history-of-italy

"It was a crucial negotiation, a truly significant founding act of the Second Republic for understanding what happened in those years and in the years that followed – to understand, step by step, Licio Gelli’s plan, the deals with Berlusconi, and the fact that there was no opposition in this country. Isn’t Matteo Renzi, too, simply the result of this agreement?"

""Alleged" is the word. Fiandaca speaks of "so-called negotiations" and "alleged negotiations". We’re off to a good start. The State-Mafia negotiations are indisputable in legal terms, as confirmed by final rulings of the Court of Cassation on the massacres of 1992–93, as well as by the direct protagonists and witnesses, not just Mafia members: Mori and De Donno state in their official records that there were ‘negotiations’ with the leaders of Cosa Nostra via Vito Ciancimino, and not merely a ‘first contact’, as Fiandaca has them saying. He needs to face facts: if he wants to talk about negotiations, he should at least read the judgments."

"I have focused my recollections on Schifani and spoke to the magistrates about him because even before the attack at the Olimpico I knew there were State-Mafia negotiations. When I saw Schifani on television and in political office, it occurred to me that he often frequented the warehouse in Brancaccio, Palermo, where Filippo Graviano used to stop for meetings. And I surmised that Schifani might have been the link in the negotiations."

"Filippo Facci knows that "The Palermo Trial" will go nowhere. Filippo Facci knows that it is not true that Totò Riina wants Nino Di Matteo dead. Filippo Facci knows that there is now no trace left of the Corleonesi’s strategy of mass murder. Filippo Facci knows that anonymous sources, in a country that respects itself, should be discarded. Filippo Facci knows that any tightening of harsh prison conditions for mafia members would be dictated solely by the quest for image and credibility of the Palermo public prosecutors, who have now fallen on hard times."

""Alleged" – I call it "alleged" – negotiations between the State and the mafia."

"I hear talk of negotiations and I do not know if anyone sat down at the table with anyone else; I do know, however, that there was an objective capitulation by the State in the face of organised crime at the moment when, with my removal, we moved from one harsh prison regime to another, vastly softened one."

"For Lupo and Fiandaca, that trial lacks any legal basis: for them, in fact, the negotiations were not only a legitimate initiative, but indeed a necessary, useful and beneficial one, safeguarding national security, as they were the means through which the State, at that precise historical moment, sought to preserve the lives of its citizens."

"The negotiations are also a state of necessity for our ruling classes who, instead of waging war on organised crime to defeat it, tell you, ‘What, are you mad? They’ll start shooting again.” And it matters little that we have 350,000 armed men who could defeat the Camorra, ‘Ndrangheta and Mafia, which together have a maximum of 40,000 men. And so even today, the Italian system for combating organised crime consists solely of striking a deal."

"The argument, of course, was that the trial should be moved to Rome; in fact, the judges decided it should remain in Palermo. As soon as it began, Fiandaca hastily wrote an "essay" with the historian Salvatore Lupo in which he retracted years of denial: having always referred to the negotiations as "so-called" and “alleged”, he admitted that "the negotiations did take place", but acquitted them on the grounds that they were "not criminally actionable" and "legally legitimate", inspired by a "state of necessity" and "for the greater good". That "good" which cost the lives of 16 people and the health of some forty others in the massacres of Via D’Amelio, Via dei Georgofili and Via Palestro. Collateral damage. And above all, no crime and no culprit."

"It is a shameful and disconcerting fact. Why Nicola Mancino and others yes, but Giovanni Conso no? This completely undermines the credibility of the Palermo Public Prosecutor’s Office. Conso was the one who refused to extend 41 bis to mafia members in prison. [...] If there was a political plot, why is the very person who would have implemented it excluded from the trial? Instead, others are being put on trial and shadows are being cast over those who bear no responsibility. For example, Silvio Berlusconi and Dell’Utri have nothing to do with the alleged State-Mafia negotiations, which are said to have taken place in 1993–94 under the Amato and Ciampi governments, with Scalfaro acting as the chief orchestrator of this affair. It is on them that attention must be focused, not on others."

"In the First Republic, there were more protagonists and more debate; today, there is only one party leader and his position."

"When asked by a journalist who the great politician was, Khrushchev, who was one in his own way, replied: “The one who promises to build bridges even where there are no rivers.” The First Republic had plenty of great politicians. Just look at the bridges built where there are not even streams or brooks."

"The First Republic tried to use cutlery at the table. These people eat with their hands and burp with satisfaction."

"In light of what is happening in our country, we should regret not only the First Republic but also the Second."

"[In 1989] The first Italian republic has just celebrated its fortieth anniversary. That's not very long, but two generations have already lived with it. As the marriage vow says, Italians have shared its fortunes, for better or for worse. Worn out, reviled, mistreated, mocked, given up for dead a thousand times, our first republic reveals an unpredictable capacity for recovery and an unexpected vitality."

"It was not the judges in the trials, but the voters at the polls who brought down the party system of the First Republic, which had been discredited, and forced the ruling class to change, at least in appearance, the political landscape."

"– Onorevole Berlinguer, Saragat ha dichiarato che con Moro è morta la Prima Repubblica. Lei che ne pensa?"

"Since the end of the First Republic, new ideas and people to carry them forward should have emerged. Instead [...] a great void was created and figures appeared on the political scene more for themselves than for anything else, starting with me."

"Let's not insult the First Republic; there is nothing else like it."

"In 1993, there was a pointless revolution in Italy, or rather a coup d'état.... Unfortunately, the Christian Democrats did not understand or underestimated the situation, busy as they were passing judgement on my alleged mental state....Today, I would say that Di Pietro could be a good mobile squad leader, one of those who are forgiven for certain excesses....As for morality, if at his age, when I was Undersecretary of Defence, I had accepted money from friends... what would have happened to me? (January 2003)"

"Public consensus was an essential factor in the success of the Mani Pulite operation."

"Nor is it particularly virtuous to suddenly discover that the “politics of the powerful” has always had its price and has always been the subject of negotiations and deals, often bad deals. At the time, it was necessary to criticise that policy itself and not so much those deals. Otherwise, only the type of deals will change, but not the policy."

"I would not say that the situation is particularly worrying. We have put in place numerous controls on our spending. However, there may be grey areas that will come to light sooner or later. I will speak frankly: if any scandals erupt, they will be dealt with in an exemplary manner."

"Looking back on Mani Pulite, it is clear, at least to me, that if you want to achieve a result, you cannot delegate the task to others. Instead, in Italy, it was, and still is, in my opinion, as if the other powers had said to the judiciary, “You take care of it”, instead of committing themselves directly to the common good."

"Tangentopoli had two perverse political outcomes. It saved Italian communism, which was in ridiculous agony and had to answer for its betrayals, its murders and the harm it had done to humble hearts. And it saved the regions. They were an experiment that even their proponents had now recognised as a failure: a jungle of bureaucrats and useless lovers."

"A judiciary that must be protected from any attempt to delegitimise it, in order to maintain its prerogative as an institution committed to restoring legality."

"Twenty-five years after the Mani Pulite investigations, Italy remains a country with a very high level of corruption. Of the politicians and businesspeople involved in the scandal, only those who have left the scene for reasons of age have gone."

"Since 1992, a false narrative of that period has taken hold. All sorts of things have been said: that there was excessive use of preventive detention, that they were tortured to make them talk, that it was a political operation to bring down the First Republic, or even a major CIA conspiracy. This prevents us from coming to terms with that system of corruption. The hope for clean politics that existed 25 years ago is weaker today than it was then."

"It was a missed opportunity for politics, which failed to seize the chance to truly renew the rules of the game and the people who play it."

"The party system has apparently collapsed because there has only been a superficial change, which has recycled too many of the protagonists in the so-called Second Republic. Above all, the methods and styles of work have not changed."

"If Craxi had become Prime Minister, he would have made choices that would have strongly countered the emerging excessive power of the judiciary."

"In the last couple of years, even though I received money, I no longer paid any of it to other politicians, as I had acquired an authoritative and independent position within the Milanese PSI that allowed me to answer to no one but, politically, directly to the national secretary of the party, Bettino Craxi."

"The magistrates of Mani Pulite have and will have my support. (5 April 1992)"

"A system of legality is necessary. If guarantees are not in vogue, let us reflect on the fact that once the well is empty, we all risk dying of thirst before it rains again."

"When the law, due to obvious disparities in treatment, conflicts with feelings of justice and fairness, it becomes very difficult to do one's duty without feeling like an instrument of injustice. We have therefore informed the public prosecutor of our determination to request, as soon as possible, assignment to another and different position, in which there is no stark contrast between what our conscience dictates and what the law imposes."

"Craxi and Martinazzoli should have acknowledged that the DC and the PSI were the founding members of Tangentopoli."

"Don't think that every month there can be a Chiesa scandal. (19 April 1992)"

"Mr Di Pietro, I am writing to you not only to wish you well in your work investigating bribery and corruption, especially now that some people would like to erase and cover up everything. I am also writing to bring to your attention, as well as to your listeners, an investigation that appears today in Corriere della Sera, which could be entitled: Where are they now? The protagonists are all people who passed through your office at the time, Dr Di Pietro: namely, those investigated, suspected and accused in the Mani Pulite investigation."

"Here, everyone finances everyone else. So as not to upset anyone. Typical of Italy."

"(About Bettino Craxi) He had transformed the PSI into an organisation in which the political power of local and national leaders was measured by their ability to collect illegal funds and bribes."

"When the wind changed, Di Pietro became an illiterate, scruffy and unscrupulous peasant. These details in no way detract from his commendable work as a magistrate, nor do they reduce by one cent the guilt of those investigated and convicted by Di Pietro."

"Leonardo Sciascia wrote: “Perhaps the whole of Italy is becoming Sicily”. I think of Tangentopoli, and Captain Bellodi, the protagonist of Il giorno della civetta (The Day of the Owl), who reflects on what should be done to defeat the Mafia: “We should suddenly swoop down on the banks: put expert hands on the accounts, generally double-entry, of large and small companies, and review the land registers”. How intelligent Leonardo Sciascia was, and how he knew how to read the news and even predict it."

"In the face of a dangerous erosion of the general will, the collapse of civic conscience and the loss of a sense of justice, the last, extreme bastion of morality, it is the duty of the community to resist, resist, resist, as if on an unyielding line of the Piave."

"At that time, the connection between business and politics, however murky it may have been, did not contradict the fundamental objective of the business world, which is to produce wealth."

"No one could delude themselves that five, or even ten years of fighting corruption would change the spirit of the average Italian, their distrust of rules and institutions. The customs of this country are, unfortunately, immovable."

"When those who had been praising us began to realise that the restoration of legality did not stop at Montedison or Palazzo Chigi, but extended to everyday life, they began to show signs of annoyance and weariness."

"I have always noticed that the only figure defined by the Gospel as “unjust” is that of a judge: and it seemed to me an apt definition. Fascism was less hateful than this robed bureaucracy that used violence in the name of justice. In the history of Italy, if freedom had prevailed, as I now believe to be certain, the names of the magistrates of Milan, Di Pietro, Borrelli, Davigo and Boccassini would have been forever signati nigro lapillo (marked with a black stone) as figures to be remembered with horror, those of the unjust judge."

"Mani Pulite began as a simple police operation in a case of extortion. Thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and the intelligence and determination of Judge Di Pietro, it developed to the point of involving an entire political class. The mechanism that had protected the system of corruption until then had two pillars. The first was the belief that everyone did it and that therefore the laws had essentially fallen into disuse and only fools still felt bound by them. The second was the certainty that if, by chance, someone fell into the clutches of the law, powerful friends would protect them or, at least, compensate them. Di Pietro and his colleagues succeeded in subverting these two pillars."

"Silvio Berlusconi's comparison with the Uno Bianca gang to express his personal opinion of the judiciary is an unfortunate one. Regardless of the fact that Silvio Berlusconi is currently on trial for corruption at the Court of Milan, Berlusconi would do well to reflect on the fact that the “accomplices” of this “deviant body” of the state also include the hundreds of thousands of Milanese who in recent years have morally supported the activities of the Mani Pulite magistrates against the attacks of the Rome regime, to which Berlusconi was also sentimentally attached, given that Craxi was his best man at his wedding. Does he want to compare the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office to the Uno Bianca gang? It is an outrage that a self-styled candidate for the leadership of the country should have such contempt for the victims of the criminal gang, including some young carabinieri, that he compares his legal troubles and those of his “friends” to the blood shed by those whose only fault was to stop brutal murderers. These arguments are not part of an election campaign. They are an insult to all citizens."

"First the Pci and then the Pds never participated in the system of dividing up government posts among the parties. But this is no longer enough to explain what is happening. Perhaps we have not been able to completely escape the consociational pact. Collective political responsibility lies with all the leaders of those years."