Italy and corruption

The Court of Auditors, in February 2010, has assessed the amount of corruption, which has become systemic, in50/60 billion euro. Digit subtracted from the community, services, public works and investment.

Corruption - says Davigo - is a crime victim to diffuse in the sense that "... no one perceives to be directly damaged", but the effects are devastating and go well beyond the direct damage to the Treasury. It distorts the redistribution of income made ​​by the political decisions of public expenditure; from investments and services to the community, wealth is diverted to groups of thugs. There is also a depressing effect on the apparatus of production, and because it distorts competition between firms, both because it is connected and calls for a more serious economic crime: false accounting, need to set aside money in black to use as bribes. If the offense of corruption we add two other related patronage and vote trading, then not only Article 97 of the Constitution - the one which establishes the obligation for public administration efficiency and impartiality towards citizens - is frustrated, but the entire system of the rule of law to have little effect.

Even more serious reflections on democracy, a political system where corruption is widespread daily practice, the bond of trust that binds citizens to the institutions is demolished; to take over his place anti-politics and strangeness to the state.

Corruption and clan
But there is another aspect of the reflections of corruption, which usually escapes or is marginalized by scholars of the phenomenon in question, which concerns the mafia-type criminal organizations. The magistrate Raffaele Cantone in his latest book, "The Leopards", says: "clans expect that the political [collusion] ensures recruitment and procurement," the pair of axes on which the relationship between godparents and their political representatives. On the other side, the political accustomed to corrupt practices and patronage, he expects the votes controlled by the clan to secure electoral victory.

In other words, corruption and cronyism are the meeting ground between the mafia, politics and public administration; for the mafia organizations in the gateway of the state. Cronyism, profiteering and corruptions make various peripheral devices territorial and state ready to be infiltrated and bent to the will of the clan. In the report mafias - politics - public administration, corruption, cronyism and vote trading play, therefore, a central and decisive role.



The ancient relationship
The relationship Mafia / politics, that is the very essence of the Mafia, differentiating it from the generic crime, was caught immediately by scholars after the unification of Italy, drives that involved the assertion of liberalism and the introduction of national and local elections. Both Mark Monnier, in "The Camorra" (1863), which Leopoldo Franchetti in its investigation of the Sicilian Mafia in 1876, show the relationship between criminals and politicians, as well as the penetration of state institutions.

But even the liberal southern Pasquale Villari, Pasquale Fortunato and Turiello realize the relationship between clans and politics. You Giustino Fortunato who coined the terms "low Camorra", operating in the districts among the populace, and "high-mafia" in action in public administration, economics, and printing. Turiello looks (1883) the role of cronyism and criminal organizations in the electoral battles for municipalities, provinces and the national parliament.

Twenty-two years after the Franchetti, Ermanno Sangiorgi, superintendent of Palermo, it sends a report to the Minister of the Interior in which he stated: "... the leaders of the Mafia are awkwardly under the tutelage of senators, congressmen and other influential people who protect them and defend them to be then, in their turn, they protected and defended. "We could continue with the conclusions of Saredo (1901), Mori (1915 and 1928/29), of Pafundi (1963), of Cattanei (1972), until the 90s and anti-mafia parliamentary commission headed by Violante, but for a economy of space we stop to Sangiorgi, it seems sufficiently documented by the ancient and uninterrupted relationship between mafia and politics.

The first releases
However, before the Italian parliament to adopt measures specifically designed to break this relationship between mafia and politics have had to spend 128 years after the first complaint of Monnier: Law 221 of 1991, which provides for the dissolution of the local infiltrated by clan .

In less than twenty years of application of the law 221 has undergone several changes and additions, giving discrete fruits, but proving unable to solve the problem of penetration in the local mafia, despite the ASL 4 and more than 200 municipal councils disbanded. With the security package in the summer of 2009, the government made ​​changes to the law more, actually emptying it. Today it is possible to dissolve a joint undercover emerge only if elements of connections "concrete, unique and relevant", are furthermore identified the administrators or public officials responsible for infiltration, as well as procurement or unlawful acts which took the form of infiltration. In other words, only in the presence of an inquiry by the judiciary is conceivable the dissolution of a local authority. The old tool that allowed to intervene without the pronouncement of a judge - indeed preventing it - no longer exists after the changes of 2009.

The other tool specifically designed to break the link of the mafia with politicians, public administrators, but also with professionals and the business world is the crime of collusion with the Mafia. Unfortunately this tool, put on by the judicial practice, it has proved unable to achieve the result of decoupling Mafia - politics. The detected expressly Salvatore Lupo in his analysis of the story Andreotti (2007) and Raffaele Cantone in "The Leopards" (2010).

A possible alternative
But if it is true that we have previously stated in the report that the mafia - politics - public administration corruption and clientelism play a central role, which is essential to the maintenance of the relationship, then - in the presence of a failure of the two instruments used to date (the 221 / 91 and the external competition) - the fight against corruption can have a strategic value. The limitations encountered so far can and should be circumvented by raising the initiative antimafia the field of fight against corruption.

Prevent the political and public servant, through a stringent legislation and a control network, to provide clan recruitment, procurement and other benefits they procured through corruption amounts to blow up the business relationship between mafia and politics.

It has long been a widespread belief that the only contrast of the clan on a "military" will not lead to the ultimate defeat of the Mafia, 150 years of history have been unified through by repeated waves of repression, none of which - however hard - has managed to come at the head of the problem. Starting in the 90s, it gained the conviction of the need to intervene on the other link in the chain gangs - politics.

The need of a breakthrough
Today, in the face of overt failure of tools for dealing hitherto used note should be taken of the need for a breakthrough in the fight against the mafia. Break the link mafia-politics is possible provided that the anti-mafia movement as a whole, right and left, takes as its strategic priority of the initiative in the fight against corruption.

Of course, at the time, the state anti-corruption legislation is absolutely depressing. To see the judicial statistics it seems that the phenomenon of corruption is in sharp decline. In fact, the dramatic decline of convictions for corruption, bribery and abuse of office, is the result of a process by which the Italian political class reacted to Tangentopoli. Not being able to put the judiciary under the political control, as it had been for more than a century away from the unit, the Italian political class (especially the right one and in the last decade) has operated in three directions to prevent or drastically reduce checks on the legality of public administration (Bruno Tinti, "The question immoral", 2009):

- Weakening of the control rules;

- Weakening of the function of the judiciary;

- Transfer of public functions to private companies promoted by local authorities (there are over 14,000) or ministries (another 1,500), released, and then, by the rules of the State accounts. (See in this regard Ivan Cicconi, "Corruption radiograph of a system," Narcomafie 12/2009). In Campania, the experience of the joint municipal requirements and the companies they generated for the management of municipal waste has proved disastrous and illustrative in this regard, the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the waste cycle had to call them "... meeting places between the underworld Camorra and mismanagement. "

Under these conditions, therefore, the fight against corruption takes on a double meaning: to regenerate the political class and at the same time to break its ties with the mafia-type criminal organizations. The breaking of this bond is the only way to finally defeat the mafia crime, releasing the potential of development of Southern Italy.

But the Italian anti-mafia movement as a whole is struggling to incredibly take note of this potential political strategy and at the same time tolerate her silence with which all political parties present themselves to the voters or non-existence of any proposal to eradicate the Mafia or ridiculously proposals insufficient for the purpose.


Fonte: Agoravox