The responsibility of power

by EZIO MAURO

After six months, the Premier has finally decided to answer the ten questions that Repubblica has been asking him since May 14 and all the world's newspapers have put forward, in the convoluted way that he evidently finds more convenient, in a roundabout and indirect way, without ever quoting any hard and unquestionable facts.

It is positive that a government leader finally feels the responsibility to answer public opinion, or at least that part of public opinion that questions him. Even if this happens with a politically significant delay, after launching insults to our reporters who asked him the questions in public, after inviting businesses not to advertise on "catastrophist" papers, after asking entrepreneurs to boycott Repubblica, after explicitly accusing it of subversion and after deciding to sue the ten questions for damages in the amount of one million Euro, bringing them into court so that a judge could hush them up. This strategy followed by the Premier, coupled with the violent personal attacks from the family press to anyone who criticized his conduct, clearly didn't pay. The ten questions stayed in their place for the simple journalistic reason for which they were put: to call the Premier to account for the contradictions and lies on the scandals that have surrounded him for six months, after the first lady's disclosure of the "political garbage", i. e. the trading of favours of young girls in exchange for political candidacy.

We had simply asked the Premier to remove all doubts by answering the questions with an interview. After the agreed four days went by without a reply, we published the questions. Since then, we proposed them again every day for the simple reason that they were left unanswered. The need to understand, the right to know authorized us to carry on, convinced that where a space for opacity and falsehood opens up in public power, there is also a space, that we consider to be natural and mandatory, for journalism.

This permanent press investigation has provoked many reactions in Italy. The readers have shown great interest, taking part anyhow as citizens in bringing power to account. Other newspapers, on the contrary, explained to us that this is not the way we do things in Italy, it is not our custom, and it is evident. Among the many accusations made to Repubblica in the past few months, two are the most significant. According to the first, the criticism by a newspaper to a political leader is an act against popular sovereignty, against the union in a single mystic body between the Leader and his people, which is inviolable and unquestionable: in reply to this, it is enough to say that in all democratic countries, every day power is up before the press and public opinion and that the vote is not a safeguard, also because in our Constitution, sovereignty belongs to the people and does not "emanate" from the people to the leader. But this first accusation prepares the ground for the second: unpatriotism, the anti-national action of those who, by criticizing power weaken the sacred unction that sanctions the charismatic union between the leader and the people in the nation's destiny.

It is obvious that he who criticizes the legitimate power - when confronted with what he considers a mistake, a lie, an abuse - loves his country at least as much as the person who holds that power, or those who do nothing: he loves his country through democracy, through the Constitution, the respect of the institutions, of the civic rule of the rights and obligations that must apply to everyone, rulers and citizens alike. What's more, one serves his country when everybody fulfils in freedom and conscience his task by doing his job. And democracies provide for and include the many cases in which, in the fulfilment of their own free functions, the press and power may come to a tough confrontation that often turns into a conflict. But there's a difference: in the United States, in France and in Great Britain, investigations and campaigns on power conducted by newspapers that nobody has ever dreamed of calling "enemies" or "hate factories" have never been accused of unpatriotism or of violating the popular will. Not even when the accused leaders were really elected by the people.

But reality and truth find their way in this convenient fake Italian noise. The Berlusconi scandal has posed, first of all, a question of truth, with the unexplained lies, and then a question of freedom, with the attacks to the newspapers. The violent reaction caused some casualties. The editor of Avvenire lost his job after criticizing the Premier because one of his family's newspapers published an anonymous article written in the language of the secret services that accused him of being a homosexual. The president of the Chamber of Deputies, because of his constitutional, and therefore unorthodox opinions, was warned to keep in line, on pain of resorting to alleged old rumours about his sex life. In other words, this was an attempt to coerce the political and personal freedom of the third highest office of the State. Judge Mesiano, guilty of passing a sentence against Fininvest in the civil case with Cir, following the proven corruption that fraudulently deviated Mondadori's entrepreneurial course, was thrashed by the media, with the weapon of ridicule, on the TV stations owned by the Premier.

There is a stunning scene in the background of the ten questions, painted by the Premier, in order to avoid answering, explaining and to take responsibility. As if a great democracy, in the middle of Europe and of 2009, could be ruled with dossiers, intimidations, threats, by stirring up fear instead of authoritativeness, using the television news, under his authority, to conceal and reinvent reality, the newspapers to strike not the unfavourable opinions, but the opponents physically, getting rid of them, if possible, by searching in their beds.

In front of this Italian picture, the newspaper of every country (of other countries) used the same criterion as Repubblica, with the same alarm, the same questions and very similar judgments. Intellectuals, jurists and thousands of citizens have taken action. Roberto Saviano explained that "freedom of the press also means the freedom not to have one's life destroyed, without an atmosphere of threat, without having against not a contrary opinion, but a campaign aimed at totally discrediting he who expresses it". Gustavo Zagrebelsky, Franco Cordero and Stefano Rodotà collected half a million signatures denouncing the "intimidation" against those who exercise the right-obligation to inform. The editor of the Guardian wrote that Repubblica has "every right in the world" to ask its ten questions. The Nieman Foundation for journalism and the Kennedy School of Harvard explained that the "government must be accountable to its citizens and the role of the press is to demand this accountability".

The reason for the ten questions is exactly this: the accountability of power to public opinion. And it is the same reason that, at the end, has surpassed - for the time being - the insults and the dossiers, the actions and attacks, forcing the Premier to answer. He has done so in a roundabout way, avoiding the confrontation with Repubblica, in an ambiguous way, asking his interviewer-notary to rephrase the questions, in a book published by his publishing house. Thus, a controlled and protected political operation, where the Premier's interest is not the truth to be clarified, but the newspapers' pressure to be eased.

The result, as the readers may notice, is a very careful navigation clear of the real issues, without facts, explanations, circumstances that can explain the truth to the citizens. It's just like the denunciation - entirely political, explicit, certified by his notary, that yesterday announced to the agencies "the answer to the ten questions asked by Repubblica" - of a limit. We must acknowledge what the Premier has done, as well of the way in which he wanted and was able to do it: he finally had to answer, after six months, proving that the questions were legitimate and necessary, as it was necessary to face them, so much that the delay towards our readers is politically guilty. He answered in the only embarrassed, vague and wary way that he can allow himself today. The real answer - this is the point - is the political conscience of this limit, that while the Premier replies, the fundamental question of the truth is still intact and open.

This is an open question not with Repubblica, but with the country, together with the last inevitable question: Mr. Premier, what is the reason that prevents you from really telling the truth to your fellow citizens on these events? As if we were a normal country, we will continue to ask this, until we understand.

(6 novembre 2009)