Now that Sergio Zavoli has finally been appointed President of the parliamentary committee which supervises Rai, the committee has been able to get to work. The committee’s most important task is appointing seven of the nine members of the board of Rai, which it has now done. The seven names, with their presumed party affiliations in brackets, are as follows:

• Giovanna Bianchi Clerici (Lega Nord)
• Rodolfo De Laurentiis (UDC)
• Alessio Gorla (FI)
• Antonino Rizzo Nervo (PD)
• Guglielmo Rositani (AN)
• Giorgio Van Straten (PD)
• Antonio Verro (FI)

Bianchi Clerici, Rositani, De Laurentiis and Verro are ex-parliamentarians, so their “labelling” is relatively uncontroversial.

Alessio Gorla is a former Mediaset man, and so is automatically considered to be close to Forza Italia. Nino Rizzo Nervo is considered close to the Margherita in virtue of his having been editor of their newspaper, Europa, but he was considered to be close to them even before he took that job.

Finally, Giorgio Van Straten is considered to be close to the PD in virtue of having been nominated by Walter Veltroni to head Palaexpo.

Of course,  the least political nomination –Van Straten’s — is also the one that has caused most discontent: first, because Van Straten is considered not just close to the PD, but close to Veltroni, and Veltroni has, as we’ve seen, numerous enemies within the party; and second, because in order to make place for Van Straten, Carlo Rognoni — ex PD parliamentarian — had to go, and presumably the party feels its interests would be better served by “one of their own” than a novelist.