Istalia

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Breaking News: "Cementopoli" shakes Patriotic Front and Istalian Falange

The corruption scandal that is emerging following the Gelamia tragedy could outline a sensational change of leadership in Istalia with Floria Monaldi ready to resign

Mars 5630

The news of the arrest of Emanuele Masiello, national coordinator of the Patriotic Front, of Claudia Emami, president of FPI in Ferano, of Nadia Piccini, party members labelled as a fixer working close to FederIndustria, the restored employers' federation of Istalia, of the mayor of Magliano Carlo Manabrea and of two of his councilors, made Istalians wake up in a country plunged into a political earthquake like few have been seen in its history, perhaps comparable only to the scandal that overwhelmed the political parties of the post-crisis of Wantuni terrorism's era. The scandal that is overwhelming the Patriotic Front, the driving force of the government majority, but which is also starting to involve exponents of the Istalian Falange, has now awaken an institutional crisis that seems irreversible. The investigation into the collapse of the Bridge of Liberation in Gelamia has uncovered a vast system of corruption and collusion between politics and business that had cast its shadow over the entire country. Every day new prosecutors open investigation files, new names enter the register of suspects and new arrests shake up the national political scene, the latest today being the most sensational.

The investigation has now involved numerous companies, businessmen and fixers as well as leading figures of the Patriotic Front, with accusations ranging from corruption, embezzlement of public money, fraud and manipulation of public procurement. Among the names that had already been included in the register of suspects thre are Giovanni Mignatta, a member of Congress and president of the Infrastructure Commission, Roberta De Santis, an influential advisor to the Minister of National Infrastructure and Transport, and Luca Palombari, mayor of Gelamia. Marcello Rinaldi, regional assessor for transport of Trivendito, and Francesco Bartolucci, another Congressman, have already been placed in pre-trial detention, both accused of having favored the illicit awarding of public contracts to compliant companies.
The investigations are outlining a disturbing picture: the existence of an illicit system, extremely widespread and complex, through which its members have taken advantage of the mammoth effort of national reconstruction to illicitly enrich themselves. We are talking about a business of hundreds, if not thousands of billions of Lire, divided up through bribes, under-the-table agreements and favors to the companies involved.

Although no direct evidence has emerged of the official involvement of the party as an entity, it is now certain that a parallel system of corruption has sprouted and been structured within its ranks. Political exponents, officials and fixers of the party are said to have influenced the awarding of contracts, managing subcontracts, networks of suppliers and even money laundering channels. The tragedy of the Birdge of Liberation has been just the tip of the iceberg: shoddy materials, colluding companies and bribes have marked the construction of several state-funded infrastructures.

At Antinori Palace the tension is palpable, the Minister Secretary of State, Floria Monaldi, finds herself with her back to the wall: internal sources speak of a Monaldi, extraneous to the facts as is emerging from the investigations, furious with the members of her own party, and desperate because now she sees no other way forward than that of resignation. Certain is that she will ask the Emperor to dissolve the National Congress and call new elections.
The elderly leader of the Patriotic Front, now in his eighties, has distanced herself from the members involved, for the most part young and rampant exponents from the new generations, many of them that were just children during the Patriotic War of Liberation, publicly disavowing and condemning their actions, probably implemented precisely by exploiting Monaldi's advanced age and a probable certain decline in her acumen, and has admitted that the party has lost popular legitimacy.

The recently appointed new Chief of Defense Staff Enrica De Mattei has already released a statement in which she emphasizes that the government's resignation is now categorically expected and that the country will have to return to the polls as soon as possible. A note of the same tone is expected from the Constitutional Court within a few hours. The Emperor is reportedly evaluating the possibility of appoint at the helm of a caretaker executive a high-profile technical figure, perhaps the Chief of the Navy Staff, and Deputy Chief of the Defense Staff by virtue of his seniority among all the Defense leaders, with the task of ferrying Istalia to the next elections.

The party was already paying for a decline in consensus in recent years due to the mounting criticism regarding the liberal policies adopted, which have seen the GDP per capita increase at a slower rate than that of the Nation and therefore in parallel increase social inequalities, and it began to be strongly criticized since the last year for what has been labelled as "the Christmas little present", that is the approval on the last day of work of the Congress before the Christmas break and the summer holidays, of a series of measures defined as "adjustments to the budget law" with which the Istalians, returning from holidays, found themselves with a series of increases in taxes, excises and various duties on their backs. The scandal raised by Cementopoli has only aggravated the growing indignation of the people, who not only found themselves with less money in their pockets but are now also discovering how so much of that public money ended up in the pockets of entrepreneurs, politicians, officials, etc...

The Hosian Democratic Union, government partner of FPI, was not implicated in the scandal, a fact clearly attributable to the fact that the system at the center of the accusations was built in the years before it entered the government. The management of this illicit system seems that has always been in the hands of FPI and Istalian Falange, the two parties that have led or supported all previous governments since the end of the Patriotic War of Liberation, consolidating their control over the political and administrative structures of the country.

In the wake of the scandal, the Party of New Communists has reinvigorated its relentless attacks on the government, and it was precisely the General Secretary of the PNC Luigi Marangone who was the first to express himself this morning in front of the cameras at the exit of the General Secretariat of the PNC in Romula in Via di Ripa Vecchia:

The gravy train is over! The pig feeder is closing its doors! Should the Patriotic Front do the same? It has shown itself to be the party of industrialists, fixers, of the bosses, rather than the people of Istalia! They have filled their pockets at the expense of the people!

I think it is now time for the Judiciary to also investigate possible illicit financing from abroad, given how easily they have opened the doors to multinationals and foreign industry eager to eat their slice of the great buffet of the istalian reconstruction. While the honest workers of Istalia were rolling up their sleeves to rebuild the country, those who governed them were enriching themselves exploiting the worker's sweat and selling the country off.

And to think that for many years in government there were those who said they loved and defended the Homeland, putting it before everything else... first the Istalians, they said! And I am not just talking about the Patriotic Front, but also about the "very very nationalist" Istalian Falange, which publicly argued with FPI over their law on foreign investments, then passively accepting it, but which instead rubbed its hands behind the Istalians' backs waiting for the highest bidder. You will see! Time, and not too much, will prove us right!

And I turn to the Istalians: is this the Istalia that brought down the Socialist Republic that you want?

The ferocity of the attacks by the leader of PNC were followed by the more calm but no less severe declarations of the National Secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party Annalisa Saragat who however also added some veiled criticisms against Mondali and his long leadership:

The reality that is emerging is a stain that indelibly muddies the first years of our new Istalia. The Patriotic Front has proven to be up to the task of leading a country at war, but it was not the same when it came to govern it.

It seems clear that the blame must fall on a parallel organization born within the party, and that perhaps also involves members of the Falange, but this shows that the time has probably come for a well-deserved rest for the "Comrade" Monaldi, alas now clearly no longer as attentive as she once was and capable of effectively leading her party, but on the other hand, we cannot blame her given her venerable age.

The country, it is an incontrovertible fact, will forever recognize her honors for what she did for the Istalians, for her leadership during the War of Liberation, and for her leadership during these early years. But, as said, the country needs a change, a breath of fresh air to definitively turn the page on the great patriotic effort undertaken to regain freedom and democracy and truly begin a new chapter in its history.

Cementopoli scandal could therefore mark the definitive decline of the hegemony of the Patriotic Front and the PSD, the main opposition force, concretely glimpses the possibility of ousting FPI from government and being the protagonist of that political alternation that many analysts and experts have been waiting for for a long time, considered foundamental to further cement the country's revived democratic structure. PSD, even before today's sensational arrests, had adopted election campaign tones for several months while the scandal emerged and mounted, promising a new, honest and transparent governance for the reconstruction of the country and that can truly allow everyone to enjoy the return of well-being and of the opportunities given by the post-war economic boom.
We must therefore expect imminent elections, elections that could already profoundly change the political landscape of Istalia, opening a new era after years of unchallenged hegemony of the Patriotic Front.

Despite the official statements and the prospects just outlined, however, many are raising further doubts and wondering how it is possible that the other parties in the country have never noticed anything. The suspicion is particularly strong at the local level, where the alternation in power has already occurred in several cases, leading some to wonder why those who have taken over, here and there, from the FPI or FI, have not noticed irregularities or found contradictions in the inherited accounts and administrative procedures. The Corriere of Istalia's investigative journalist Elisabetta Maduri, for example, has been investigating for months the administration of Terebbìa, which passed with the last electoral round under the control of the PSD after years of FPI hegemony. Is it possible that the new administrators didn't detected any anomalies? For now these are just speculation, but the risk that the investigation will widen and involve other parties cannot be ruled out.