating the private system of managing the water system in Turin, Genoa, Parma, Piacenza and Reggio Emilia, Italia dei Valori has stated once more that in view of the current legislation on the topic (law n 133 dated 6 August 2008 and n. 126 dated 24 July 2008), it must become a fundamental condition that the party fights until in the statutes of the companies that control water resources, the share percentage held by the public sector must be formally laid down to be the majority of the shares.

Basically, the right to water is inalienable. It is a good that belongs only to the citizens.

Read previous article:
Water is a right

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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7 April 2009

Today – a day of suffering and of solidarity

Today is just the day of suffering, of solidarity and also of the human and political closeness towards the institutions, including the government, that are rushing to meet the needs of the population that has been so harshly hit by the earthquake.

I would like to express my solidarity with the citizens of Abruzzo and especially those of L’Aquila, who are today living through another dramatic day in their history. This land has high seismic activity, just like many others in Italy and it is not in a new position in relation to these upheavals. After the terrible earthquake of 1915 at Avezzano, of the 11,000 inhabitants, only 300 survived. But Abruzzo has broad shoulders and it will rise up again quickly but still with suffering.

In Italy “ambasciator porta pena” {the messenger brings bad news}, in fact it is he himself that represents the suffering. If you denounce, you are denigrated, suspended, and you yourself denounced, and, as happens in States where the rule of law has been compromised, you pay the consequences. That happened to Giampaolo Giuliani, a physicist, a technical guy working in the national laboratory of Gran Sasso.

What happened in L’Aquila is a tragedy that could have been limited. Giampaolo Giuliani, who had forecast this disaster, was denounced for causing alarm. It should have been the moment for making an accurate check on the warning given, and putting in place necessary precautions to avoid the irreparable or at least to limit the consequences.

As everyone knows, Italy is a country with very high level of seismic activity. Among the buildings that collapsed in Abruzzo there are even schools, a number of public buildings and a student residence. I am wondering what’s the point in investing in the project of the “ponte sullo Stretto di Messina” {bridge over the Straits of Messina}, which itself is in a seismic zone, or discussing safe nuclear power stations, if we can’t even succeed in guaranteeing the anti-seismic requirements of homes. I am wondering if, rather than burning money for useless Pharaoh-like construction, it might be better to give back the money to the towns so that they can manage to look after the maintenance, the restoration and organisation of the security arrangements needed for the existing public and private structures.

But we will talk about all this in the next few days. Today, I repeat, it’s the day of suffering and of solidarity.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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5 April 2009

Milan – metropolitan city

I’m publishing the video and the text of the speech I gave yesterday, Saturday 04 April, at the conference called "Prepariamo la città metropolitana" {Prepare the metropolitan city} that was held in Milan.

”As you know, we of Italia dei Valori are a political grouping that are looking towards a time in the future when the provinces will be superseded. Because in certain cases the province is too restrictive, and in other cases it is too wide. In the case of Milan, the province and the city should be a single entity, a metropolitan reality that unlike Reggio Calabria deserves to be considered such.

The metropolitan city that we imagine is a metropolitan city that in Milan must develop first of all at the level of the infrastructure, next on the industrial level, thirdly that is also the top priority on the quality of life in the city.

At the level of infrastructure, in reality we are well informed about the reality. We are aware that the fundamental point is the untangling of all the realities that arrive at Milan and leave from Milan. We have tackled this issue many times and now there are the conditions for doing this. What are needed are great arteries for the trains, the roads and the air traffic that lead to and near Milan, but then how is it possible to get across the city? The Tem {Milan’s Eastern ring road}, the Brebemi {road joining Milan to Brescia}, the Pedemontana {route at the foot of the mountains} make sense if there are all of them and if all together they make it possible to “untangle” what is the long distance traffic that enters and leaves Milan.

You have seen that the whole motorway system, the A1 rather than the A4 both going towards Piedmont and towards Lombardy, then at the end it all ends up in the funnel of the ring road. It has been very positive, and I am among those who, let’s say, unblocked it with the realisation of the fourth lane on the A4 at Agrate, but then you have seen the funnel that was created between Agrate and Capriate, we now find part of it going towards Cascina Gobba and the other part towards Rho. So the situation in which it is necessary to create both the little “ring road”, from Rho to Monza, as well as the bigger ring road, the “Pedemontana” in Lombardy.

All this is of no use if the Tem {Milan’s Eastern ring road} is not unblocked. All three of these projects are of no use if we don’t create a system of metropolitan areas and metro tram systems. It is important that from this extra-urban reality, it is possible to enter and leave Milan with a major public transport system.

...

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4 April 2009

A risky venture called Europe

Here is an article of mine that was published recently in the special issue of Orizzonti Nuovi released on Tuesday 31 March, concerning the European elections scheduled for 6-7 June.

"Europe is a risky venture, a rampart for Our Country, which is currently having to deal with an economic crisis of enormous proportions and is currently being led by a Government that is unable to manage the crisis. It is for this very reason that the Italia dei Valori Party has fielded a series of candidates for the upcoming European elections, people that represent the kind of Italy that is clean, one that is strong, an Italy that consists of honest people. The Italia dei Valori Party will be putting up independent candidates, people that are not necessarily professional politicians but that are truly representative of civil society, this because politics with a capital “P” cannot be run by old windbags or repeatedly recycled politicians, but only by people of merit who are prepared to fight to improve the lot of the “res publica”.

We want our candidates who will represent us in the European institutions to be the Country’s finest, people that are prepared to work tirelessly and happily and that don’t underestimate the task that lies ahead of them. We have already announced our first few candidates, namely Luigi de Magistris, Sonia Alfano, Carlo Vulpio and Niccolò Rinaldi, and more will follow them. Anyone that knows their stories will also know what we are talking about, what they represent and that, this time around, the Italians will honestly be able to say that they voted for the kind of Italy that they don’t have to be ashamed of but a Country of which that they can truly be proud.

“Corriere della Sera” journalist, Carlo Vulpio, is a symbol of the battle for media freedom. This is the man that has led a number of major investigations, fighting off any attempts to gag him and rejecting any compromise. His nomination is one of legitimate defence, as stated by the journalist himself during the course of the press conference organised by our party.

Luigi de Magistris, the magistrate whose “Why Not” inquiry touched a raw nerve with the powers that be. A man that has not been allowed to continue to do the job that he so loves. As a matter of fact, he has been hindered and indeed deligitimised, simply because he was not prepared to bow down to anyone but continued to work only in the interests of truth and justice. He simply did his job, as required of him by the Constitution and, for this, he paid a high price, indeed one that was too high.

Sonia Alfano, President of the Association of Mafia Victims’ Families and daughter of a renowned Sicilian journalist. Sonia battles every day to ensure freedom of thought and to defend the Rule of Law. She has always sought the truth, without any ifs or buts, and continues to do so. Her story is symbolic of a land that refuses to bow down, a land that is constantly seeking answers to the problems of thirst and getting the truth from the justice system.

Niccolò Rinaldi, Secretary General of the ALDE GROUP (Alliance of European liberals and democrats) in the European Parliament. In addition to his diligent commitment to foreign policy, particularly as regards the Countries of the southern hemisphere and the war zones, Rinaldi has also written various books on Afghanistan, as well as other publications that form part of a multi-disciplinary project on collective memory, as well as being an expert regarding the workings of the various European institutions.

In any event, in subsequent issues of Orizzonti Nuovi we will also be telling you a little more about the other candidates as well. As a matter of fact, the Italia dei Valori Party is taking this one step further by attempting to provide an outlet for all other organisations that continue to resist and react. This party continues to look to, and to nominate the kind of people that have battled in recent years in support of the peace process and on development co-operation, people that have striven and worked hard on serious economic proposals that could allow us to face the current crisis with greater confidence.

The Italia dei Valori party is well aware that the current Government actions are purely aimed at taking from the poor and giving to the rich. All we have witnessed up to now is an increase in the number of people that are unemployed and on welfare benefits, while the usual familiar faces continue to increase their own wealth by means of ad-hoc laws and legal provisions. The dichotomy offered by this berlusconian Italy is entirely unacceptable: the gagging of the media, mind-numbing television programmes, dancing girls and pro-Government advertising, laws that only suit the usual handful of familiar faces (it is sufficient to look at the sale of Alitalia, which did little more than pad the wallets of the usual handful of businessmen while leaving thousand of families out in the cold) and legal provisions designed to hinder the Public Prosecutors’ operations and prevent them from completing their investigations (sufficient to think about the law regarding wiretapping).

In the final analysis, this is precisely the kind of Country that we don’t want and, with a little responsibility, a bit of straight talking and a good dose of decisive action we intend to introduce ourselves in Europe with the kind of stories that are symbolic of the Italy that we can currently only dream about."

Download the special issue of Orizzonti Nuovi >>

>>

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1 April 2009

Water is a right

In Turin, Genoa, Parma, Piacenza and Reggio Emilia, the merger of Iride and Enia is risking consolidating the private system of managing the water service.

Article 9 of the new Statute says: “the capital of the new company must be held in considerable measure by public entities”. Before, the majority participation of public bodies was guaranteed. Doing that, the proportion of public money will tend to go down below 51%, which means that the control exercised by the citizens on a public good will become zero.

The right to have water is an inalienable right and it has to be equally accessible to all.

With the law number 133 dated 6 August 2008, the Berlusconi government started off the privatisation of national water resources by deciding that “their management can be entrusted to private hands”. By 31 December 2010, all local public services, including the water services, will become “raw materials” quoted on the Stock Exchange, like gold and oil.

As though that weren’t enough, the government, with the law number 126 dated 24 July 2008, has made cuts to the Fund for the reconstruction and the modernization of the national water network that sets out the availability of 30 million Euro to the town authorities for 2008 and 20 million for 2009 and for 2010. The local authorities will no longer be able to make our water taps work and they will be obliged to hand over the management.

The choice of privatization is wicked and inconclusive, as the case in Paris can demonstrate. After a long period of private management, the mayor of the French capital has decided to return the management of the water resources to public hands once more, as the private companies had caused bad service and an uncontrolled increase in prices. The same thing has happened in England. Now the risk is real even in Italy.

Italia dei Valori will fight so that water remains public and owned by the citizens.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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31 March 2009

You don’t play with the snake

The government is not dealing with the real problems of the country. In a moment of great difficulty, it is lavishing in useless celebrations of itself without ever losing sight of its only real objective: power.
Italian citizens are witnessing a sort of hypnotic torpor that is fed by newspapers and TV stations in the hands of a P2-ist. The Opposition of the PD must not hesitate and be attracted by banquets of mess-ups that have already been shown to be failures in the past. Italia dei Valori will not give up the right to claim a future that is different and of credible development for this country.

I am publishing an interview I gave that appears today in La Repubblica.

La Repubblica: Have you seen Berlusconi? He has gone back to sounding off about the “communists”….
Antonio Di Pietro: «The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and I don’t think that communist regimes are being proposed once more in Europe. Berlusconi is trying to shift the attention from the crisis with an instrumental use of history.“

La Repubblica: At the PDL conference, Gianfranco Fini invited the Majority and the Opposition to open up a “grande stagione costituente” {great season for the Constitution}. Are you up for that?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Fini is a good talker and a poor “doer”. I could also agree with what he is saying, but why is he as President of the Chamber, with the power he has to fix the agenda for each day, why has he kept us busy for the last year on measures whose urgency still has to be demonstrated? It’s the usual craftiness. Rather, let Parliament deal with the crisis in the economy and the labour market.“

La Repubblica: Is there no need to reform the Constitution?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Berlusconi has nailed us in Parliament to talk about the “lodo Alfano”, wiretapping, the gagging laws, always shifting the attention from the true emergencies that interest the Italians. Now he is thinking of keeping Parliament blocked on a reform for his own use and consumption, while the Constitution just needs to be applied.“

La Repubblica: Berlusconi complains that he can only fix the agenda for the Council of Ministers and that he would like to increase the powers of the premier. What do you think?
Antonio Di Pietro: «What Berlusconi has proposed was already written in Licio Gelli’s “piano Rinascita” {Democratic Rebirth Plan}. After the control of information, the attack on the independence of the magistracy, the weakening of the trades unions, here is absolute power, the final piece in the jigsaw for the completion of the plan of the P2, that Berlusconi was affiliated to. There are all the motives to try and liberate ourselves from here while there is still time.“

La Repubblica: Liberate ourselves from Berlusconi? What do you mean?
Antonio Di Pietro: «In politics there are only two ways. One is with the “Bastille”, but that is an unacceptable way. The only solution that is left is that of having continuous information flowing through to the general public so that they are not letting themselves be drawn into a trick.“

La Repubblica: Don’t you think that the PD should sit down to the table of Constitutional reform?
Antonio Di Pietro: «It’s necessary not to fall into the trap of going back to the mess-ups, to the bi-Chamber meetings. Any reform, as long as Berlusconi is in power, will be used to achieve illegal ends. I would remind the PD that you don’t play with snakes, because sooner or later, they bite and kill you.“

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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30 March 2009

Announcements without foundation

I’m publishing an interview I gave that was released on 27 March to the daily paper “Messaggero Veneto” about the current political situation in our country on the recent measures taken by our government, ranging from fiscal federalism to the living will.

Messaggero Veneto: Honourable Di Pietro, let’s start off with one of the government’s most recent measures: fiscal federalism that you abstained on. Is this is signal of a different way of being in Opposition to Berlusconi?
Antonio di Pietro: Italia dei Valori is in favour of fiscal federalism of the rule of law and of responsibility.

Messaggero Veneto: Having said that?
Antonio di Pietro: Federalism can block the perverse mechanism of waste and of the culture of state handouts, thus becoming a useful tool in the control of the territory, in verifying the spending of public money and the checking of the payment of taxes by all the citizens. We are fed up of seeing people going around in a Ferrari and then not paying taxes. We have worked in Parliament to get to a responsible federalism that is serious and with agreement.

Messaggero Veneto: Housing: the Regions have obliged the government to stop. What is Italia dei Valori’s position?
Antonio di Pietro: The draft law on housing is an encouragement for delinquency in the part where, without the agreement of the Regions and the local bodies, it decides on an indiscriminate increase in the volume metrics to the damage of the environment and urban quality of life.

Messaggero Veneto: Doesn’t that seem exaggerated?
Antonio di Pietro: I’m talking about “encouragement for delinquency” because it is clear that if you exhort a private person who has a veranda to create a room out of it, or to increase the volumetry of their villa, then they will surely do that. It’s a way of gathering consensus by creating a market for exchange votes. However, this is a sensitive issue that has to be considered in detail and not by means of self-certification. We are thus against the urgency decree, as we consider that it is necessary to have a parliamentary debate and an attentive examination of the regulations.

Messaggero Veneto: A harsh judgement even on the 500 million that will be assigned to private building?
Antonio di Pietro: Once more, this government is trying to buy the consensus of the citizens with the recurrent use of advertising. The housing plan is a real electoral fraud in the part where it states it is assigning 500 million to private construction. In fact, this figure is just what was assigned by the previous Prodi government to public construction and to the towns. Once again, Berlusconi makes cuts for the poor to give it to the rich.

Messaggero Veneto: "Cornuti e mazziati" {Adding insult to injury}. So, according to you, the President of the Council is treating the Italians like that because of his mistaken choices in the field of the economy and they find themselves without a job. But in the other European countries things are not so different.
Antonio di Pietro: "Cornuti e mazziati". I said that and I repeat it because the President of the Council, probably forgetting the office he holds, allows himself to offend and insult the workers, who on the contrary, should be treated with absolute respect. Every unemployed person would like to have a job, and the government, by responding to what is one of its tasks, should help them by means of incentives, further social security provision and not by stating “sort yourselves out”.

Messaggero Veneto: Instead?
Antonio di Pietro: This Executive has presented economic measures that are not adequate to tackle the crisis, measures that are aimed at protecting just the well-off classes and the usual well known ones. We are seeing a government that is not fighting tax dodging, not helping “precarious workers”, young people, the most vulnerable classes in society, but it is great at selling smoke, and putting forward effective advertising.

Messaggero Veneto: And the premier is inviting the unemployed to get busy…
Antonio di Pietro: Berlusconi’s invitation to the unemployed to get busy, is a true insult that is added on to the damage caused by the joke. There is no unemployed person who doesn’t want to work, otherwise they would not define themselves as “unemployed”. By saying these things, the President of the Council is making a joke of those without a job by making declarations in the style of don Rodrigo. ...

...

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22 March 2009

Clarity, determination and opposition with no holds barred

I’m publishing an interview I gave to Alicenonlosa.it, in which I respond to questions about the candidacy of Luigi De Magistris, Sonia Alfano and Carlo Vulpio and our priorities for the forthcoming European elections.

Alicenonlosa: Honourable Di Pietro, which are the three priorities for Italia del Valori’s political programme for the European elections?
Antonio Di Pietro: Italia del Valori has decided to explain the programme by means of the physicality of the candidates, by means of their CVs and their personal and professional experiences: justice in Europe by putting forward De Magistris as a candidate, anti-mafia in Europe by putting forward Ms Alfano, correct information by putting forward Carlo Vulpio.
Next week we will put forward as candidates, people who are particularly engaged with co-operation and peace.

Alicenonlosa: What’s the result you are hoping to achieve?
Antonio Di Pietro: The result that we deserve by means of the clarity of language, the determination of our action, an Opposition with no holds barred and the construction of an alternative to government that we want to bring about with those political forces and the civil society that are up for it. The day after, we will know.

Alicenonlosa: What tangible results has Italia del Valori shown in the Italian Parliament?
Antonio Di Pietro: Italia del Valori has done so much both in opposition to the measures in relation to the Justice system, information and the economic policy taken forward by the Berlusconi government, as well as by intervening on certain measures, of which the most recent one, is that on federalism for which we have turned upside down the Lega’s original design that simply wanted to divide Italy into two parts: North and South.

Alicenonlosa: What are the relationships like these days, between Italia del Valori and the Democratic Party?
Antonio Di Pietro: Italia del Valori has made clear choices, that is choices to contribute to a clear government programme. We repeat our availability to have dialogue that may not necessarily lead to sharing the electoral team that is presented. However, up until today on issues that are important for us, we have not had responses from the Democratic Party.

Alicenonlosa: The good will running between yourself and Beppe Grillo is evident and it’s not a coincidence that the IdV candidacies for the European elections started off and have been supported by Grillo. However, at a local level, Beppe Grillo’s 5-Star Civic Lists are being presented on their own with their own candidate for mayor leaving IdV to make its own choices. Why should a citizen vote for Italia del Valori rather than the 5-Star Civic List?
Antonio Di Pietro: We are not saying that they should not vote for the 5-Star Civic List. The citizen has political groupings in front of them: both Grillo’s Civic Lists and IdV are offering innovation in politics.

Alicenonlosa: I will go around the question again: what is the difference between the two lists – that are presenting themselves as competitors?
Antonio Di Pietro: It’s a new class of leaders that is putting itself forward and each is offering a series of candidates that are respected; both are trying to take forward the same idea on certain important topics like renewable energy, correct and transparent information, a just justice system that is equal for everyone. You see, the anomaly of our country is not that a comic is talking about politics but as Beppe Grillo says, it’s the politicians that act as comics without accepting responsibility.
Thus we say we welcome that part of the active citizen body that decides not to stay looking out of the window to come together to take their ideas forward. We are doing it, and if others do it too, it’s the adding up of ideas, not a conflict of ideas.

Alicenonlosa: In different cities of Italy from an electorate that is close to you and that holds you in high esteem, there’s a criticism emerging that IdV is often represented more by people who have been active in other parties until the other day rather than “Di Pietro-ists” What do you say to these criticisms?
Antonio Di Pietro: Italia del Valori was born like flowers in a meadow and thus at the beginning it had to rely on those flowers that sprung up in the meadow. Between one flower and another there could even be the odd false flower… this is why our commitment is to create a class of leaders that is as determined as possible and as committed as possible.
Thus I am transforming the question into an appeal: all those who are part of civil society who are closed up inside your houses, don’t stay looking out of the window, but come and visit us. Together we can build a better Italy!

Alicenonlosa: Why did IdV decide to put forward the judge De Magistris as a candidate for the European Parliament?
Antonio Di Pietro: Italia del Valori is putting forward De Magistris because he is a person who has done his duty and he is paying the consequences. He received a “notice of investigation” as a dutiful act in relation to the investigations that he was carrying out and while he was doing this, they took away the dossiers. There is a formal investigation to see whether he really has committed a crime. Up until now, De Magistris has committed no crime and no one has ordered him to be sent for trial.
For those facts, we assume our responsibilities knowing that he is a victim of a system that makes those who do their duty, pay the consequences.

Alicenonlosa: Today, in an interview given to Il Corriere della Sera, Calderoni said “Antonio Di Pietro is the politician who has been the best student of Bossi’s lesson and the election results show he is right.” Is that how it is?
Antonio Di Pietro: Every day I am trying to do my best in politics by learning about the needs of the citizens that I am meeting every day. There has never been a day when I have given up walking around in the streets because it is through uninterrupted dialogue with the citizens and the institutions that I can realise what I have to do and what are the needs of the people.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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20 March 2009

Sonia Alfano in Europa

Let’s get back into Europe, but with Italians “of Value” that we can be proud of. This is why we are presenting our candidate who has a human, professional and ethical story and who will be able to represent the best of Italy in Europe.

Text of the speech:
”Unfortunately what we are finding on the agenda at the moment is evidence of the infiltration of the mafia within the institutions. To give you an example, the name of Renato Schifani comes to mind. He’s the President of the Senate and a few years ago he was a business partner with the boss Nino Mandalà of Villabate. Or, I can think of the Minister of Justice, Angelino Alfano, who happily went to the marriage of the daughters of the bosses, for example that of the boss Croce Napoli with whom he spent time and embraced and kissed.
I believe that our country needs to make known to the outside world what is happening in Italy. It’s not just an Italian problem. The slaughter in Duisburg is a striking example. This is the proof that the mafias have got their roots planted not just within the territory of Italy, but that they are continuing to expand in the whole of Europe.
If many people continue to think that the mafias are a problem existing only in the South , they are just favouring their growth. It is well known that the mafias tend to plunder the territories of the South, but in reality, they invest their money in the North. In the South, we have seen blood in the streets; however this money is then laundered and reinvested in the North of Italy and now in the whole of Europe.
The most important thing to do is to try and get our cry of alarm to arrive in Europe. I am convinced that when faced with this type of emergency, all the Italians have to shoulder their own responsibilities.
I will never ask you to give me your trust. I have no intention of deciding anything for the others from within a closed room. I would like to construct this journey together with you and above all I would like it to be you, together with myself, to accept your responsibilities and that you become aware that each one of you is an important foot soldier in this nation.
Too often we have had to feel shame for the headlines that the foreign press has used to describe our country. I believe that it is fundamental to take out there, together with all of you, a new signal of the honesty of this country. Italy needs to change. It’s not an impossible journey. It’s difficult. However, it’s necessary to do it. Just so that we can look our children in the face and so that we can continue to gaze on the “tricolore” {Italian national flag} that too often we have seen bloodied with dead bodies.
I would like there to be a stop to the export abroad of the worst, and for once, I would like us all to be able to believe, all of us together, that this country is to be reconstructed yes, but that it is just waiting for our contribution and that no one can any longer afford to hang back.”

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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18 March 2009

Luigi De Magistris in Europe

Let’s get back into Europe, but with Italians “of Value” that we can be proud of. This is why we are presenting our candidate who has a human, professional and ethical story and who will be able to represent the best of Italy in Europe.

Text of the speech:

”Right now, the first thing that is important for my personal and professional story is the reason why I have chosen to commit myself to Politics, the Politics that has a capital “P”.
I am leaving a job to which I have dedicated 15 years of my life and that has been my dream, as someone has said, the mission of these years.
I believe that I have not been allowed to exercise the role that I loved, in particular that of Public Prosecutor, that allowed me to investigate, to verify the facts, to do what I have always dreamed of doing in my life.
In certain ways, obstacles have been placed in my path in this activity so that I have not been able to carry on for some months now. What worries me even more, in this historical moment, is the activity of delegitimisation, of obstruction and of attack against myself and my profession, and against all those who have tried to verify the facts, in these months, these weeks and these years. And finally, what has happened to the Salerno magistrates who have been suspended or exiled to other parts of the territory of the nation.
Basically, I realized that the conditions no longer exist to carry on the activity that I love, at least as regards myself, and thus, to succeed in doing something important as a magistrate in this country.
I will try to bring my personal experience, my civic passion and my love of justice and my ideal attention in what is the principal reality in which things, facts, and even the story of a country can be modified, and that is exactly doing Politics with a capital “P”.
I am happy with the project put to me by Antonio Di Pietro and Italia dei Valori and by the engagement that civil society is asking of me. It is the commitment of civil society that enters politics, and that therefore wants to do something solid. A project that will want to place the first foundations, the first basis in the European elections, but that is certainly aiming at a new politics in Italy. This politics of transparency, of honesty, of the rule of law and of concrete actions is the opposite of the caste system in which we have found ourselves immersed for years.
I want to give my availability with courage, to do something different, something risky, but something that can enthuse. I believe that it can be important.
Europe is a place where we absolutely need to take another image of our country, different from that of the ones who have plundered European public financing. It is an Italy that wants to change, that wants to present an image, not just in appearances, but in substance, and to have a completely different politics.
Europe is a place where we must and we can defend the Constitution. This is another reason why I have chosen to commit myself to politics, because I believe that we find ourselves in a phase in which there is really strong authoritarianism that I have defined in certain circumstances as “pre-fascism”. So, just as in the last century, it was important to create the Constitution that was written from different democratic viewpoints, with the participation of Socialists, Christian Democrats, Liberals and Communists, now is the moment when civil society must commit to defending the Constitution in Europe, the Constitution that still has to be put into practice, especially in the fundamental principles like that of liberty, of solidarity and of equality. On these topics, we need to take ideas to Europe, ideas that I will later explain in detail in the various meetings that I will have in the next few months throughout the country, and also via the Internet. I believe that the Internet is fundamental, because it is not just a “network of virtual relationships between people” but behind every person there’s a heart and a pulse. Spirits, consciences and feelings, that we need to work with to give enthusiasm, especially to the young people. ..."

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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15 March 2009

Would you have one like that to represent you?

A few days ago a young woman called Gisella wrote to me. She is an adolescent blogger and she was asking for my help with an intimidating email that she has received that is signed by the former Sicilian Senator, Nino Strano. Italy remembers his face for the mortadella in his mouth in Palazzo Madama {the seat of the Senate} when the Prodi government fell because of the betrayal by Clemente Mastella.
However, no one remembers his apologies for that gesture, not even me.
And while the citizens, above all the Italians, are forgetting, the Internet and those who frequent it are keeping the memory alive. Our country is full of respectable people, who would never have done something like that. It would certainly have been more elegant if the PDL had put him to one side. But no, that didn’t happen. They promote him, worthy to represent the Italian people in Europe. They put him forward for the European elections in June, as he himself proudly explains on his blog.

Dear Gisella, I am on your side, and when Strano tells you to deal with more important matters, tell him that you are doing so. Choosing who represents you in Europe is an issue that relates to you, as is your future that you don’t want to leave in the hands of people like him.
Dear Gisella, who knows how many other “strange, strange” people will be included in the lists of the parties. We know we will be disgusted.
I invite you to follow my blog during the week starting from Tuesday and I will present a few candidates that we are not ashamed of, honest people from civil society. No professional politician.

Gisella’s letter

Dear Di Pietro,
For a few years, I have been a blogger and video-maker (my tiny fortress is www.gisa.splinder.com and my official YouTube channel is Ladygroove71b that among others is overflowing with film clips honouring yourself.)
As you know well, the recent news item is that Strano, the one who sadly is famous for the foul language and the eating of a mortadella at the moment of the announcement of the fall of the Prodi government, is to be a candidate with the PDL at the European elections, even though he was not elected at the previous elections. When I picked up this news, I took the opportunity to set to, to create a short video which is a simple assembly of clips extracted from national and European TV News about our guy’s epic famous “salami gesture”.
The result is this video.
A few hours later, in the personal YouTube email the following private message arrived from the person named "Nino Strano"

The letter signed by "Nino Strano"

”Dear person,
I invite you to remove the video that you have put up!
An action with the people responsible for YouTube is already happening, We are acting in a common direction, with a procedure to remove the videos that damage my image!
For the action that I took, I have already apologised in the appropriate places, and also through newspapers.
I invite you to deal with more important issues in your life. Do not act as the people’s moralizer!
I hope that you will soon remove this video, otherwise the YouTube managers will do so. My denunciation has already been sent off!
Thank you
Nino Strano"

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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Remaining true to the principles

For some time now, there has been talk of an agreement between the Italia dei Valori party and the electoral list of “those outside of the political parties”, which includes some names of people for whom I have the greatest respect. Then, suddenly everything went up in smoke and now, in the newspapers, I read about the statements made by Paolo Flores D’Arcais, Director of Micromega, who talks about the Italia dei Valori having made a “mistake” by not “taking on board” for the next European elections a movement that is made up of free voices and independents that have not found their place within the current party-political structures.

I would like to assure both Paolo Flores D’Arcais and all the other citizens of this Country that the Italia dei Valori party has always been, and still remains open to the candidature of people who want to retain their independence, relying solely on their own professionalism and the human story that they represent.
The facts prove this, as does the number of parliamentarians that currently, under our banner, freely express ideas with which we agree. For example, Deputy Beppe Giulietti of the “Articolo21” association, and Senator Elio Lannutti, journalist and President of the independent Adusbef consumer association are two such people whose names immediately come to mind.

The Italia dei Valori party remains open to the professionalism and values of all those people that believe in the principles that we currently represent in a manner that is totally unique and recognisable within the Country’s current political context.
Therefore, it is not some or other banner or symbol that makes these principles recognisable, but rather the stand and the commitment that each of us invests in promoting the ideals of loyalty, honesty and composure.
I conclude by inviting citizens to come forward, without any need for membership cards, blood pacts, trademarks or any “other quid pro quos”, but armed solely with a healthy desire to bring about change in an Italy that needs to be completely rebuilt from scratch.

Many others have already taken up the challenge and, beginning next week, via this blog, we will be providing an avenue for independent representatives of civil society to explain to the citizens the reasons behind their decision to stand side by side with the Italia dei Valori party in the upcoming European elections.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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14 March 2009

Who is afraid of Gioacchino Genchi?

The Public Prosecutor of Rome has now ordered a search of computer consultant Gioacchino Genchi’s home-office as part of the ongoing investigation into charges relating to invasion of privacy. An order to be executed by the Special Operations Unit.

After 20 years spent working as assistant to the institutions, the name of Genchi, who is under investigation for abuse of power and invasion of privacy, has suddenly begun appearing in all the newspapers and on all the television news broadcasts as the man to whom Luigi De Magistris entrusted all of the wiretapping activities carried out as part of the Why Not and Poseidon inquiries. All of the politicians are now ganging up against De Magistris and Genchi, all, that is, except for the Italia dei Valori party.

In the Senate, Francesco Rutelli, Chairman of Copasir (Parliamentary Committee for State Security) and, somewhat ambiguously, also one of the people affected by the investigations into wiretapping, as mentioned also by Genchi himself during the course of an interview posted on Beppe Grillo’s Blog on 27 February and repeated on my Blog, proceeded to report back on the investigation into the activities of the consultant in question. A report that describes the dangers and irregularities in stellar numbers: somewhere between 14 and 18 million lines of telephone calls archived in the space of just a few days. Sisde (the Democratic Information and Security Service) is amongst the bodies whose lines were tapped. Something that was previously unthinkable and so erupts the false indignation in Parliament. No one bothers to pay any attention to the words of Public Prosecutor De Magistris, who dismisses Rutelli’s statements and the entire “Genchi issue” as “a major fabrication” designed simply to discredit the results of the investigations that were taken away from him.

Who is it precisely that is so afraid of Genchi? Or rather, when precisely did the discussions surrounding Gioacchino Genchi actually begin? The answer to either one of these questions would explain everything.

His name is linked by a golden thread that leads us back to the Why not inquiry, via Luigi Apicella, the Salerno Public Prosecutor who was disbarred and had his pay suspended for ordering the search and seizure of documentation held by his Catanzaro colleagues.
The thread also goes via Corriere Della Sera journalist Carlo Vulpio, also relieved from duty by the editor of his newspaper after two years’ worth of writing articles concerning the Poseidon and Why not inquiries. But before that, the thread passes via Captain Pasquale Zacheo, De Magistris’ «right hand man » in the “Lucan Togas” inquiry that was transferred out in a big hurry. The thread leads all the way back to Public Prosecutor Luigi De Magistris, who was relieved of his duties as regards the abovementioned inquiries by being transferred to another branch and assigned other judicial duties.

De Magistris availed himself of Gioacchino Genchi’s services in order to decode the telephone call lists, just as many other institutions had previously been doing for many years. So Gioacchino Genchi was not directly involved in the wiretapping activities, if anything, all he was doing was entirely legitimately creating telephone utilisation charts using itemised billing reports supplied to him from time to time by the magistrates.

The Why not inquiry concerns billions upon billions of Euros of public funds and loans that disappeared behind a political and business set-up that is enough to make the entire economic system of the Country tremble. The only thing that Gioacchino Genchi may be guilty of is being involved in the “wrong” investigation at the right time. An investigation that would have confirmed the existence of a new P2, one that is extremely active and firmly in the driving seat in the most important Government departments.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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13 March 2009

Credibility in Europe

The political parties are busy campaigning for the European elections to be held in June. Expect anything, major advertising spots, major promises and all sorts of promises. The issue of security will once become the focus of national interest, thereby obscuring the current economic crisis, and Bossi will once again haul out the unloaded rifles of that federalism that was never implemented. Thus will begin the usual strategy of blacking-out and denigrating the Italia dei Valori Party. A strategy that has already begun to show in the national dailies.

You will see lots of space given to the Democratic Party, which needs to rebuild its image as a soft opposition, but is also very important in terms of the government’s game plan. You will see huge headlines and half-size photographs for the Udc and the Lega, which have been relegated to third place, to act as balancing fulcrum between the two main alliances.

As regards the Italia dei Valori Party, the diktat will be peremptory: blackout.

The reason for this is clear: in politics, anyone that cannot be bought or blackmailed is dangerous.
The Italia dei Valori party is not for sale and is therefore dangerous. And if it is true that our party is making news and increases readership and print figures during the year, at election time we are a threat to the Caste, although not to the citizens, who will get the chance to change the face of politics in June.

The Italia dei Valori party will be nominating some honest people with a history of professionalism, social commitment and values. People with no criminal record.

As far as we are concerned, neither the European Parliament not the Italian one is some sort of Elba for sentenced criminals, statute barred offenders, people under investigation or those that have been pardoned, nor do they represent some sort of reward to be handed out to those who have earned it through some sort of negotiation with the parties.

During the European elections, the citizens will be able to express his/her individual preference on the election form, something that really concerns the Caste. Silvio Berlusconi has announced that he will be standing for election as the main candidate in all constituencies and has advised his ministers to do the same, following his “excellent” example.

A gesture truly worthy of the dishonesty of a corruptor.

Silvio Berlusconi is well aware of the fact that the space that the medial will allocate to members of the government will be over and above that stipulated by the “par condicio” law concerning election campaigns. Not only, but this vile little game of theirs will also enable them to hide from the citizens the faces of the real candidates who will be representing them later in Europe. The Italians will see well-known names and faces, such as Fitto, Tremonti, Matteoli, Rotondi and Scajola and will vote for them, but it won’t be these people that go on to Strasburg. These will be nothing more than the obscure back roads by which they will reroute the votes cast for the respective ministers. These ministers should be kicked out of office and their salaries suspended for the entire duration of the electoral campaign because of their inability to fulfil their obligations to a Country that is about to go into default and that cannot be governed only on alternate days due to other electoral commitments.

During the next few days, I will be announcing a number of important nominations. The candidates selected by the Italia dei Valori Party aim to, and I repeat, represent the Italians with dignity in Strasburg. Our first appointment will be next Wednesday on this blog, when I will be announcing the first of a series of excellent candidates, an unmistakeable sign of a turnaround that the Italia dei Valori party aims to engineer in both European and Italian politics. Then the Caste will understand.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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11 March 2009

A Legislature to forget

I am publishing a chunk of the interview given during the programme "Chiaro e tondo", broadcast on 10 March 2009 on RAI 3.

Bianca Berlinguer: According to you, how is it that even though the economic crisis is ever more serious, the popularity of the President of the Council is still at the same level or even increasing?
Antonio Di Pietro: I’m not dealing with the popularity of the President of the Council. I am dealing with the problems of this country and I am convinced that right now we need to choose the priorities on how we are to use our funds. Why am I challenging the President of the Council? Not only and not so much because he is called Berlusconi, but because he takes from the poor and gives to the rich. Because he allows unauthorised parcelling out. Because he allows tax dodging. Because he allows massive construction projects that are useless except to “give glory to himself” as they said once upon a time, and because he even reckons, as he said today that the Parliament is of such little use that it’s enough to have a single person, to vote in the name of the whole party. In relation to all of this, if you will allow me, we of Italia dei Valori believe that in the prime position we have to place the fight against precarious working, the fight against unemployment, and the relaunch of the economy.

Bianca Berlinguer: You are referring to the proposal that Berlusconi made today: that in the case of the reform of the regulations of the Lower House, just the group leaders could be the ones voting and if the others of that group were not in agreement, they can come and vote.
Antonio Di Pietro: There’s a problem: At times the voting is not as it should be because there are tricksters. Like those in the three card trick who manage with two hands to vote for three people. Given that it’s necessary to eliminate all this, because it is a squalid vulgarity, instead of throwing these people out of Parliament, he wants to send just one person to vote for them as well. Instead of saying that robbery is a crime, it’s enough to say that robbery is a virtue.

Bianca Berlinguer: Fini has said that the hypothesis that Berlusconi could become the President of the Republic is anything but remote given that he has personal consent and popularity. If that were to happen, what would you do?
Antonio Di Pietro: We of Italia dei Valori have always been opposed to this model of government. I repeat, not in a preconceived way, even though I think that Berlusconi is to democracy just as Fede is to journalism. However, we think this in a reasoned way because we realise that on economic issues he is not dealing with the problems of the most vulnerable members of society, but simply, he is resolving the problems of those who are the craftiest, and the strongest.

Bianca Berlinguer: But if he were to become the President of the Republic, what would you do?
Antonio Di Pietro: We of Italia dei Valori are doing what any person facing this situation should do: prevent it happening that a new Saddam Hussein takes possession of this country.

Bianca Berlinguer: Even that? Do you not think that by comparing him to Saddam Hussein, by making such an extreme comparison, you are ending up by playing his game?
Antonio Di Pietro: Thus, so as to avoid playing his game, you have to act like the little lamb in the parable, the one that is ill-treated by the wolf and has to say: “thank you, thank you wolf, everything is fine”

Bianca Berlinguer: But don’t you think that it is a comparison…
Antonio Di Pietro: It’s not a matter of comparisons. I repeat: does he want to be the Chair of the Milan football team? Let him be the owner of the Milan football team. Does he want to be the owner of the information system? Let him be the owner of the information system. Right now at this moment when I am talking to the citizens, I need to make it understood how the economy in our country is not going well, simply because there are too many people who don’t pay taxes and make laws for themselves on tax evasion and false accounting.

Bianca Berlinguer: Italia dei Valori has proposed referenda against the wiretapping law and against that on living wills, if they get through. Doesn’t it seem a bit risky to you to set up these referenda given that the most recent ones didn’t achieve the quorum?
Antonio Di Pietro: It’s true that they didn’t achieve the quorum because there are the defrocked priests, who, instead of telling the citizens to go and vote and to make choices according to their conscience, they tell them not to go and vote, so that the quorum will not be achieved and even if 90% of those who went to vote think like I do, they don’t get the vote to count. That’s why we of Italia dei Valori presented a motion to Parliament today, even before having a referendum, to deal with the unemployment allowance and the solidarity contract. Before doing a referendum on the social and economic issues we want the government to be committed so that at least in relation to the growing unemployment numbers , that it makes a solidarity contract: fewer hours of work for all, but so that all can work without landing up on the street.

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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8 March 2009

A battle without weapons

Year 2009: January, rape in Primavalle; February, rape in Caffarella, in Milano and in Bologna; March, in Cosenza the man accused of having used violence to sexually abuse his wife and daughter is arrested for continued and serious sexual violence.

”Violence against women, rape and all forms of molestation, of oppression, of persecution in relation to women represents a source of shame” is what was emphasised by the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, when celebrating the “Feast of Women” at the presidential palace.

The world economic crisis aggravates the risk of violence against women and girls. “It is forecast that women and girls, in developed countries as in the countries that are in development, will be particularly hit by the loss of employment, by the loss of the means of survival, by having greater responsibility in every sphere of their lives and by a greater risk of domestic and social violence” is what was declared by Yakin Erturk, the UN special envoy concerned with violence against women.

A CSM resolution of these last few days underlines the need to improve the response of the justice system in relation to domestic violence as well as by training and having greater specialization of magistrates and security forces.

Thus it is clear that in order to effectively stand up to the phenomenon, there is the need to integrate the repressive interventions with policies and actions that are precise and coordinated in the spheres of society, health, education and information. Premier Berlusconi, yet another time on such a sensitive topic, is deceiving the Italians and is demonstrating that he has no consideration in relation to women.

The Council of Ministers has issued the legal decree D.L. 11/2009 “Urgent measures in relation to public safety” the government’s publicity clip called “Decree to combat sexual violence, resources for 100 million Euro”. It’s just a shame that of these resources, only the crumbs are ear-marked to fight the evil of violence against women. The reality is this: in this decree not only are there not resources to seriously combat the phenomenon of sexual violence and domestic violence, but up until now, this government has taken away resources from the security forces and the magistracy, thus preventing them in fact from putting into action, strong and decisive measures for the security emergency.

The lack of staff, the halving of the number of police cars, with no overtime, is that how the government is thinking of combating the phenomenon of violence against women?

In this battle too, we are here now and we will be in the future. And I want to thank the numerous women who have been supporting us for some time and the new women friends that we have got to know in recent months and who are giving us the strength to carry on these battles.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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6 March 2009

The Lega: Berlusconi syndrome

I have to admit that the Lega has made and is still currently making what is undoubtedly a major commitment to the territory. I must, however, make a distinction between the regional Lega and the Roman Lega. These are two entirely different entities that are completely irreconcilable.

I would like to remind you that the Lega and the Italia Dei Valori are the only two Italian parties, out of the thousand or so parties that have tried and failed, which were born in the same manner as “spontaneous country flowers”. In other words, they were born not as a result of any sort of split or merger of alliances, but directly as a result of an agreement between citizens regarding the battles that needed to be fought: defence of a region by the Lega versus defence of values by the Italia dei Valori Party. In this sense, we believe that both of these organisations are in fact the only truly new institutions in the post-Tangentopoli political arena.

The only pity is that the Government Lega, namely the Lega that operates Monday to Thursday, is so totally different from the one that I see out in the region.

There is no way that I can agree with the Lega that sat down at the table yesterday and said “yes Dad” to Berlusconi when he announced that wiretapping can only be used once the guilty party has already been identified. Then, on Sundays, the Lega comes out here to the North and says that we must battle against delinquency, fight crime and fight against the rapes and the violence, whether committed by locals or foreigners, and then proceed to return to Rome and pass laws that prevent these offences from being investigated, only to later whisper in my ear that: “you guys are right, but there’s nothing that we can do about it”. My response to them is as follows: “Then don’t come and talk rubbish in Lombardy, claiming that you are doing heaven knows what. This is not the right way to do things.

It would certainly be possible to guarantee security in a serious and effective manner, right now, but there is real concern in Government circles and within the majority in Parliament that, should any major legislation be passed to improve security and help in the fight against crime, the said legislation would land up hurting various individuals within the institutions themselves.

We simply could not agree with the Lega’s stand yesterday when they rejected a wire-tapping authorisation request submitted by the Court of Milan, regarding a number of parliamentarians. This is not the same Lega that comes around on Sundays and tells the citizens that there are certain people in Rome who are only looking after their own interests: we will never be in a position to know about this because, also thanks to the Lega’s vote, these parliamentarians can never be investigated.

What precisely am I trying to say? I want to appeal to the citizens of the North: the time has come to stop accepting everything at face value, even when it comes down to the Lega itself. There are other organisations that we can talk to, are there not? And if we happen to come across any local representatives in our area that are committed heart and soul, individuals that we can talk to and who work from 7 o’clock every morning, checking to see whether or not the schools and the other services are working properly, then why not? However, if we then look at what is happening in central government, then we must say that, from now on, we will be watching these people and comparing their actions with their election promises. We are no longer prepared to sit back and allow ourselves to be taken for a ride by individuals who are afflicted by “berlusconism”.

I remind you that some of the main symptoms of "berlusconism" include the following: "saying the total opposite of what one is thinking, doing the exact opposite of what one says, and misleading the voters into believing that everyone will be better off voting for Berlusconi, while the truth is that, in fact, the only ones that will be better off are Berlusconi himself and a few of his friends”.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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5 March 2009

Armchair Collection-ism

Today, once again, I want to talk to you about information and I am doing this because I believe that we have arrived at the limits of democracy, because by now information is becoming a tool under the control of specific people specifically placed by the party system, above all, and by people who want to carry on their private affairs by means of the use of information itself.

I want to talk to you about the Board of Directors of the RAI. As you know, the appointments have been made and Italia dei Valori refused to take part in this “carve up” and instead it has denounced it in all locations. Now they are deciding who is to be the Chair person of the RAI Board of Directors. Even Italia dei Valori has been asked if it wants to take part in the process to select this Chair person, but we refused, because we are contesting the very idea that first you do a misdeed and then you want to close the doors. This is the misdeed: the members of the RAI Board of Directors were selected by the parties in a spirit of perfect “carve up”, with a vulgar agreement between the Centre Right and the Centre Left. This is why we don’t intend to take part.

So that you can understand the conflict of interests that there is inside the RAI Board of Directors I will talk about one case, that of Guglielmo Rositani. OK, let’s reflect: by definition the RAI is offering a public service. Its task is to inform the citizens and to guarantee the protection of democracy. The RAI should be the tool for controlling the powerful on behalf of the people. It is clear that if the Board of Directors is appointed by the parties, then its members respond to the parties. It is those who are controlled that are appointing those who control them, as though the defendant in a trial is appointing his judge. And at this point there is no guarantee that what is said by the public information system is true.

Take the case of Rositani: a member of the RAI Board of Directors. He is also the mayor of a small town in Calabria and a member of the Board of Directors of the Ponte di Messina {Bridge over the Straits of Messina}. When the public information system has to let the citizens know if in that town the mayor is doing things well or badly, or whether the Ponte di Messina is a good or a bad thing, according to you, how do you think the Board of Directors will decide? Will it decide on the basis of an objective result or on the basis of a subjective result of those within the Board of Directors itself? It seems to me that there is a conflict of interests, and that it is evident: he acts one day as the judge and on another day as the one being judged.

It seems to me that, one more time, it’s necessary to denounce this party “carve up” that makes decisions on its own and doesn’t allow the citizens to find out how things really are, but as it suits and pleases those in power and on behalf of this or the other party. Italia dei Valori has dissociated itself. It is protesting. And at the same time it is taking on itself, the task of informing the citizens how things really are.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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28 February 2009

Neither right wing nor left

Here is an extract from an interview I gave to the "Otto e mezzo" programme broadcast by La7 on 25 February 2009.

I was asked what my political leaning is. In my opinion, ideological politics are dead and buried, together with the all of the banners and stereotypes. And with them also the majority of the politicians that now follow a policy of opportunistic consensus and are therefore much like flags flapping in the breeze.

As for me, I am committed to practicing the kind of politics that are based on the principles of ethics, morality and justice.
I am not a justicialist and this term does not really exist at all. The rules can even be changed, but once they are established they must always be respected, not only when it suits the individual to do so. Therefore, I am neither right wing, left wing, centre, nor up or down, but I am on the side of the citizens.

Text of my address

Chiara Geloni: Are you right wing or left wing?
Antonio Di Pietro: Neither the one nor the other. I am a person that believes in Christian solidarity and that when good communists know how to be supportive, as the people in the populations houses stand together, I wont ask if he goes to Mass on Sunday, because it means that he goes to Mass every day of the week. I am not a fascist by any means because my family is not fascist and I cannot even imagine being one, but when I talk about law and order I am not talking as a right wing supporter, because I believe that everyone is equal before the law and that, therefore, everyone must respect the law. When I talk about enforcing respect for the law and about throwing delinquents in jail, I do so not because I am a fascist, but because it is right for the citizens.

Federico Guiglia: You haven’t perhaps become somewhat radical in the meantime? I ask you this simply because you have already announced two referendums and you have just submitted a request for another on the Alfano Bill.
Antonio Di Pietro: If the truth be told, I did the very same thing with regard to the Previti Bill, which they said was okay. In actual fact, in June we will be voting in a referendum regarding the electoral law and we are one of the parties that subscribed and that helped to gather signatures. I believe in direct democracy, especially when there is a Parliament like our current one in power, where parliamentarians are voted in by the prince and proceed to vote without even really knowing what they are voting for, simply because if they don’t, next time around they will be sent home, and one where there are some serious conflicts of interest.

Chiara Geloni: But this is a right-wing concept.

Lilli Gruber: What precisely do you mean by right wing?

Chiara Geloni: This whole idea of direct democracy and of the futility of Parliament and the concept of representation...

Federico Guiglia: Populism in other words.

Antonio Di Pietro: Please excuse me. I ask you as citizens. Did I say that Parliament is useless or did I say that Berlusconi is busy rendering Parliament obsolete? I am telling you this so that we can better judge the state of our information system.
We currently have a Parliament that includes a number of sentenced offenders and attorneys of sentenced offenders who make decisions regarding matters involving justice. You accuse me of constantly talking about justice, but do you know why I constantly talk about justice? Because that is currently the only topic of discussion in Parliament. Instead of submitting draft legislation regarding the economy, taxes and levies, do you know what they put in as the first rule in the “Milleproroghe” Bill (Thousand postponements bill)? This was no postponement with a deadline, but a total pardon: the failure by the Parties to pay the fines levied for having put up posters illegally during the last election campaign, for having violated the “par condicio” principle. I cannot afford to violate this principle because that would affect my credibility but these other people violate the principle and then simply introduce a law in Parliament that makes such violation no longer a crime.
Do you know what happened in Parliament today? On numerous occasions the opposition has lost out by a margin of two or three votes, simply because the majority not only has one hundred more parliamentarians than we do, but also because they are a bunch of slackers that, like Brunetta, don’t bother to go and vote. There is one gentleman in particular who manages to cast three votes with two hands. I would like to see if you can you do that: abracadabra.

Chiara Geloni: But now that they are about to introduce a fingerprint recognition system for voting purposes, they won’t be able to do this anymore. Correct?
Antonio Di Pietro: We obviously haven’t understood each other properly. They will be installing the fingerprint recognition system next week, but do you know why it is being installed? Because we have a bunch of cheaters in Parliament.

Lilli Gruber: Today saw the approval of Brunetta’s legislation that aims to reward those within the public service that take their work seriously. Do you agree with this?
Antonio Di Pietro: As regards rewarding people on the basis of merit, absolutely yes, but I repeat, beginning with Parliament. Many of them are loafers that get other people to vote on their behalf, thereby cheating the State and stealing their daily allowances.

Lilli Gruber: So you agree with the Government in this regard.
Antonio Di Pietro: Agree with the Government? I agree with using common sense.

Lilli Gruber: Does this include the issue of the construction of nuclear power stations? They have announced the imminent construction of no less than four nuclear power stations in Italy.
Antonio Di Pietro: As far as we of the Italia dei Valori party are concerned, we believe that these are inappropriate, useless because of the lead times, unhealthy and dangerous. For this reason we intend to oppose their construction, both within and outside Parliament, so as to prevent them from ever being built. I would like to point out that these so-called third generation nuclear power stations are like the ones that were built in other countries no less than thirty years ago and that produced high levels of waste products, so much so in fact that it has been said that they are obsolete. So, over the next thirty years we will be building a number of nuclear power stations that are already obsolete, without even knowing precisely where we will be disposing of the nuclear waste.
In actual fact, these nuclear power stations will never be built because, in the interim, other energy sources will come to the fore, such as wind power and solar power. This is nothing more than an advertising spot for Berlusconi, who is selling smoke and mirrors by announcing what he will be doing in the future and thereby avoid having to answer for what he is doing now.
Do you know what happened in Parliament today? The Director General from the Taxation Department of the Ministry for the Economy came in and proceeded to inform us that tax evasion in Italy currently amounts to some 200 billion Euro per year. If I was the Government, I would ensure that that money comes into the State’s coffers so that we could all pay less tax and get more services in return. That is what the Government should be doing, rather than shouting about “the moon in the well” every day.

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25 February 2009

Nuclear: we have everything to lose

This morning during the programme called "Il Caffè" on RaiNew24, I spoke about the economy, the justice system and nuclear energy. Nuclear technology is old technology that is out of date, that all the countries in Europe are in the process of dismantling. So as to claw back losses in this sector, France, financed by the government, for military purposes rather than for civil ones, is trying to sell this obsolete technology to other countries. In 1987, with a referendum that repealed the law, the people of Italy consigned this source of energy to the waste paper basket. If there’s a wish to turn back then it’s necessary to go back over the same democratic path (unknown to the government). Nuclear cannot be decided by Scajola or by Berlusconi, but only by the people.

Text of the interview

Corradino Mineo: The thing that we have cleared up straight away with Di Pietro, and this is interesting, is that he is not in favour of this Italian-French agreement to construct 4 third generation nuclear power stations because we don’t know how to get rid of the waste products, because nuclear power is a slow-fused time-bomb that will start functioning in a long, long time in the future, while instead, we should be investing in alternative energy. Thus we have a Di Pietro ecologist who is aligned with Obama on this issue.

Antonio Di Pietro: I am very proud to be aligned with Obama, but I’m not putting myself in an ivory tower. I just want to say this: Third generation nuclear power stations are the ones of thirty years ago. Today there is a technology that is called fourth generation post-nuclear, that they are experimenting with right now and even Italy is participating in this. To do nuclear power stations today would still mean getting a solution not before 2050.

Corradino Mineo: Berlusconi said that the plant will be constructed by 2020.

Antonio Di Pietro: This is what he said. But you have to find the site, make agreements with the population, and to know where to put the waste products. Whether it pleases or not, given that in nature, nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, these radioactive waste products, that last for thousands of years and that will cause the death of loads of people, will have to be put somewhere, some place will have to be found, and I’d like to see who it is that is keen to have them next to their own home. To do all this investment, to waste all that money, to put at risk the whole environment of our country to land up with a nuclear power station that is already obsolete in 2050, and to get there when science and technology will have already concluded other solutions, like the optimisation of solar energy and wind energy, non-polluting alternative energies that also have a lower use of energy. This is why, to me it seems inappropriate, costly, dangerous, environmentally destructive, and on the issue of health, a time bomb, as well as a nuclear bomb.

I invite the users to listen to the rest of the interview about the economy, the PD, Mills, gagging journalists and the conflict of interest: watch the video.

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24 February 2009

Bold as brass

The European countries of the G20 at their forthcoming summit in London, will be looking for greater regulation and supervision of the international financial markets that will include sanctions against tax havens. Silvio Berlusconi will be obliged to accept these proposals, at least verbally. Our country is the leader in Europe for swindling the European Community in the management of its finances, and it is also the first for the highest pay package for the parliamentarians with a seat in Strasburg, who are also the leaders in absenteeism. Tabucchi, an Italian writer living in Paris, taking part in the programme Annozero, defined Italy as a “Country with a special Statute” with respect to the rest of Europe, for the political choices that take us day by day further away from the other member States of the European Union.

With what nerve will Silvio Berlusconi ratify the proposals by the European colleagues about the fight against the tax havens? In fact, he has made ample use of the tax havens to escape the tax man and the Italian justice system. David Mills has been convicted in the face of the absolute indifference of the media. Apart from Italia dei Valori, no party has called for the premier to resign, given that Mills’ conviction would also have meant a conviction for Berlusconi as the one who did the corrupting, if it hadn’t been for the lodo Alfano. But this is the finger that does the pointing. Let’s look at the moon that it is pointing at: David Mills lied in trials like the one on the bribes to the Milan Finance Police, the one on the undocumented Fininvest funds, diverted to off shore companies to avoid the tax man, the one on illegal financing (and thus more tax evasion) to Craxi’s PSI {Italian Socialist Party}.

Mills lied to falsify the running of the trials that evidently, could have led to the conviction of the corruptor (Berlusconi) who in those trials was also under investigation as one who evades paying taxes.

So then, how can Berlusconi guarantee the members of the G20 and represent the Italians in the fight against the tax havens, he who has been the one who has exploited them the most? How can this government have the cheek to declare war on tax evasion that is a sixth of the GDP, when this executive has a man that invited the citizens to practice fiscal disobedience? .

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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21 February 2009

A feasible alternative

Antonio Di Pietro: We of the Italia dei Valori Party are not only busy building up an opposition that can stand up to Berlusconi, but also an alternative option for the Country, consisting of defence for the weaker members of society, of fighting against illegality and of an economy based o the market, but also respect for the rules, otherwise 200 billion in tax evasion will make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Journalist: In addition to being a politician, you also have a certain technical understanding since you are both a policeman and a magistrate, so what do you think about this decree concerning the patrols?
Antonio Di Pietro: The decree has been called “anti-rape” and it is the greatest deception ever because at this very moment, in Parliament, they are busy approving a law that prevents wiretapping, even environmental ones, but claiming to be fighting against sexual assaults. What this means, is that we must lock up the rapists while saying that we cannot go and find them. So who are we going to chuck in jail then? We should be chucking the government ministers in jail, that’s who.

Journalist: And what about the patrols?
Antonio Di Pietro: Fortunately the patrols have been avoided as regards the truncheon swingers and executioners of the night, end it has proven to be the nothing more than the umpteenth salvo fired by the Government in an attempt to have us believe that they are improving the fight against crime. In reality, as long as the action is limited to citizens calling 113 whenever they see a crime in progress, then that is already happening now. The problem is something totally different: if you want to put a truncheon, a baton or a weapon in the hands of a citizen, you run the risk of turning him into an executioner of the night or a lawless sheriff. The policemen are entirely correct in reacting to this rape of legality.

Journalist: Now, let’s move on to the crisis within the Democratic Party. The latest polls show that support for your party is standing at 14%, including the votes from the Democratic Party. For you the glass may be half full, but what about the centre-left?
Antonio Di Pietro: The Italia dei Valori Party is well aware of the fact that the main objective is to build up an alternative political force that is numerically adequate and, above all, credible as an alternative to the Berlusconi government, which we believe is a para-fascist regime. That is why we don’t pay too much attention to the polls, because we are well aware that we must keep our feet firmly planted on the ground, indeed, as we do every day, demonstrating in the squares and in the towns. Just like this afternoon, when we will be in Piazza Farnese to demonstrate for the right to be able to live with dignity and to die with dignity.

Journalist: The living will?
Antonio Di Pietro: As a Catholic, in my opinion a living will is a civilised document in that we must let citizen have the right to choose his own way of life, to live it with dignity and then, as was said first by Pope Paul VI and then by Pope John Paul II, the right to close his/her eyes and return to the Lord.

Journalist: Now let’s talk about infrastructure, a topic that is undoubtedly extremely important in this region.
Antonio Di Pietro: Not only have we already stated previously that Genoa needs infrastructure, beginning with the harbour and moving on to railways, roads and national and international connections, but we have also already identified the priorities, how to get them completed and how to fund them. The current government, which was sitting in the opposition benches at that time, was very hard to please and now that they are in power, they have even cancelled the funding.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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20 February 2009

For life and against State sponsored torture

Tomorrow, Saturday 21st February, at 15h00, we will be in Piazza Farnese in Rome for the demonstration promoted by Micromega, ‘For life and against State sponsored torture’.

The Italia dei Valori party is taking to the streets again and it is doing so without any banners, nor any party symbols, because this is a battle without colour and because never before has it been as important as it is now for us to stand together. On this issue there must be no distinction between Catholics and lay people: the right to a dignified life belongs to everyone, just as the right to a dignified death. We are not the only ones saying this (because that would be of no consequence), but Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II have already said so in a far more solemn manner.

I am still ashamed about the way in which many politicians dealt with this matter during the last few days of Eluana Englaro’s life. It was not a very edifying spectacle, which offended all of this Country’s citizens, above all Eluana herself and the many other people that are currently in her same situation. Tomorrow we will also bear witness in that square, we also want to continue to fight and battle on.

What we want is a law regarding living wills that respects the individual’s freedom of conscience and, should this not occur, we will propose that a referendum be held in order to give the citizens an opportunity to choose.

The appointment then is for Rome, tomorrow at 15h00.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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14 February 2009

Theories that are easy to prove

On 29 January the front pages of the newspapers and the television newscasts openly accused me of publicly insulting the Head of State. The reason for this shame were my words spoken in Piazza Farnese. Oreste Dominioni, President of the Union of Penal Chambers and attorney to the Berlusconi family (and Dell’Utri), formally lent credence to the media lies by laying a charge with the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Yesterday, 13 February, Attorney Giovanni Ferrara and Public Prosecutor Giancarlo Amato made a ruling regarding my criticism of the Head of State, stating that: “in exercising the legitimate right to criticise, which is permissible, in moderation, even in the case of holders of the highest public offices in the land (recognisable here without any question), there has been no offence committed against the honour or the prestige of the Head of State” and continues “thus there are no grounds for the charges relating to the kind of offence envisaged in article 278 of the Penal Code and, consequently, our decision not to request the applicable permission, as specified in art. 313, clause one of the Penal code, to take action against the person under investigation". Translated, this means that the accusations made against me were nothing more than an act of denigration.

In their ruling, the magistrates included certain accounts from a number of press articles, which appeared to confirm the existence of an effectively offensive reference to the State President, however, upon reading other accounts published on the Internet, they write, the true meaning of my statements "appeared to be totally different. An impression that was completely confirmed by viewing and listening to the complete audiovisual recording of the address”.

In other words, the Internet told the truth while the press told lies and the same goes for the politicians that accused me.

Also yesterday, the author of the “Internet information shutdown” amendment, namely Senator D’Alia, responding to my article entitled “Internet in Italy: just like China and Burma”, concluded that: ”Our regulation - (whose precisely, Mr. Senator? Yours and the Government’s?) – is not about shutting down either Facebook or YouTube, nor any other site or social network. If anything, it is aimed at protecting the users that experience the Web as a proper meeting place and a source of information, as well as the blogs that are full of nonsense, such as Beppe Grillo’s and Antonio Di Pietro’s”. Clearly, D’Alia and his prompters do not even know what the Internet is.

These two episodes are proof of a dual theory, namely that the only free information still available in Italy is that found on the Web, and that the intention of this political class is to place it under Government control, together with the justice system, in order to prevent it becoming an avenue for free speech.

The proof?

Today’s edition of the newspapers should be dedicating the same amount of space to the news of the ruling as they did when they were defaming me after the Piazza Farnese event, rather than waste their time counting the number of people listed in the Genchi archive whose telephone conversations were recorded, in support of the limitations on wiretapping that both the Government and the complacent opposition are hastily attempting to introduce. Alas, this has not occurred, and so the theory has been confirmed.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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12 February 2009

Appeal to Europe

Today I was in Brussels where I asked the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs to revoke my parliamentary immunity so that a civil action can be carried out in relation to the period when I had a seat in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. So no one can say that I retreated from a trial.

In Brussels I participated in a seminar on justice that was organized by the liberal democratic group and in a press conference I explained Italia dei Valori’s guiding principles for the forthcoming European elections. I am publishing the video and the text of my speech.

”I believe that the European Institutions, starting with the Court of Justice and the European Parliament, can do what the Italian Parliament does not manage to do: it can put a stop to the President of the Council’s “ad personam” laws, it can put a stop to the gagging of news media and it can put a stop to the denigration of the magistrates. These are all activities that the President of the Council and his government are taking forward for a dictatorial project. In Europe, we want to make it known that there is justice and there is an equality of citizens that this government cannot destroy.
Italia dei Valori, that is today participating in the demonstration for the defence of the Constitution, right from the first day of Berlusconi’s government has made it known that with a Parliament that is appointed by a few leaders, with a Parliament that cannot make laws apart from approving government legal decrees, with a Head of State who is prevented from taking his decisions forward, with a magistracy that is denigrated, and offended, and with the possibility of every defendant being able to reject his judge if he doesn’t like him, and with a structure of news provision, above all the public one, that is also completely gagged, so much so that in these very same hours they are appointing the Board of Directors as a system of assigning lots and dividing it up between the parties. If this is not dictatorship, it is the ante-chamber to it.
We are trying to put barriers in place and to clamp down on this before it is too late.”

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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11 February 2009

SHAME

I have waited until the end of the day to comment on what has happened in the Senate following the death of Eluana Englaro.
I would like to express my solidarity with signor Beppino Englaro, her father, because yesterday that pain that perhaps had been masked by the years in an apparent normality has been reawakened with all its strength like a fire that was never put out by the ashes over the years.

I am feeling indignation and shame for the spectacle that the politicians in search of an author have offered at Palazzo Madama {seat of the Senate} with words that are beyond any type of decency. Shameful words that offend me as a citizen, as a father, and as a politician: the word “assassins” is one of these.
It is a defamatory word that is not pronounceable in Parliament.

“Assassins” are those who did not offer a hand to Beppino Englaro when according to Englaro’s own declarations, in 2004, he asked for help and did not receive a reply from the then President of the Council, Silvio Berlusconi, and from his Minister of Health.
“Assassins” are those who have created a media and political trial for Beppino Englaro for the choice in his life that has caused the most suffering. I am saying this as a father because I cannot imagine so much pain enclosed within the body of a person to succeed in taking a decision of this type. A decision that I respect.

The “assassins”, senator Quagliariello and senators of the PDL, are quite different people.
The true “assassins” are those who did not provide body guards for Marco Biagi, on 19 March 2002, in Bologna.
“Assassins” are those who delete, in a scurrilous act of racist propaganda, comma 5 of article 35 of the legal decree dated 25 July 1998, according to which “access to the health services by the foreigner who has not the right papers, cannot lead to any type of communication to the authorities, thus exposing citizens to the risk of pathologies like tuberculosis.

Let Berlusconi, Quagliariello, Gasparri and the government "claque" look at themselves in the mirror and let them be deeply ashamed of themselves, at least for today.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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9 February 2009

Pulling out the plug is a right

I’m publishing an interview I gave to the daily newspaper La Stampa, dated Monday 9 February 2009, talking about the issue of the Englaro family.

La Stampa: Honourable Di Pietro, will your party vote for the “Save Eluana” draft law?
Antonio Di Pietro: «There cannot be a party that could impose a vote on the parliamentarians for such a sensitive, such a dramatic issue. And this is even more valid for Italia dei Valori that feels close to the working man who up until yesterday was voting for “Rifondazione” and to the sister who lives on solidarity.»

La Stampa: Your group leaders, Donadi and Belisario are in favour of the draft law. And yourself?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Please don’t let’s start saying that IdV is split. But I will vote “no”.»

La Stampa:
Why? Antonio Di Pietro: «Because not just decrees but also laws must never be “uti singuli”, but “erga omnes”. However, this draft law only talks of the case of Eluana and it does not tackle, as it should do, the more complex topic of living wills. Parliament needs to deal with that, in the widest forms and in the most authoritative way, and it should have regulations for the right to life but also another right in which I have a profound belief: the right to die with dignity.»

La Stampa: You are a believer. And yet it seems that you are claiming the right to pull out the plug.
Antonio Di Pietro: «Anyway in this drama I feel like one who is defeated because I envy those who are certain. I’m not certain. I think that, if I were to find myself in a terminal condition, without an exit route, I would like to have a merciful hand that helped me to close my eyes. But if it had to be me to close the eyes of another, my hand would be held back.»

La Stampa: You would like to be helped to die, but you would not be able to help another to die?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Yes. But above all I would never want the reasoning for my anguish to have more weight than the reasoning of the distress of another person. I would like to have a law that gives the freedom to behave according to conscience.»

La Stampa: Are you talking about your own life?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Yes.»

La Stampa: Your mother?
Antonio Di Pietro: «My mother and my sister.»

La Stampa: What happened?
Antonio Di Pietro: «They were the two people who were the dearest to me in the world. My mother had an ictus. She was in the hospital ward for 7 months and she never recovered. I remember her in the last few days of life, in bed, without moving, without power, in an irreversible coma. I remember her eyes, and in them I saw her pleading. I am sure that in her eyes there was the desire to be helped to abandon the suffering. But I did not have the legal possibility to help her. And if I had had I would not have had the courage.»

La Stampa: And your sister?
Antonio Di Pietro: «My sister, Concetta, poor woman. She was sixty years old. She was taken away by cancer. She was still young. It seemed as though I was reliving the same experience that I went through with my mother. The same eyes, the same pleading. And do you know what the absurdity is? It is that they were Catholics and believers and that they would never have accepted a law that favoured death. »

La Stampa: A contradiction.
Antonio Di Pietro: «Not at all. And this is the great mystery. Exactly. How is it possible, on topics like this one to have so much certainty? I see former priests on one side, and defenders of every liberty on the other. And I don’t understand them. That is why I’m not happy that it is said that Italia dei Valori on this law is voting in favour of or against Berlusconi. He doesn’t deserve it. We don’t deserve it. Peppino Englaro don’t deserve it.»

La Stampa: Have you met him?
Antonio Di Pietro: «I believe that he has more important and more dramatic things to keep him busy, rather than meeting up with a poor politician. With me, even on this story they are tugging at my jacket. But for him... Everyone is shouting “murder”, “assassination”. That makes me sad. But how can they think that a father wants to kill his daughter? But I say: Stop. Just try for a moment to enter into that human drama.»

La Stampa: And this seems to be the point: Peppino Englaro has the courage that you don’t have.
Antonio Di Pietro: «And I would like that to be guaranteed to him by law, and fast time frames are needed.»

La Stampa: It’s euthanasia.
Antonio Di Pietro: «Call it what you like. But if it were me, if it were a matter of myself and my health, I would like to be able to die.»

La Stampa: Let’s come to the conflict between Giorgio Napolitano and Silvio Berlusconi.
Antonio Di Pietro: « Napolitano has done well. Berlusconi wanted to force his hand. He wanted to make it happen that Parliament was faced with a “fait accompli”. And on a topic like this as well. He did well because he has stopped another “ad personam” law. He did well because the decree was trampling over a verdict, perhaps even for humanitarian reasons, but it was introducing a really dangerous way of proceeding, that could be replicated in the future for different reasons. And because he defended the Constitution.»

La Stampa: Well, you admit then that Berlusconi had humanitarian reasons...
Antonio Di Pietro: «What an idea! Berlusconi is just walking all over Eluana’s suffering.»

La Stampa: Do you feel that he wants to shorten Napolitano’s seven year period?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Well, more than anything else, it just seems like the delirium of omnipotence. From the “lifting” to his hair transplant he’s gone on to the anxieties of a “dittatorello”. From a psychological case, he is becoming a psychiatric case.»

La Stampa: We’re at that point.
Antonio Di Pietro: «But what do you think of one who is galloping over this matter of Eluana to split the country even more? To make it unstable, ungovernable and then, as he has announced, to change the Constitution as he likes. But do me a favour. They said I was mad when I said that Napolitano has to watch out for the laws that the government is promulgating, for Berlusconi’s various objectives. Certainly, for the love of God, I say it in “di-pietro-language”. However, then, in a more formal way, even Veltroni said that. And in a cultured way, Scalfari said it. And so?»

La Stampa: And so?
Antonio Di Pietro: «Well then, this Di Pietro is not so crazy after all. Or is he?»

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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8 February 2009

Going Beyond the Englaro case

Another example of bad news reporting. This morning, the front page of the newspaper "La Stampa" had the headline "Di Pietro: voterò con il Cavaliere". {Di Pietro: I will vote with Berlusconi}. And the subheading: “A surprise from the former prosecutor: that life has to be saved”.

A great presentation of an interview. It’s just a shame that I never gave an interview. In fact I have never spoken to this asserted interviewer, the journalist Amedeo La Mattina. La Stampa put into my mouth even “using quotes”, sentences that I have never uttered. So basically it is an interview that was literally invented. In fact if you go and read the article you realise that it’s not even a matter of an interview. However, it’s a shame that that is how it is presented in the “headline” on the front page. It would make you laugh if it didn’t make you cry.

To be described as one who is with Berlusconi, right at the very moment that he is about to give the final blow to Italian democracy, gives me goose bumps just to think of it. But the issue is: we need to understand if it’s just a matter of a simple journalistic accident (which in itself is excusable as everyone can make a blunder) or if someone wanted to take advantage in a dishonest way (but the issue is too serious to decorate with polemics).

Instead, I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to say what I think about this issue and how the Italia dei Valori party will behave in relation to the Englaro case.

Without any “ifs and buts”, Italia dei Valori is with the President of the Republic on this issue. Napolitano has done well to put a stop to the legal decree that would have presented Parliament with a “fait accompli” and instead, it is good that in such a delicate matter like the “living will” (that is the right of each one of us to be able to pull out the plug when we have arrived at the limit of our strength) should first be discussed and carefully evaluated by Parliament. It’s true that the human situation of Englaro calls for rapid responses (and, in fact, we have given our consent that it can be discussed straight away in the House) but it’s not possible to do laws for individual people, directly with the only aim of stopping an irrevocable verdict. According to us, the truth is that Berlusconi, right now, is taking advantage of the opportunity to divide the country even more, to make it ungovernable and unstable so that he can then say that he’ll sort it out (even changing the Constitution, if this doesn’t happen to allow him to do what he likes). Just as Mussolini did in his time.

Up until a few days ago, it was only we of Italia dei Valori that said that Berlusconi was a “public danger”. Everyone insulted us for having recommended the Head of State to watch out for the laws that Berlusconi was about to promulgate. Today the others are saying the same things (recently there was Eugenio Scalfari in “La Repubblica” and Veltroni in various declarations). Sooner or later, someone will have to apologise to all those who first in Piazza Navona and then in Piazza Farnese, did not stay silent and raised their voices in defence of the Constitution.

In a few days, Parliament will have to decide whether or not to approve the “Englaro draft law” that has been presented. It is one of those cases that by definition “party discipline” cannot be imposed on the parliamentarians. In fact, one thing is the "hullabaloo" created by Berlusconi at the expense of the Englaro family, another is to decide whether it is possible to make a law that allows a person to ask their loved ones to “help them” die when they can really not go on (not even to turn off the light or no longer even able to decide what they have to do).

I am personally in great distress and I think that also goes for so many Italians including the parliamentarians. Here it’s not a matter of staying with the Centre Right or the Centre Left.

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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6 February 2009

Open letter to the President of the Republic

Signor President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano,

Let it be permitted to tell you, in your position as the guarantor of the Constitution, that, in our opinion, the Berlusconi government is about to put in place another rip in the Constitution.

He has already got Parliament to bend to his will with a massive use of legal decrees and “obligatory” votes of confidence.

He has already occupied the public and private news in a total conflict of interests.

With the Lodo Alfano and the other myriad of “ad personam” laws that he has imposed, he has already mortified the principle of the equality of all citizens before the law.

Now, in a single blow, he is getting close to a “poker of filth” worthy of the worst Argentine model: the nomination of the members of the RAI Board of Directors, the modification of the self governing structure for the Court of Accounts, the limitation on telephone wiretapping, the modification of parliamentary regulations.

Since he is occupying the RAI, the citizens cannot find out what is happening in the secret locations of power and they will no longer be able to exercise any democratic control.

By altering the membership of the Court of Accounts – that as set out in the Constitution, has the specific task of checking the accounts of the Public Administration – even that body is put under the control of the Executive that thus will be able to falsify as it wishes, the balances of the State without anybody being able to stop it.

By the indiscriminate limitation on telephone wiretapping, the magistracy are prevented from doing their duty and efficaciously standing up to organized crime.

By the distortion of Parliamentary regulations, the Opposition is prevented from exercising its constitutional rights and Parliament is reduced to being a simple doormat of the Executive.

What is happening in our country as a result of the current government seems to follow in the footsteps of the German National Socialist party in the 1930s, rather than those of a democracy based on the rule of law.

Having said that, we respectfully but decisively ask you not to remain silent and to intervene to avoid this destruction of democracy. Before it is too late.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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5 February 2009

Italian money, P2-ist gifts

You really need a very tanned face.
“Mister one percent” has mental health problems if he, really he, one in the government who has been under investigation so many times, can exclaim about an entrepreneur like Soru with statements that we are reading today in the newspapers.
Silvio Berlusconi, who exploits the institutions to turn out laws for himself, for his companies and for his friends, should first act as the President of the Council and then the leader of a party. It’s sure that he should dedicate himself to dealing with the national economic problems and not be doing an election campaign at the expense of the taxpayers.
I would like to remind “mister one per cent Berlusconi” a few details that perhaps have slipped his mind.
Soru is not using the public concessions for TV frequencies, a source of enormous gains whilst paying the crumbs of 1% of the RTI turnover to the Italians.
Soru was not a chum of Craxi and a P2 card-holder.
Soru did not illegally finance Craxi to construct the fortune of his companies.
Soru is not defending himself from competition from Sky by taking the sales tax from 10% to 20%.
Soru did not provide the cash to Cesare Previti to corrupt the judges in a trial.
Soru did not decriminalise “false accounting”.
Signor President of the Council, even Vanna Marchi would be able to be an entrepreneur with the public concessions and the support of the P2-ists.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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4 February 2009

Piazza Farnese: I support Antonio Di Pietro

The act of writing the name in the register of those under investigation is a dutiful act by the Rome Procura, as has been pointed out by the prosecutor himself on taking action for the denouncement “with a mandante” presented by the lawyer Avvocato Dominioni.

I would like to remind the newspapers that don’t want to write it, that Oreste Dominioni certainly is the Chair of the “Unione delle Camere Penali” {Union of Criminal Chambers} , but he is also the lawyer of the Berlusconi family (and according to an article in today’s l’Unità also of Marcello Dell’Utri).

On the other hand, the Procura {Prosecutors Department}, at the appropriate moment, will also be duty-bound to write the name of Dominioni in the register of those under investigation, as well as all those who together with him have slandered me, on the false presupposition that I offended the Head of State.

As I made clear in Saturday’s article (""Dominioni the kamikaze""), to trust in journalistic reconstruction summaries, rather than first verifying what really happened, as Dominioni has done is a serious lack of diligence that can be very costly, at a criminal level, to anyone who has formulated this.

I will take to the Public Prosecutor, the complete recording of what happened in Piazza Farnese (watch my speech on YouTube) and I will call as witnesses the thousands of people who listened to my speech in the square or via live streaming. Dominioni can take nothing other than newspapers excerpts and cuttings from agency reports that are factious and characterized by omissions, given that he has ignored as evidence, the tens of videos of that day.

The truth is much more mundane: Dominioni does not intend to follow an action of justice, but rather solely to provide a favour to his own clients, and one in particular.

Anyway, with this denunciation, Dominioni gives recognition to the fact that it is now reduced to waste paper, the right to demonstrate one’s thoughts and one’s criticism that is allowed by article 21 of our Constitution.

This legal case is in reality a fundamental moment to reaffirm the possibility for the citizens in our country, to still be able to freely criticize the work of anyone, even the Head of State.

The attempt by the “mandanti” {instigators} of this denunciation is clearly to once more humiliate our Constitution (as has already been done with the Lodo Alfano, the wiretapping and the myriad of “ad personam” laws that have been promulgated under the Berlusconi IV government), quite a dangerous precedent that differentiates a western democracy (the Italian one is dying, but still alive) from a turbid South American dictatorship.

I invite everyone, supporters, the participants and the Piazza Farnese organisations to promote and give visibility to this case on the Internet by:

-Il gruppo di Facebook
“Ero a Piazza Farnese e la penso come Antonio Di Pietro: denunciate anche me {I was in Piazza Farnese and I think like Antonio Di Pietro: denounce me too}”

-The blog initiative
"Piazza Farnese: io sostengo Antonio Di Pietro"” {Piazza Farnese: I support Antonio Di Pietro}

I will keep you up to date on the evolution of this trial just as I have done for the trials of Mills and Bassolino.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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31 January 2009

Dominioni the kamikaze

Three full days have gone by since the Piazza Farnese event, days during which I have been falsely accused by both the media and the politicians of having insulted the State President. Everything I had to say about these lies I have already said abundantly. I have no intention of repeating myself again.

I can only invite the citizens to read my articles of the past few days, but above all to watch the numerous video clips of the address I gave in that square, on the Web. However, professor Oreste Dominioni, who claims that "he is not a friend of this or that government", but also just happens to be legal advisor to the Berlusconi family, as well as President of the Union of Penal Chambers, is not satisfied with the evidence and has decided to institute legal action against yours truly, accusing me of public defamation of the Head of State.

This is a purely political move. No qualified judge, having heard my address, would have proceeded in such a perfectly kamikaze manner. However, neither Dominioni nor those that asked him to lay these charges have any interest in winning. All that matters is the article on page 14 of the Corriere della Sera, and as for the judgement, many years will pass and the Italians will forget all about the matter.

I am confident that I will the case for three very good reasons. The first reason is that I never accused the Head of State of being a Mafia member, nor have I ever thought that he is one (the complete recording of my address will stand as adequate proof of this).

The second reason is that in having respectfully claimed that, in my opinion, the Head of State has not always displayed complete impartiality, I exercised my legal right to criticise any authority, which the Bill of Rights guarantees for all citizens.

The third reason is that, as proof of the validity of the aforementioned right to criticise, I will be taking a very substantial and significant press folder into court with me, which will contain articles regarding numerous examples of criticism levelled at former State Presidents in the past (amongst them Cossiga, Ciampi and above all Scalfaro), without anyone having raised any such vociferous objections as those raised against me, simply because I am not aligned with the system and I am not prepared to bow down to anyone.

One thing is certain, I can assure professor Dominioni that I will in no way be asking to exercise my right to parliamentary privilege. If anyone wants a court case, then so be it, so that constitutional principles, as well as freedom of thought and of expression can be reaffirmed.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that laying charges is a bit like lighting matches in that, once they have been lit, one must be careful not to get burned.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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29 January 2009

This is a country to be redone

Piazza Navona like Piazza Farnese, the same scenes, the same journalism, the same headlines, same News broadcasts, same politics, leathery, unable to be moved, and united against the truth, the freedom of information and the citizens. That square, called into being by the Associazione Nazionale Familiari Vittime di Mafia {National Association of Families of Mafia Victims} shouted out to defend the justice system, to defend democracy.

The words of truth were called Marco Travaglio, Salvatore Borsellino, Carlo Vulpio, Sonia Alfano, Beppe Grillo, and Pancho Pardi. Of them, and of their words, there’s no trace this morning, except on the Internet.

For the leaders of disinformation it was enough to extrapolate a sentence from my speech to construct “their item of news”, then bipartisan declarations have been added to this or rather “monopartisan” declarations from the world of politics.

Casini “Di Pietro humiliates the Opposition”, Cesa and Cuffaro are humiliating the Italians.
Cicchitto “Idv is a party that is “qualunquista e forcaiolo”” {one that is not interested in politics and that likes using the gallows}, l prefer that to one that is swindling and “Mafioso”.
And following that there is Fassino, Finocchiaro, Follini, right up to the last doorkeeper of palazzo Madama {where the Senate sits}, in an orgy of delirious declarations that are pathetic and false. It would have been perfect if they had interviewed Previti, Dell’Utri and Provenzano.

The truth is that that square defended Luigi De Magistris, Clementina Forleo, and Luigi Apicella who are also victims of the mafia, that is even more than before, infiltrating itself into the institutions, that is killing without bullets, but with printed paper and News broadcasts, the new arms of mass destruction. No one looked at the moon, they were all intent on looking at the finger {that was pointing at it} because it is forbidden to look at the moon. The moon has a name “Why not”, and it talks about billion of European financing that disappear into nothing every year in Calabria and that end up in the pockets of organised crime and of the political parties. Life-blood for the dictatorship into which we have slid.

The banner displayed in Piazza Farnese did not offend President Napolitano and nor did I offend him. The tens of videos published on the Internet bear witness to that. The citizens can say that I am right and I say that Beppe Grillo is right when he says that “This is a country to be redone”.

Thank you to the organizers, who were not Italia dei Valori, another lie, but rather the National Association of Families of Mafia Victims. Thank you to everyone who participated on the stage, in the square and via the Internet.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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15 January 2009

Italianita sold off

Let’s talk about Alitalia but from a different viewpoint. The truth is that Alitalia has been eaten up by Airfrance. Do you remember how this whole story began?

The previous government had sold Alitalia, debts and capital, to Airfrance. Berlusconi said: “No, Italianita! Stop everything. We’ll think about it with the captains courageous, my friends, and we will resolve the problems, and if necessary even my children will go.”The election came, the collapse came, because, well, Alitalia went bust, even though they continue to tell you that it has been saved. The goods of Alitalia went away for 4 lira not 4 euro, directly to the crafty ones of CAI, and the debts went to the Italian citizens. Almost 4 billion euro has been debited to the State Treasury, that has to take in on because it was the only Alitalia partner, and thus the Italian taxpayers have to pay the debts.

The crafty ones of CAI, what have they done? They have taken and they have sold, today, 25% of the new Alitalia, but in fact they have put it into the hands of Airfrance, that is, those to whom we would have sold the debts and the capital. They have given them only the capital that they paid 4 shillings for and are now selling on for 44 shillings.

So basically, is it Alitalia that has been saved or is it Airfrance that has received a favour? Airfrance has achieved its aim by spending only a tenth of what it was willing to spend before. The debts will be paid by all Italian citizens, and the ones who have gained are those who bought for 4 and sold for 44, the crafty ones of CAI.

There’s the Berlusconi solution for the Alitalia crisis. For this the government should deserve to be sent home, because a government that exploits the Italian citizens, that takes from the poor to give to the rich, is not the one that we want. This is why we of Italia dei Valori are operating a harsh Opposition to this Berlusconi government on the issues of the economy, as well as on the issues of the justice system and the social sphere. They deserve nothing but a harsh Opposition.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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10 January 2009

React, react, react

The attacks against me personally and against the Italia dei Valori party in recent days have become extremely frequent and smack of the incredible. This is not just a simple journalistic campaign but rather a well-orchestrated criminal activity aimed at putting a stop to the only party that has up to now seriously opposed the current Government. A criminal activity that has been conducted scientifically by individuals and the mass media owned by Prime Minister Berlusconi.

A criminal activity that I have already reported to the magistrature, mentioning certain specific events, and that now needs to be seen within the scope of out and out collusion and that is being carried out in terms of a single criminal objective that is being driven by multiple individuals at many levels, each with a specific task and role to play (principals, executors and promoters) and using, above all, the weapons of denigration and misinformation. Weapons that my political adversary Silvio Berlusconi is able to use at his pleasure since he is the “direct proprietor” of half of the Italian media (private TV stations and newspapers) and politically controls the other half (Government TV stations and Management Bodies) since he also happens to be the Head of the Government and the Parliamentary majority.

And so the basic anomaly surrounding the person of Berlusconi once again comes to the fore, namely, the conflict of interests at play and that he abuses in order to lord it over everyone else. Yes, I am aware that there are the usual know-it-alls that say that people are tired of hearing about conflicts of interest and that expect us politicians to rather work out how to resolve the Country’s economic problems. However, that is precisely the problem in that as long as we are continue to live with these conflicts of interest surrounding Berlusconi, we can never be sure whether the decisions he makes are in the citizens’ interest or his own, or for that matter in the interest of some of his friends (such as for example the matter of Alitalia, where the Government has lumbered the Italian taxpayer with the Company’s debt while the assets and profits, even on the judicial front, land up in the pockets of the “usual bunch of cronies”).

Notwithstanding this mountain of illegality, in recent days the attention of the mass media has instead been focused entirely on criticising the excessive control of the Italia dei Valori Charter and on criminalizing my personal property holdings (as if I had somehow stolen them from someone else).
Well, precisely because I have nothing to hide and no hidden agenda, I immediately took action to dispel any potential doubts regarding my behaviour. Yesterday I went to the notary, where I radically changed the Charter of the Italia dei Valori Party so that decisions regarding the utilisation of financial resources are no longer exclusively in my hands but rather in those of a 7-member executive committee (Presidential department).

Seeing that I was already there, I went one step further: I proceeded to eliminate the shareholdings and the roles assigned to the original founders of the party (namely also my wife, to whom I must truly apologise for all of the problems I may have caused her), thus entrusting the powers assigned to them until now exclusively to the party’s institutions. Furthermore, I entirely scrapped the much-maligned article 16 of the previous charter, namely the one that conferred all statutory powers to me personally on a transitional basis. These too have now been assigned in their entirety to the party institutions. Finally, I also stripped myself of the authority to further change the Charter, thereby removing any chance of going back at a later stage. Anyone who wishes to view the new Charter and compare it to the previous one can go to the website www.italiadeivalori.it and go to the section entitled “Charters” (compare the two Charters).

I did all of this because the Italia dei Valori has now become a fully fledged political party and therefore it is only right that it be allowed to stand on its own two feet. Initially I could not do what I have done now: in order to set up any enterprise – even a political one – there must necessarily be an initial input person or “founding member” that sets up the “machinery” ands takes responsibility for guiding the enterprise.

I am also taking this opportunity to advise that next week I will be going to Naples where I will be meeting with the magistrates investigating the Campania scandals, to give my testimony as citizen, parliamentarian and former Minister for Infrastructure. At the same time I will also be meeting with the members of the Italia dei Valori Campania branches in order to assess the party’s situation in that region and take any necessary action that may be necessary.

In conclusion, the time has come to change from the “resistance” phase to the “reaction” phase. I am ready.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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8 January 2009

The bitterness of being Olive

I’m publishing an item of agency news that gives the thinking of Arturo Parisi regarding Italia dei Valori’s initiative on the referendum against the Lodo Alfano. As many of you will know, yesterday a delegation from Italia dei Valori deposited the referendum signatures at the Court of Cassation (view the video: Referendum, un dovere civile). The signatures were collected all over Italy. Signatures for liberty. Signatures for democracy. Signatures to make ”everyone equal before the law”
Parisi’s thinking flatters us and we agree with most of the words which are an expression of the Italians who belong to the people of democracy

Agency text:

”Unfortunately we have to restate our sadness at the decision of the PD leaders not to participate in this initiative” to promote a referendum against the Lodo Alfano. Those are the words written by Arturo Parisi in an article that will be published tomorrow in Il Riformista. Parisi emphasises that today Di Pietro has handed over to the Court of Cassation “the signatures of more than one million citizens who are asking for a referendum on the abrogation of the Lodo Alfano. He adds that this result is certainly a reward for the political commitment of Italia dei Valori that was straight away the first promoter. In relation to this initiative, the Olive people who within the PD are fighting as “Democrats for Democracy” immediately shared in the spirit and the idea. They have participated with conviction and encouraged the democrats to take part in the campaign sessions that have been happening all over the country, and they themselves have been promoting the collection of signatures, and to an even greater extent they have been joining in without thinking of the party labelling of the organisers.”
The former Minister continued: “The citizens have responded and among them in the front line were the democratic voters. Thus today’s result is for us in itself a victory for democracy.”
Parisi went on: ”While we share with IdV and with the other political groups who have been engaged with this project, the satisfaction for this result, unfortunately, we have to state once more our sadness for the decision by the PD leaders not to take part in this initiative. It’s not possible to recognize the equality of citizens before the law as a principle of our Constitution which cannot be dismissed and to refuse to take part in the initiative with the argument of a possible defeat.
To refuse to fight is already on its own a defeat. To refuse to continue to fight on an issue that in Parliament we have denounced with words that are of a certain severity, is equivalent to transforming a temporary defeat into a definitive defeat.”
Parisi added: “As we said from the start even in relation to the questionable initiative in Piazza Navona that was much talked about, it’s not possible to feed indignation for the forcing and the antidemocratic torsion that Berlusconi has stamped on our political system and then not to follow this up with an appropriate action within the institutions. We can’t push our voters into the streets and to the campaign tables and then leave them on their own or in the hands of others. If an issue is not getting a response from the institutions, sooner or later they will look for the response elsewhere. The referendum mechanism was thought up by the constituent fathers exactly for this reason. This is why, - he concluded – today’s result is a victory for democracy.”

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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6 January 2009

Lodo Alfano: citizen signatures

Piazza Navona was a great victory for civil commitment. It demonstrated how the civil society is not completely resigned to close itself indoors, but still has the strength to reflect and take action. We have shown that it is possible to go back to doing politics with the people and not just in the secret rooms of power. The Internet and the spreading of the word have worked miracles.

In Piazza Navona we demonstrated against the Lodo Alfano, a law that in fact has immorally and unconstitutionally violated the State based on the rule of law, because from now on, in our country “the law is equal for everyone, apart from 4 people”, among whom is Silvio Berlusconi who has been made unpunishable and unpunished.

The collection of signatures against the Lodo Alfano that started on 11 October of last year, has already got more than the target of a million signatures and thus has double the minimum needed which is 500 thousand. We have spent time over the Christmas holidays checking them one by one and tomorrow at 10:00 am, in front of the Palace of Justice, we will hand over the signatures to the Supreme Court of Cassation.

Thank you to everyone for the commitment.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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4 January 2009

The other side of the coin

Here is the text of an interview I granted the daily “Libero” and published today, regarding the article written about me in “Il Giornale” in connection with electoral reimbursements to the parties.

Antonio Di Pietro: Il Giornale published a rebuttal brief presented during the course of a civil court case by the people of “Cantiere”, an association led by Occhetto and Giulietto Chiesa, in which they requested the division of electoral reimbursements for the 2004 European elections.

Libero: I see no problem up to this point.
Antonio Di Pietro: True, were it not for the fact that the Chamber of Deputies rejected similar requests on three previous occasions and the magistrature on two. Now, while the association led by Giulietto Chiesa has the sacrosanct right to submit such requests whenever they see fit, the fact remains that we have come out tops five times out of five. In my opinion this confirms that we are in the right.

Libero: Why would it be wrong for them to demand part of the reimbursements? Is a portion not rightfully theirs?
Antonio Di Pietro: The “Cantiere” association was only founded in 2005 and therefore they cannot expect to receive any reimbursement relating to an election held in 2004. Secondly, the reimbursement is paid to the party that requests it and not to individual candidates: never before has there been any pro-rata split, in other words one piece for you and another piece for me. That is why both the Chamber of Deputies and the magistrature have decided in our favour on five out of five occasions. Had “Il Giornale” wanted to be less partisan and evasive, they would have also shown the other side of the coin.

Libero: It emerged during the inquiry that you, your wife, Susanna Mazzoleni and the honourable Silvana Mura are all part of the Italia dei Valori association, which overlaps with the Italia dei Valori political movement.
Antonio Di Pietro: Good Lord, man, they are one and the same thing! Whether you wish to call it an association or a movement, that is what we are! The organs are the same and there is a single current account from which only the funds required for the movement’s activities are drawn.

Libero: Was it really necessary to duplicate the structures?
Antonio Di Pietro: In its charter, every party establishes certain precautionary arrangements regarding the management of its funds. You may or may not like the charter, but I don’t go and stick my nose in other parties’ charters: this is how we have decided to handle the matter, we are comfortable with the situation and we are not about to lend any credence to the claims of some or other spoilsport.

Libero: Do you fear any spoilsport within your ranks?
Antonio Di Pietro: The in-fighting within the Democratic Party between former Margherita and former Ds members regarding heritage is not something that I dreamed up. And now I am waiting to see what happens between the members of Forza Italia and those of the An when they form the Pdl party. I want to sit back quietly and have a clear view of what is going on.

Libero: That’s right, I. Antonio Di Pietro. They say that within the Italia dei Valori you are the only one that lays down the law.
Antonio Di Pietro: We at least hold meetings, I don’t know about all the others. Our party is not lacking as regards internal democracy. Having said this, I also admit that after having made a number of mistakes in assessing people, we decided that these people should establish the Italia dei Valori party, namely me, Susanna Mazzoleni and Silvana Mura. As far as I know, the other parties were also established as a result of the efforts of one individual. If this is not good enough, then let “Il Giornale” begin by preaching to Berlusconi, then to the others.

Libero: You could always change tack.
Antonio Di Pietro: That is already happening. The Italia dei Valori party has grown, it is currently represented in all of the institutions, both at the national and the local level and the election lists are not drawn up solely by Antonio Di Pietro.

Libero: You are a symbol of absolute transparency...
Antonio Di Pietro: So hear me out then: the Italia dei Valori party has submitted a draft bill for the registration of political parties and we want the parties to be governed by a single set of regulations. Not only, but for this budget year, we have asked that electoral reimbursements be scrapped, precisely so that a political party regulation law can be introduced. Do I look to you like somebody that has anything to hide?

Libero: No. In fact you created two entities, because you never know...
Antonio Di Pietro: What two entities? There is only one! These days, political parties are run as proper associations, each with its own internal charter. The important thing is not to reallocate funds to activities other than party-related ones. And this is precisely what we have done, so much so that –I repeat – the request submitted by the “Cantiere” was rejected five times out of five. So shall we know talk about the real problems? Shall we say that the independence of the magistrature is under threat?

Libero: It seems to me that there are also a few innocent citizens being threatened by judicial zealousness: can we agree on this? Do you also agree?
Antonio Di Pietro: Actions speak louder than words when it comes to guarantees. Do we want a justice system that works? Do we want our court cases to be settled more speedily? Then we require more funds, not less funding, as has been the case with Berlusconi’s budget. We need more personnel but, instead, we are facing a thirty percent cut.

Libero: Shadow Justice Minister Tenaglia has proposed three judges instead of only one in order to prevent the precautionary incarceration from imprisoning people for no reason. Do you agree with this?
Antonio Di Pietro: As far as I am concerned, we can put up five judges, but to do this they must be available in the first place. But there are none available, so I say let’s call back the thousand or so judges on leave of absence, let’s call up the military judges that could be used to help us catch up on the backlog of pending cases, let’s re-establish the ordinary magistrature and then we’ll see whether the court cases take more time or less. The problem can only be resolved by financial and organizational means, otherwise it is the usual method to ensure that members of the Caste are not prosecuted.

Libero: In Italy, whenever there is a problem of some sort, it is always said that the cause is a lack of personnel, however, the abuse of preventive incarceration remains a fact.
Antonio Di Pietro: That’s not true. In terms of the use of preventive incarceration, there is one judge that prescribes it and another that verifies the grounds. If the judges were to be put in a position to work better and more serenely, the justice system would operate more effectively. As regards the 7th January, we will be submitting the million signatures against the Alfano Bill. Perhaps that is the reason why they are focusing so much attention on us.

Libero: Investigation is the basis of good journalism.
Antonio Di Pietro: If that is true, then why don’t they make our voice heard when we talk about the social problems facing our Country? And when we raise any objection to the attempts to gag the judges? Or when we accuse the government of having given away Malpensa? So now it’s okay that Alitalia has been given away to Air France, hey? What has changed? They should allow me to talk about the realities instead of only ever making mountains out of molehills when it comes to certain accusations against Di Pietro. However they have made a serious miscalculation because we won’t give up. I refuse to change.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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1 January 2009

The ill-suited president

I’m publishing an article from the prestigious English daily paper "The Guardian" in which the journalist declares Silvio Berlusconi ill-suited to chair the forthcoming G8 summit.

“Gordon Brown saved the world, Angela Merkel saved her federal budget, Jose Manuel Barroso saved his job for a second term – and Nicolas Sarkozy saved Europe. Now, as a horrible year splutters to a close amid ever more dire economic forecasts for the EU, step forward Silvio Berlusconi.
He saved David Beckham from LA obscurity by helping him get a 10-week loan at his football club, AC Milan – guaranteeing him more lucrative sponsorship deals and appearances on several of the TV channels run by his Mediaset empire. Mission accomplished, he is hell-bent on saving Italy and, Gordon-like, the planet.
On 1 January, the day Sarko officially stops being EU president, the Italian presidente del consiglio takes over as chairman of the G8 and, with breathtaking delusions of grandeur, is already busy arranging a summit between Barack Obama and Russia's Dmitri Medvedev.
By March, when the European economy is likely to be in meltdown, he plans a G14 summit – originally a Sarko idea to involve the emerging economies – on the "human dimension" of the financial crisis.
Presumably, this is diplomatic language for growing personal debt, poverty, joblessness, hopelessness and all the usual accompaniments of mid-winter bleakness in, potentially, the worst recession since the second world war. Especially in his own country, which has been in recession for two quarters, and faces a steep rise in unemployment, sees car firm Fiat seek a partner to buy it out of its misery and, without the euro and the European Central Bank he despises, would be bankrupt.
Berlusconi, worth around $10bn (£6.4bn) and a serial architect of judicial reforms to afford himself immunity from justice, is the political leader who called Obama "tanned" and likened a senior German MEP to a Nazi camp guard (Kapo).
His contribution to the EU's economic recovery programme – a €200bn stimulus package worth 1.5% of GDP – appears to be tax cuts for his political supporters in small businesses and slashed penalties for tax evaders – worth 1% of GDP, according to opposition politicians in Italy. The package is so derisory that most analysts believe it could even be a fiscal tightening.
Now the 72-year-old playboy of the western world wants to be president of Italy, succeeding ex-communist union leader Giorgio Napolitano, a man of great probity, after 2013. Presumably, Mugabe-style, for life and, Chirac-style, for perpetual immunity from prosecution.
This, in all seriousness, is the person who, by rotation, will chair the G8 next year, when there is likely to be an economic bloodbath around the globe.
It's time to end this stupid process and, as foreseen for the EU under the stalled Lisbon Treaty, choose a president or chairman of genuine stature and vision to head this body for the long haul. Especially as we all agree it, like the UN security council and the IMF/World Bank, should be permanently reformed to embrace China, India and the rest among the emerging economies.
It's bad enough that the eurotoxic Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president, becomes titular head of the EU on 1 January (OK, his prime minister will chair the meetings). This column would rather see Sarko achieve his ambition of becoming long-term eurogroup president and de facto EU leader after his hyperactive success in running the EU for the past six months.
Perhaps he could take on the G8/G14 as well for the rest of his tenure of the Elysée – certain to be extended after 2012 for a further five years on current form.
Or give it to Tony Blair. Anyone but the ill-suited Berlusconi, the undisputed president of Tangentopoli 2, or bribery city, that his native country has yet again become.”

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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31 December 2008

My Best Wishes for 2009

The year 2008 has been one of great changes. Obama has become President of the United States. The economic crisis has obliged the world to rethink its model of development. Changes in climate have gone through an unthinkable and worrying acceleration.

The year 2009 will be a difficult year. The collapse of finance will be felt throughout the real economy. In employment, in the everyday life of citizens, from the possibility to continue to pay the mortgage on your home to keeping your children in education, even simple survival. The number of Italians below the poverty level is increasing together with evictions and with job losses. The year 2009 is worrying even for the ability of the State to face up to its commitments and that is true also for many local authorities.

However, the year 2009, can be the year of turning the corner, of the recovery of that sense of national solidarity and of a project for the future of Italy. Or otherwise, we can wait for a slow industrial, social and political decline in line with the present. The year 2009 can be a year in which the words “law”, “justice” and “equality” are re-evaluated together with the issue of morality that is nothing other than the prevalence of the honest people in society.

Or the confirmation of the current presence of hundreds of convicts and people under investigation in Parliament and the continuous attempt by Berlusconi and his followers and lackeys, even in the ranks of the Opposition, to remove themselves from the law in every way. The year 2009 will be, whether for good or bad, a year of change. The basis for a soft dictatorship will be made ready, a way of opening up to the spread of corruption and the destruction of the economy, or instead, there will be the start of a new phase of the Republic.

I know that many families will be spending the holidays without a job and with the anguish of what happens tomorrow. These people listen to the Carneval-type declarations from Berlusconi who is inviting everyone to spend to relaunch the economy and they feel as though they are being taken for a ride. Among them are 12,000 sacked from Alitalia, 9,000 from Telecom Italia and tens of thousands of workers from small and medium sized companies.

With the roll call for the new year, there are 1,300 missing. These are the ones who have died at work. This is an unsupportable shame for a civilized country. Above all to their family members and to those without employment go my wishes for a good year, together with the promise that I and Italia dei Valori will do everything possible to give back to the Italians the dignity of work and the pride of living in a State where honesty and competence prevail.

Happy New Year from Antonio Di Pietro.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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29 December 2008

Letter from Cristiano Di Pietro

My son, Cristiano di Pietro, has written a letter that I am publishing.

He is leaving Italia dei Valori. I find that to be proper behaviour and to a certain extent excessive, given that he is not even under investigation, but I respect him and I take note of his action.

"Montenero - 29.12.08

To Honourable Giuseppe Astore, President of the IDV regional political office - Campobasso
To Dr. Giuseppe Caterina, Regional Secretary of IDV - Campobasso
To the members of the national IDV President’s Office

Dear friends,
I have done and I still do my duty as a councilor for the town and the province without ever having broken the law (and in fact no judicial authority has ever had any evidence against me). And yet every day I find that I am on the front pages as though I had “the plague”.

My only fault is that of being the “son of my father”: to attack him they are attacking me, my wife and my three children, while forgetting that we too have our dignity and a right to exist.

I am leaving Italia dei Valori and thus I am giving up every position within the party and my role as the leader of the Group in the Provincial Council of Campobasso, where I will sign up to the Mixed Group. I am doing this though it pains and displeases me (above all because of the injustice that I am subject to) but I don’t want to cause any embarrassment to the party.

I am waiting peacefully for the Naples Procura to complete its current preliminary investigations (that anyway do not even relate to me personally). And when this has been completed, every individual personal position will be clear to all. Then, when everything is cleared up we may talk again.

Warm greetings and sincere wishes for a better year.

Cristiano di Pietro”

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics
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26 December 2008

Democracy - South American-style

I’m publishing an interview that I gave on 22 December with Il Secolo XIX, on the topic of federalism and presidentialism.

Antonio Di Pietro: But are you really shocked? Have you really not understood where Berlusconi wants to go?

Secolo XIX: Should we have been able to predict it?
Antonio Di Pietro: Certainly. This idea of arriving at presidentialism is just the last link in the chain of steps that would turn our democracy into a real oligarchy.

Secolo XIX: For most people it seemed that Berlusconi had simply made it official that he wanted to be a candidate for the post of President...
Antonio Di Pietro: That’s surely also true. He is not missing out on the opportunity to make known the results of opinion polls that give him 80, 90 or perhaps 108% in the approval ratings and he is hoping in his own heart, that with a reform like this, he will be elected President of the Republic. Elected? What am I saying? He thinks he will be publicly acclaimed. It’s just that, as in everything that he proposes, presidentialism, without adequate mechanisms of institutional checks and balances, ends up by bringing in obvious forms of distortion of democracy: and in this case “Peronism”. A person like Peron who is carried at shoulder height into the Casa Rosada, and in our case into the Quirinale.

Secolo XIX: And so what? It’s only a person as candidate for the position of President of the Republic, perhaps a bit too early, and with a model that is different from the traditional election in Parliam