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Franco Bechis
The only consultant who does not appear anywhere is the one who appears on television with that job: Walter Ricciardi, the former president of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità who this year became the black soul of the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza.
It is he who suggests the most radical options, pushes him into the harshest confinements and the most unpopular decisions. But Ricciardi, whom Speranza says is her free advisor, is nowhere in the ministry. If there is a contract, it is also locked, because it does not appear on the endless list of consultants and collaborators of Speranza among the transparent documents of the administration, as required by law. However, in that long list there is no shortage of benefactors willing to give suggestions to the minister without asking for anything in return: they do it for free. Excellent for the minister and also excellent for Italian taxpayers, who sometimes pay handsomely for that list out of their pockets. Someone else, someone less.
But Speranza is very generous (it is not difficult to do it with public money), and she wanted many friends of the last years who could have ended up in difficulties with her to receive suggestions. Former Unity or Liberation journalists have been called in to lend the minister a hand from day one and an additional team of six enlisted to help Speranza communicate when the pandemic broke out. It was the opportunity that the Minister of Health took advantage of to promote another of his direct collaborators, Massimo Paolucci, a former MEP of the Democratic Party, to the commissioner of Domenico Arcuri where he became his effective right hand. In the team of experts there are friends who were in the Democratic Party at the time when Speranza was also there and then they changed course with him and Pierluigi Bersani. There’s Nerina Dirindin, a former Article One senator, who is an expert on health policy but for free. Hopefully good virologists will be there with the minister. Instead, there is Armando Francesco Cirillo, who was one of the young leaders of the Democratic Party in Calabria, later enlisted by the Nens of Pierluigi Bersani and Vincenzo Visco and passed as a collaborator in the parliamentary group of the Democratic Party. Now, for 36 thousand euros a year, he offers advice to Speranza “for data analysis and activities to support initiatives,” which is not a splendid thing. There is also Carlo Roccio de Novara, who was the 2014 Europeans candidate in the Democratic Party and today advises the minister on biotechnology, but at least he is really a biologist and not one of the most common.
The pearl of the team, however, is Speranza’s “ethical advisor,” who I imagine helps him examine his conscience every night. Or perhaps only once a week, because the remuneration is not very high: 36 thousand euros gross per year until the end of the minister’s term. He is the head of the local authorities of the Esperanza party, Alfredo D’Attorre, who was with him in the Democratic Party and eloped with him while still being a deputy in the last legislature. D’Attorre was a nice and slightly boring young man who had a certain notoriety for having made a splendid girlfriend, Sara Manfuso, fall in love with him. Their love story drove the media crazy and the couple was heavily courted in television studios. They parted ways that way: in the media, with an ad for her at the end of the story in The Day of the Sheep. But they stayed on good terms, especially since together they conceived a beautiful girl who is daddy’s love. They are private facts, and I wouldn’t mention them if they hadn’t had a public dimension here too: Manfuso (who was a passionate Renzian) was drawn to politics too, and someone offered him a candidacy in Lazio for the latest politics. But she rejected the golden opportunity, and made public the reason: “I can not run against my ex.” Our D’Attorre, in fact, was a candidate at the same university in Speranza. The beau geste, however, was of little or no use: she retired, the voters trumpeted it, none of them held the coveted seat. D’Attorre, who graduated in philosophy from the Normale di Pisa, returned to his post as a researcher, with whom he does not earn much for a living. Until Speranza thought about the need for a moral adviser, and Alfredo found himself in the ministry willing to offer ethical suggestions to the generous minister. He certainly will, but he has not forgotten the political verve. So on twitter, in addition to ethics, he thinks about defending the stability of the executive as a squire, which is also that of his consultancy. He takes it out on the civil servants’ unions on the day of the strike, making an obviously ethical appeal: “Does a public employment strike make sense at this time? How does the rest of the country perceive it? ». And on Christmas Eve he goes straight to stab that Matteo Renzi who with his team is the earthquake Giuseppe Conte and his friend Speranza: «They wanted another government: it will continue to be Conte. They wanted delegation to the services: they will not have it. They have caused a scandal about the Recovery Fund and the MES: the control room remains and we will not accept the MES. But the Renzians tell the newspapers that they have won. Happy them, happy all … ». Amen.
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