«Politics is a value and must be preserved. If it has lost value along the way, it is a good idea to recover it, but not through the courts.” This is what Stefano Savi, Giovanni Toti’s defender, says. The president of Liguria has been under house arrest since May 8 on charges of corruption. “For us there are no elements for the precautionary measure”, he explains, broadening the discussion to include political hypocrisy. “Politics must be financed, it is up to the legislator to bring order.”
The hearing before the Review judges for the appeal against house arrest will be held on July 8. Are there concrete elements to obtain freedom?
To date, the investigating judge has considered the elements underlying the precautionary measure to exist, on the one hand maintaining that there may be evidence pollution and on the other, without looking for concrete elements, presuming that if Toti returned to carrying out the activity politics would fall into the commission of the hypothesized crimes. This is done without justifying either the actuality or the concreteness of this position, but simply recalling the fact that in this period at least four electoral campaigns were carried out, for which funds were raised, and since hypotheses of corruption were contested, which we we believe they do not exist, it could also happen in the future.
A fault linked to personality?
Yes. For us it is a rather embarrassing approach, because it never has an end, being a fault linked to the author. As if to say that if someone commits a crime he will repeat it all his life.
In essence, shouldn’t Toti be more involved in politics?
Exactly, just as someone else shouldn’t be an entrepreneur anymore. We contested all this, and Toti did so too with a letter in which he stated that he had acted in good faith and that he had done everything without ever neglecting to pursue the public interest, that he had attempted to streamline bureaucracy, always in the interest of Liguria. If he solicited someone to make payments for his political party, he did so openly, because the payments were always made in a tracked manner, according to what the law prescribes. He never recognized a causal link between the interventions made and the financing received, so much so that the interventions were made without distinction in favor of those who paid or would have paid something and those who had never paid anything.
Toti has chosen not to resign, despite the invitation being precisely this. And he relaunched, convening, authorized by the investigating judge, the council at his home. What interpretation should be given of this choice?
Indeed, even in the public prosecutor’s latest opinion, the exercise of the function is linked to the risk of repeating crimes, so it is said that if there is no resignation, the opportunity would remain. For us it is unfounded, above all we believe it is necessary to balance on the one hand the precautionary needs, which must specifically protect something for a specific period of time, and on the other the popular mandate, achieved for the second time with many votes. Toti has a role to respect, to balance with that of the needs of the criminal trial. This role, entrusted to him by many Ligurians, must be defended for Toti, naturally in compliance with the investigations. Therefore, at present, until all the initiatives that the Code makes available to us have been implemented, we will not consider the idea of resigning: it would mean failing to fulfill the commitments undertaken with the electorate.
But if the risk of recurrence is linked to political activity, couldn’t these meetings with the junta be an opportunity to repeat the crime, given that they do not take place in the presence of the police?
We asked for the possibility of holding a series of meetings of a political, not administrative nature, because he cannot exercise administrative action at this moment, given the suspension. These are meetings that serve to take stock of the situation. We appreciate the fact that this political investiture was respected.
The governor clarified that all the transfers are in the open and all the sums reported with transparency: but is this alone enough to guarantee that there is no crime?
It’s a bit like the hypocrisy of Italian politics that doesn’t want to properly address the problem of political financing. It’s not that we can’t talk about money when we talk about politics. The methods may be different, but it is necessary to clearly distinguish what the limits are and to ensure that those involved in politics are safe from the request for funds, which, by force of circumstances, cannot fail. In the current system there has been an expansion of the concept of corruption, with the sale of the function which, if applied extensively, could lead to some shocking paradoxes. We claim what we have done, we were in good faith, but in our future political activity, until there is a decision from a judge who says how things are, we will have to adapt the forms, not the substance, in such a way as to avoid that the Prosecutor’s Office, which has already expressed itself, continues to express itself in this sense. This simply means giving forms that are more precautionary, intervening when we realize that for years a possibility of productive expansion has been blocked by bureaucracy, rather than by office inefficiencies, but doing so with caution. Toti intervened not on the merits of the issues, but simply to understand why some important decisions and also harbingers of relationships, of jobs, were inexplicably blocked, or to understand why certain authorizations could not be given, without interfering in the merits or force anyone’s hand.
But hasn’t the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Open case, which involves Renzi, already set limits on party financing?
Yes, the judges have made it clear that the synallagmatic relationship must be demonstrated. I’ll tell you more: last week the Review ruled on a Spezia provision, on a parallel situation also subjectively linked to some common positions, and repeated these things quite clearly. But each Prosecutor’s Office applies the laws based on what it believes is right to do. So it is also true that those who find themselves involved in politics at the moment must be very careful, because yes, in the end the Court of Cassation will come to agree, but in the meantime, sometimes even irreversible events can happen. Toti will continue to do politics, but “defensively”: he will do everything that needs to be done, but just as the doctor is careful not to end up in the Prosecutor’s Office, despite being a doctor scrupulously and honestly, so Toti will continue to promote any initiative in favor of the Liguria region with those precautions that allow him to avoid having situations of this type again.
In the times of the Nordio editorialist, the defensive administration was referred to as “evil”.
The legislator, in general, should somehow bring order. It would be appropriate for all politics, regardless of colour, to address this problem: not only that of the transparency of the sources of financing, but also that of the certainty of the forms with which to receive these funds, because if we continue to expand the concept of corruption we will end up to open a discretionary phase, with considerable damage. Politics must be protected, because the action of those who administer is important for society and must be carried out honestly, in the public interest, but it must also be protected.
Is populism also to blame?
Exact. The politician is not perceived positively in our country, then when it comes to money it is even worse. No one contested Toti’s enrichment or personal advantage, and this is already something, but if we continue to surround politics with a negative aura, with politicians all scoundrels, we seriously undermine the possibility for citizens to have political expression and to be able to maintain it. If we take the same fact and look at it from two different angles, on the one hand we talk about corruption and on the other we talk about good administration. This discretion cannot be outside of politics: it must be the voter who says “I’m not voting for you anymore”. Now abuse of office is being abolished, precisely because it opened up areas of discretion and invasion of the field. But I wouldn’t want what is no longer done with abuse of office to be done with corruption. The step isn’t that long. Politics is a value and must be preserved. If it has lost value along the way, it is a good idea to recover it, but not through the courts. Otherwise we then wonder why the ballot boxes are empty. The voter has the right to choose his representatives and judge them for their actions, and only he has it: we cannot open the door to something different, otherwise we will subvert the institutional balance.
