Grillo – Political Parties Deserve Nuremberg, not Robespierre

How to solve crisis of political parties, the Grillo way: “What’s needed is a non-violent trial. We are a civilised people”

ROME – “A public trial of the political class is necessary. Without violence. We are a civilised people. Swindled, fleeced, screwed, impoverished, derided, but we are civilised anyway. No one can think about being a substitute for the magistracy or to evoke new situations like the slaughter in piazzale Loreto. Beppe Grillo expresses the hope in a blog post with the significant title “Italian-style Nuremberg”, followed up on Twitter with “Loro non si arrenderanno mai (ma gli conviene?). Noi neppure” [They will never surrender (but why should they?). Neither will we].

The violence of the tone was matched by the reply from Fini supporter Deodato Scanderbech: “I will not take a media lynching from a comedian who has achieved nothing good in his entire life. Not everybody in Parliament is a Lusi or a Belsito. To the contrary, most of my colleagues are respectable people who do their duty every day”. Grillo, leader of the Five Star Movement (M5S), points out that “Saint-Just and Robespierre are not examples to be imitated, even because they too ended up on the cart that carried the condemned people to the guillotine. The trial must be moral and collective. Each citizen must have the right to deliver a virtual spit”.

The attack on the bipolarism-based post-First Republic system is stinging and directed at both sides of the political fence. The impression is that Beppe Grillo’s initiative seeks to garner consensus among people who have chosen to abstain because they are dissatisfied with politics in the wake of recent scandals. The blog goes on: “Anyone who has been in public office in the Second Republic: the parliamentarians, ministers, under-secretaries, presidents of the region, the mayors of the principal cities of the provinces, the presidents of the provinces, as well as obviously the Presidents of the Council and the presidents of the Upper and Lower Houses, must make a public declaration on the Internet giving their wealth BEFORE and AFTER their investiture. They must give the explanations for any wealth that may have been accumulated during their term of office. Houses, estates, gifts that they weren’t aware of. A dutiful act that will reward those who have nothing to hide”.

Grillo justifies his request by claiming that “in this country there is ingrained the mistaken idea that it is natural for a politician to get rich. Actually, it’s difficult to find a politician living in poverty or someone who leaves the Palaces of Power with ragged trousers. The salary and the benefits that the politicians receive, even though they are excessive, are not enough for them to become well to do”.

Now we come to the crux of the matter. According to Grillo, politicians get rich with “sources (...) somewhere else”. He calls for in-depth investigations that will enable “citizens (...) and even the magistrates (...) to know, for example, the reasons for which minister Z or senator B ended up at the end of the legislature with a couple of extra apartments or half a million euro in their wife’s bank account. A fully transparent analysis of wealth covering the time of the Second Republic, with the contempt of the citizens and the social isolation of anyone who has abused the State for their own interests and the intervention of the magistracy if their should happen to have been a crime”.