What guarantors and former Dalemians write about D’Alema being investigated
What the newspapers write about the suspect Massimo D'Alema for Colombiagate. Damato's Scratches
Pardoned, i.e. ignored, on the front page of the Riformista even by Matteo Renzi, who also wanted the most sensational and basically successful scrapping of it in the Democratic Party, Massimo D'Alema is back on the front pages of the newspapers as an suspect in Naples, together with Alessandro Profumo and others, for alleged international corruption in a failed deal involving colossal Italian military supplies to Colombia .
The most acidic newspapers, biased and anything else against the former Prime Minister, the only ex-Pci exponent who managed to get to Palazzo Chigi, albeit for a short time, presiding over two governments in less than two years, between October 1998 and April 2000, were those of a center-right area which also usually waves the flag of guaranteeism. “Investigated for corruption – D'Alema's “cartel”, fired in red and black on the entire front page of Il Giornale , still partly owned by the Berlusconi family. “The priests of the triple morality” is the title of Augusto Minzolini's editorial.
Yet, at least from what I personally understand, the warmest message of good wishes received from Berlusconi in recent weeks on returning home after 45 days in hospital, mostly spent in intensive care, was that of D'Alema. Which Berlusconi at the time had preferred to other exponents of the left for the presidency of one of the various bicameral commissions that followed one another for constitutional reform, before surprisingly blocking the work even though he had arrived at a draft presidential project, just as the Knight wanted.
I will say more, and this time also in public, having been told once by D'Alema himself. Who, in particular, revealed after one of the races to the Quirinale during the so-called Second Republic that he had received a telephone call in which Berlusconi had confessed that he admired him to such an extent that he was tempted to vote him as head of state, but that he was held back by fear of disappointing his electorate too much.
Among the advisers – then but perhaps even today, albeit from different political positions – who pushed the hardest on Berlusconi for that vote was his former minister for relations with Parliament, Giuliano Ferrara. However, in whose newspaper – Il Foglio – the most abrasive comment on the investigations into which D'Alema underwent is still fresh off the press, "mistaken for Machiavelli and instead it was Totò", as the opening title says, in turquoise, assigned to a long article by Salvatore Merlo. Who saw in the former communist leader's affairs the shadow of Totò from an old film, however not knowing how to explain whether D'Alema had made up his mind more than selling or buying the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
Politics is truly an ugly beast, and the press that lets itself be influenced by it or even aspires to direct it. I don't know whether to pity D'Alema more for the way he got back into the newspapers or his former admirers now busy demolishing what's left of him.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/massimo-dalema-colombiagate-giornali/ on Wed, 07 Jun 2023 05:02:48 +0000.