Chris Hanretty

Perhaps the Berlusconi years made me lazy, but I’ve had to re-learn some cautionary principles of Italian politics:

1. the position of the government is not necessarily the same as the position of the parties that compose it;
2. the position of the government is not necessarily the same as the position of the largest party in the government;
3. the position of either the government, or the largest party therein, is not necessarily the position of the leader of either of those two groupings

We’ve seen this on electoral reform, where the government (and Vannino Chiti) have a proposal, but Prodi doesn’t want to endorse it until it’s locked-down, and the Democratici have no firm position on it.

Now we see it on reform of Rai. The government, through Paolo Gentiloni, has issued a draft of a reform of Rai, which establishes a foundation appointed by Parliament, the regions, and certain other cultural bodies, which then appoints a “proper” executive board. Prodi’s heir-apparent Walter Veltroni now argues that this is not enough:

“mi chiedo se non possiamo fare un ulteriore passo avanti: abolire il cda della Rai visto che e’ un duplicato della commissione di Vigilanza, in cui esistono le stesse componenti politiche

I wonder whether we might not take a further step, and abolish the board of Rai, given that it’s a copy of the oversight commission, where the same political groupings exist”

The intent - abolish political-broadcaster parallelism - is admirable; the response is a bit stupid. I don’t normally agree with Sandro Curzi, but he’s right to say that a single MD, without board, would hinder Rai. Given that Veltroni explicitly invokes the link, a better response would be to abolish the oversight commission, the Vigilanza. But of course, that would interfere with the dogma of “the centrality of parliament”, and undoubtedly piss off the parliamentarians Veltroni needs in his campaign to become leader of the Partito Democratico.