Antonio Di Pietro, Gianni Barbacetto
Il Guastafeste

1992

Antonio Di Pietro was the most renowned magistrate (Public Prosecutor to be precise) of the epochal investigation known as "Clean Hands" carried out by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office* team in the early '90s, aiming to uncover the devastating mix of corruption, extortion, and illegal financing scientifically organized by more or less influential and well-known figures belonging, in a completely cross-sectional manner, to the political nomenclature of the time; following those investigations, an authentic cyclone hit the top ranks of the political forces of the time on the breach: Christian Democracy and the Italian Socialist Party were almost wiped off the parliamentary map of the years to come.

"Clean Hands" seemed, utopistically, to rekindle the hope of those who believed that another Italy, less manipulative, more transparent, and more (big word?) honest was possible; however one views it, it can be said without particular fear of contradiction that at that juncture there was one of the last real attempts, within our national borders, to dissipate if not completely eradicate and call to their responsibilities the protagonists of a certain way of doing politics (still, alas, very much current: with the aggravating factor that today the majority of the crimes contested at the time have been largely decriminalized), thereby prosecuting the very close, consanguineous relationship between wheeler-dealers, corrupt politics, and far more than complacent entrepreneurship.

2009

Antonio Di Pietro, everyone knows, is for about ten years the supreme leader of the movement known as "Italy of Values": for some by now the only repository of the sentiment of legality and real opposition to the light-regime towards which our country is heading, for many others an unqualified opportunist, an indescribable character who has reaped the maximum benefit from his "political" work within the justice-seeking Milan Pool; it is appropriate, in this sense, to highlight an indisputable historical fact: those who at the time endorsed, pushed through the media, and sponsored through their multiple press organs the so-called "easy cuffs," soon after used politically for their own ends the partisan revolution that followed, becoming in fact the most fierce critic of it besides repeatedly serving as the Prime Minister of Italy. 

The book, written at the end of last year, fortunately does not configure itself as a mere operation of sterile self-promotion (between the lines, undeniably, there is also this) about his immaculate and enlightened "work" shaped by Our protagonist over the past twenty years, but rather it is the particularly detailed account of multiple interviews conducted with the same former magistrate by journalist Gianni Barbacetto (who collaborates regularly with Micromega and Repubblica) which chronologically retrace backward the steps (descent or ascent, you choose) towards today's Di Pietro's thinking; among the most interesting passages, I would highlight the illustrative excerpt titled "Me and Silvio": particularly interesting about the intrinsic nature of both characters: although in this instance, counterreplies from Our beloved Premier are absent; there is also ample space for the political and implementational analysis of the events which saw his movement navigate within the alternation of the two alignments leading the national government over the past fifteen years.

The subjects and tones addressed are, as they should be and always ought to be, often piercing, uneasy, if not at all accommodating toward the interlocutor, who, as is well known is not one to beat around the bush: he meticulously tackles various topics, sometimes resorting to his particular dialectic (far from crude or ordinary, as many dissenters would have you believe), with enviable precision, wisdom, intellectual honesty, and perspicacity, always and everywhere affirming - ça va sans dire - his own truth [well may there be contradictions and replies from the parties involved], both on the various vicissitudes of even a private nature that have concerned him until today, and on the thousand-and-one battles (many of which, by his own admission, lost) "of a former magistrate who entered politics without asking for permission". 

I have the faint impression that reading such a concise volume (not even 200 pages) would benefit more His often poorly informed detractors than His supporters in a more appropriate manner: but, it's well known, on Channel 5 there's always 'Amici' (or the 'Big Brother') to educate them.

*composed of the magistrates Bocassini, Colombo, Di Pietro, Davigo, Greco, and led by chief prosecutor Borrelli and his deputy D'Ambrosio;