306. Politicians Thieving Again
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| Leaders of the Lega Nord at a Parliamentary sitting |
One of the few
advantages of Italian politics is that political parties are financed by public
funds. Some may well disagree with this
and believe parties should finance themselves, but in doing so they subject
themselves to the dictates of the sponsors- which takes us back to that vicious
circle again of the rich always ruling the roost.
Hence one can see
the advantage of politicians being answerable to the people only, or at least
that’s how it should be and probably was until lo and behold what came into
light in the last few days is that two parties at least, one being the Democrazia e Libertà better known as
the Margherita who for some reason
cannot “locate” 223 million Euros of
public money given for the upkeep of their party.
The other party who have been accused by the magistrates,
among other things, of “truffa ai danni dello Stato” (fraud against the state) is the Lega Nord.
They have not used such public funding for political reasons but for
their own personal use and pleasure, it is claimed.
The leader of the Margherita,
Francesco Rutelli, denies any misuse of money and here we are talking well
into the millions, as mentioned earlier 223 to be more precise- it is not just
pocket money. The leader of the Lega Nord, Umberto Bossi resigned from
this position saying that whoever is responsible for this would pay, no matter
what surname he held. An allusion to his
son Renzo Bossi whom it is alleged
used public funds to pay for his somewhat wayward education. He had failed the high school state exam
three times and without this diploma there is very little you can do in Italy,
certainly not take up public positions of any sort. He therefore studied for this exam privately,
a venture which did not turn out to be cheap.
It is also claimed that he was at present negotiating with a British
university to gain a degree, here again, we are talking of thousands.
But Bossi Junior’s
education was only a drop in the ocean, there was the reconstruction of the
family Villa, and the 41 building premises owned by Mrs Bossi. Funds have been found to have travelled as
far as Tanzania and it was at this
point, when the party officials were about to transfer another colossal sum to a Tanzanian bank and one in
Switzerland, that everything came out in the open. The discovery of such is also thanks to the
present government legislation that prevents the transfer of unaccountable cash
either in Italy or abroad.
Therefore the once
leader of the Lega Nord is not denying anything, he has even offered to pay
back the fortune that has gone “missing”- but he maintains that he was left in
the dark about such goings on by his treasurer and family members.
With the present
crises and people not being able to retire when they had expected to, when the
taxes on gas, electricity, petrol and food etc sent the family budgeting
rocketing sky high, when the circulation of money is restricted yet colossal sums
are transferred abroad, when people can’t afford to own their own house and
politicians build theirs with the people’s money what can the ordinary
individual say? How can a normal person
react to all this pilfering of public funds?
What is even worse,
however, is the betrayal the people
feel. This party won popularity because
of their manifesto “Roma Ladrona”
(Thieving Rome) In other words the party maintained that the central
government in Rome “stole” money and resources from the North- which at the
time, 1980s, was not totally unfounded.
But now this party are playing at the same game, if not infinitely
worse.
Adding to this there
still remains the problem of how to finance political parties. To revert to a sponsor system, parties would
lose their independence and consequently so would the people, and frankly, I
myself would not wish to see this happening.
One thing that seemed to have emerged from all this is that there must
be buckets of money being handed over to political parties if they so abuse of
this funding- what is handed over is
just too much!
Hence I would use
a reimbursement system. Receipts must be
shown of effective spending for the funding of the party and officials should
oversee that such expenditure is realistic before handing over public money. Fortunately this is what the government is
negotiating at present and are withholding the 3rd instalment due to
parties.
Jolly good!
P.S . Power always
brings corruption, so it seems, but at least Berlusconi never put his hands into into Italy’s cash box- he has
his own.
