Corruption in Italy: Laws and authorities aren't enough. We need to rediscover honesty, a now obsolete word.

HOW TO FIGHT CORRUPTION

In Sierra Leone, where 5 thousand bribes are counted per minute, a sort of system has been established green number, on 515, to report anyone who asks for a bribe. In Italy, which holds the record for corruption in Europe, preceded only by Bulgaria, a single front has finally been equipped, the National Anti-Corruption Authority chaired by Raffaele Cantone, for effectively counter what we can consider the heaviest ball and chain in the country.

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HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF CORRUPTION

For charity, Let's not confuse a poor African nation with Italy, and yet with a minimum of intellectual honesty we must recognize at least two important similarities that bring together two universes so distant from each other, from the point of view of the conditions economic and social. First point contact: in Africa there will never be a redemption of the continent and its population without concrete and widespread results in the fight against corruption; In Italy there will never be a real economic recovery, much less a new cycle of economic boom., if we cannot bring the current use of bribes and kickbacks back to physiological levels, at least in line with other more developed nations in the Western world, our reference club.

Secondo: 80 percent of the population of Sierra Leone admits to being "forced" (the quotation marks are obligatory) to pay bribes for public services that on paper are free; 90 percent of Italians, especially those working in the business world, are convinced that corruption and recommendation, two sides of the same coin called mass illegality, are the easiest way, et alsometimes the only one, to obtain a public service that is also rightfully due to the citizenAs you can see, adding the two points of contact between Sierra Leone and Italy, the two countries appear to be closer than they seem.

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The confirmation of this analysis, rather depressing, it must be admitted, comes from a little book with a very indicative title (It's normal, everyone does it., editions Chiarelettere), written by Michele Corradino, magistrate of the Council of State, former chief of staff of several ministers, and for a couple of years commissioner, next to Cantone, of the National Anti-Corruption Authority. Corradino uses an almost narrative method to describe the widespread nature of the phenomenon, and through the reconstruction of telephone and environmental interceptions, published over the last few years in various newspapers, he turns the epic of bribes and kickbacks into a sort of Crime Novel of our country..

Fortunately, there is no shortage of hilarious scenes, jokes from neorealist cinema, in the dialogues between businessmen and between the corrupt and the corrupters. At the same time, the commissioner, this is now Corradino's role, reminds us of some of the side effects, damages and waste systemic, corruption in Italy. For example: the estimate of 60 billion a year drawn up by the Court of Auditors, later revised and corrected (but is it really so important to establish the economic damage caused by corruption to the cent, assuming that it is possible? Isn't what we see every day, just by browsing the newspapers or surfing the web, enough?), or the fact that Every point lost in the Transparency International rankings, where we are only sliding down, translates into a 16 percent cut in foreign investment.

CORRUPTION IN ITALY

Corradino puts it on the table possible therapies, which frankly we already know and are just waiting to see them applied: more transparent procurement and effective, or a short and clear law that regulates lobbies in Italy, which are accustomed to operating in a sort of gray area where corruption becomes almost automatic. And then he insists a lot on call for the need for "a cultural turning point", a concept very dear above all to Cantone who wrote the introduction to the book. And here we can only rely on the category of optimism of the will, trying to look at ourselves in the mirror, dusting off the patina of rhetoric, and reminding ourselves who we really are. Otherwise we risk going from news to fairy tales.

For Italians, the honesty It's not yet a shared value, a fixed point in our community life, something that unites us even from the perspective of mutual convenience, which is not marginal for the purposes of a "cultural shift." We lack an organic relationship with the etymology of this word, where honestus, as Cicero wrote, is the man worthy of honor. A category that does not fall within a law, a sanction, or any anti-corruption deterrent, but is part of the most intimate, and therefore most solid, part of the person and the citizen.

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