Everything about Antonio Di Pietro totally explained
Antonio Di Pietro (born on
2 October 1950) is an
Italian politician, currently
Italian Minister of Infrastructures. He also was a
Member of the European Parliament, former
Italian Senator. As a judge, he's a former
prosecutor in the team known in Italy as
Mani Pulite in the early 1990s.
Prosecutor
Born to a poor rural family of
Montenero di Bisaccia (
Molise), Di Pietro went as a very young man to
Germany to work as a waiter in a restaurant, to pay for his studies. Back in
Italy, he graduated in
law in
1978 and was admitted to serve in the
Police as an officer. After a few years, he entered the judicial career as a
prosecutor.
Together with other known judges such as
Francesco Saverio Borrelli,
Ilda Boccassini,
Gherardo Colombo,
Piercamillo Davigo, he founded the
Mani Pulite ("clean hands") team, which investigated on political
corruption.
In this role, he put under investigation hundreds of local and national politicians, all the way up to the most important national political figures, among which
Bettino Craxi; he's supposed to be the one who sent
Silvio Berlusconi the famous "warning of investigation" (a formal act to inform a citizen that an investigation is being run about him) while the prime minister was heading an international meeting on police cooperation.
The investigation warning, or
Avviso di garanzia in Italian (later formally reformed by the Parliament into the new name
Invito a comparire), was in the years between 1992 and 1994 all but a guilt sentence to many Italians, who saw loathed politicians exposed by this procedure. While this was hardly a sign of respect of elementary rights as "Innocent until proven guilty", it must be remembered that the corruption had been so evident and blatant that even politicians were embarrassed when they actually had to defend themselves from these charges. By the time's procedures, such a communication had to be sent to any person subject to investigation by three months since the beginning of the said investigation.
He soon became the most popular among Mani Pulite judges, due to his peculiar way of speaking, with a number of dialectal inflections and expressions, coupled with a sensible accent and a determined temper.
He was also known for being one of the first Italian prosecutors using digital technologies in his work, using computers and visual presentations, which raised some protests (for example, by advocate Guido Spazzali). In fact, Di Pietro became soon interested in
IT, and used it actively in his work: instead of taking classical education (in Italy, the usual high-school education for
lawyers), he'd studied to become an electronical technician, so his interest for
IT and computers was raised already with his formation, as he remembered in an interview
(External Link
). He is still showing interest in
IT with his quite successful
blog (similar, in format, to
Beppe Grillo's one) and
YouTube conferences.
Minister
After the effects of the Mani Pulite investigations disbanded the previously ruling parties (first of all,
Democrazia Cristiana), Di Pietro was called by
Romano Prodi in his new governing team, as a minister for the Public Works, with competences on all what was primarily object of bribery (all the initiatives financed by the state). Here he tried to impose a controversial project which would have doubled the main national motorway between
Bologna and
Florence, causing a violent opposition by inhabitants of the interested areas, as well as the embarrassed protest of ecologists, who were politically sustaining Prodi's coalition but couldn't accept such a plan which would have destroyed splendid
Apennine valleys and woods.
It was noted that Romano Prodi had previously been under investigation, run by Di Pietro himself, but had been discharged before any trial.
He came under investigation himself in
1997 about his activities, both in the police and as a judge, but this was considered by most to be a political move. It was later found that the main prosecutor of Di Pietro in these times,
Fabio Salamone from
Brescia, was the brother of a man that Di Pietro himself had prosecuted, and who was sentenced to 18 months of jail for various corruption charges. It took however some time before the authorities realized this and ordered Salamone to other duties and after years of trials, Di Pietro was eventually cleared of all charges.
See also: Escalating conflict between Berlusconi and Di Pietro on the backfight of Berlusconi against the Mani Pulite judges.
Political career
After being cleared, Di Pietro started a political career, a thing he'd previously excluded on the grounds that he didn't want to exploit the popularity gained doing what he perceived to be just his duty. He was elected to the
Italian Senate in an additional election because of the resignment of a senator, and defeated right-wing
journalist Giuliano Ferrara in the
Mugello constituency, a "fortress" of the left wing.
He later founded his own movement,
Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values), making its main theme the fighting against
political corruption in
Italy. As a protest against the growing tolerance to corruption in most Italian political parties, and the condescendent attitude of left-wing politicians like
Massimo D'Alema towards Berlusconi, he didn't run together with the left-wing coalition in the Italian
general elections of 2001, which were won by
Silvio Berlusconi's coalition.
Di Pietro collected just short of the nationwide 4% limit which had to be passed to enter the Lower Chamber of the Parliament in the proportional quota, and a single senator, who strangely immediately defected to Berlusconi's party.
Running together with the former leader of the
Italian Communist Party and founder of the
Democratic Party of the Left,
Achille Occhetto, he received two seats in the
European Elections of 2004. The other seat is currently taken by
Giulietto Chiesa, a journalist.
Di Pietro was one of seven candidates as leader of the left-wing coalition
The Union for the primary election held on
October 16, 2005, and eventually won by Romano Prodi, in which he obtained 3.3% of the votes, ranking fourth.
On
May 17 2006 Di Pietro was appointed
Minister of Infrastructures by
Romano Prodi in his new government.
He is member of the Bureau of the
Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and sits on the
European Parliament's
Committee on Legal Affairs. He is also a substitute for the
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and chairs the Delegation for relations with
South Africa.
On
January 30 he published a letter on the Italian newspaper
L'Unità, where he promised to work for a law that will prohibit anyone to be elected more than twice consecutively, and that will prohibit anyone who has been sentenced with a definitive sentence to become a candidate in elections. The letter is also available on his personal website.
Vidcast
In December 2006, Di Pietro started a
vidcast on
YouTube, a video sharing website. In the vidcast, which from January 2007 is issued weekly, Di Pietro talks about the issues discussed in the weekly Government Cabinet
(External Link). Other prominent politicians, such as
Angela Merkel of Germany, had released one-off vidcasts, but this is perhaps the first time that a minister of a government in office has a regular vidcast.
Career
See also: European Parliament election, 2004 (Italy)Further Information
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