A wad of seven million lire, the first of a series. He is thus caught in the act of crime Mario Chiesa, exponent of the Milanese Socialist Party and president of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio. And he was arrested on February 17, 1992. To report him, the same businessman who hands over the money into the hands of the Church. “A rogue,” she defined him Bettino Craxi, leader of the Socialist Party.
It is the beginning of one of the darkest moments in Italian political history. Tangentopoli and the sensational Mani Pulite judicial investigation led by the magistrate Antonio Di Pietro.
A Pandora’s box that opened by uncovering a corruption system that collected bribes on public contracts. Which involved not only politicians and officials, but was a financing instrument for the policy itself.
Today, 29 years later, what remains of Tangentopoli? In just two years it completely changed the country’s economic and political scenario. Over four thousand people were investigated, with names that were almost marble symbols of the politics of the moment, such as Bettino Craxi. The same as questioned by Antonio Di Pietro will tell: “I have always been aware of the irregular nature of party funding and my party”.
We talked about it with Federico Niglia, professor of Contemporary History, at the Luiss University of Rome.
How can we introduce Tangentopoli to those who were not yet born in 1992?
«We can identify the pillars of Tangentopoli, first of all by reasoning on the fact that Tangentopoli represents the moment in which a judicial investigation addresses what has been a vacuum in the history of Italy: the role of parties and the way in which parties are financed. Here this is a void, I mean a dynamic that is not regulated, not covered and that certainly had not been the subject of discussion not only among political forces but also in public opinion ”.
What do you mean?
«The Italians, starting from 1978, began to take a stance against a system that had changed from a party to a party system, and which had transformed this filter subject, precisely the party, into an all-encompassing reality. Everything that happened in Italy had to pass through the parties. Even that world of entrepreneurial activity, of free initiative, of development of the country which in theory (and also in practice) had to be detached from party dynamics. And here the reference is to that process of subdivision which then has some of its symbols in the Cencelli manual and which many films have summarized well and which shows how parties go from being the vital ganglion to the diseased cell of a system. This is the starting point, the object on which the initiative of the judiciary is developed ».
Which protagonists can we identify?
«Here we also find the novelty of Mani Pulite, the protagonists are identifiable because they identify with the city of Milan, with the Milan prosecutor’s office and with the well-known pool of Mani Pulite. Mario Chiesa, the first accused, then some figures linked to politics and the first reference is Bettino Craxi ».
What do these characters tell about the country?
«Two worlds: Mario Chiesa the world of party apparatuses, which are then declined down to the smallest fragments, of the management of a power that is not national but regional, provincial, municipal, local, of controlled structures. Then Bettino Craxi, the emblem of the parties, at the moment when Mani Pulite breaks out, is a leader who had marked the previous decade. If we reflect on it Craxi is a president of the Council of a party that had not produced any up to that moment, he was a figure who in the eighties had represented a factor in unloading the translation balance, he was a relatively young politician when he had governed . However, in a certain sense it also symbolizes a republic of parties that has aged, and during the nineties it represents an age that is about to pass ».
Mani Pulite falls at a particular moment in our history.
«It is a very important moment because it falls into a phase of great transformation of the system. In 1989, the collapse of the Berlin wall had upset a whole equilibrium that was that of bipolarism, of the cold war, it had made the communist party substantially inconsistent, and this had shaken an already very difficult balance, which was that between the parties. The pentapartite was the last alchemy that the country had given itself to give itself a government. This already strongly tried system is completely unhinged by Mani Pulite which in this sense goes beyond its judicial sense, accelerating a process of political transition. What we call the passage from the first to the second republic is nothing but the rethinking of the system, but this could not have happened if the old system had not been destroyed ».
What remains of Tangentopoli today?
«Mani Pulite is a founding moment of our present for better or for worse. It is certainly important because the objective pursued is to shed light on a series of offenses present in the criminal code and therefore prosecutable, but it is also true that Mani Pulite in a certain sense is the symbol of the weakness of politics and this is something that we carry with us in our dna. A system that is born on the ashes of a great judicial investigation is a system in which politics has failed, which does not mean that it should not be reborn but of course it always carries this retro thought, that politics is insufficient in itself and therefore requires an external party to control it. This is perhaps one of the legacies that must be transmitted to those who have not lived those stories ».
What can history teach us?
«What history can teach us is to get a sense of change and in this perhaps Mani Pulite is a very interesting case. It is very important to study if you want to understand the strengths and weaknesses of what is the Republic and above all Italian democracy, which is a complex democracy and in which politics always represents a central element, that is, Italy as a political country, which lives of the confrontation of ideas, movements and parties ».
Why is it important to study Tangentopoli today?
«Studying Tangentopoli means studying a pathological moment in the party system. All this must be studied not only to create institutions and a healthy civic conscience but it is also useful to understand how important an episode of this type is for the international credibility of a country. We must always remember that this story shows how politics can always be overthrown but that one cannot live without politics, the other powers of the state cannot replace the political ones and this forces us to participate in ways that should be as healthy as possible. “.
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