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The president of the Commission, Barbara Floridia (M5S), announced that she had tendered her resignation to the presidents of the Senate and the Chamber, a decision accompanied by the resignation of all members of the opposition. The centre-right, for its part, responded by in turn announcing its exit from the Commission and relaunching the proposal to set up a new body with a new president.
“Today I handed over my resignation as president of the Rai Parliamentary Supervisory Commission to the presidents of the Senate and the Chamber”, wrote Floridia on social media, defining the choice as “painful but necessary and inevitable”. According to the senator of the 5 Star Movement, every attempt to keep the parliamentary body operational proved in vain: «I had to realize that staying and reporting was of no use. All I have to do is give a strong signal in the face of the arrogance and unscrupulous use that this majority makes of parliamentary institutions and commissions.”
In the long message, Floridia claims to have sought dialogue and discussion in recent months to allow the Commission to carry out its role of guarantee, while denouncing a systematic boycott by the majority. In his opinion, for almost two years the government forces have been preventing the normal functioning of the Supervisory Authority because the opposition has not supported the candidate indicated by the centre-right for the presidency of Rai. “The blockade is not for institutional reasons nor for differences on the merits of the issues, but only for blackmail,” he states. The outgoing president speaks of an unprecedented situation in republican history, claiming that the Commission has now been “emptied of its functions” and kept alive only formally, while decisions on the public service would be taken elsewhere. Floridia also recalls Italy’s failure to comply with the European Media Freedom Act, defining it as a further critical element.
At the same time, all the opposition representatives present in the Commission announced their resignations. In a joint note, the group leaders Stefano Graziano (Pd), Dario Carotenuto (M5S), Angelo Bonelli and Peppe De Cristofaro (Avs) and Maria Elena Boschi (Italia Viva) speak of a “necessary political act”, matured after months of paralysis of the body and after repeated appeals to the presidents of the Chambers, Ignazio La Russa and Lorenzo Fontana, which remained without outcome. The document also recalls the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella’s call for the full functioning of Parliament’s guarantee bodies.
According to the opposition, the Commission is no longer in a position to exercise its supervisory role over the public service. The signatories denounce a progressive deterioration of Rai, with a reduction in pluralism and editorial autonomy, a decline in credibility and ratings, and an increase in external contracts. Remaining in the Commission, they argue, would mean “endorsing an increasingly partisan use of the public service”.
On the same line is the group leader of the Green and Left Alliance and member of the Rai Supervision, Peppe De Cristofaro, who defines the resignation as “the only possible epilogue” of a now unsustainable situation. For the parliamentarian, the Commission has no longer carried out any supervisory activity for two years and the block would represent “an unprecedented institutional crisis”, while he accuses the government of transforming Rai into a “TeleMeloni”, denouncing cancellations of programmes, changes in schedules and a management oriented more towards the occupation of seats than the quality of the public service.
The response of the centre-right members in the Supervisory Commission was of an opposite nature. In a joint note, the members of the majority claim to also resign from a Commission which, according to them, has been “occupied, seized and exploited in an irresponsible manner by the left”.
The centre-right accuses the opposition of having exploited the rule which requires a two-thirds majority for the election of the RAI president and reiterates that it is working to modify that regulation. The majority therefore says it is willing to quickly set up a new parliamentary commission and to quickly appoint a new president of Rai, in an attempt to overcome the institutional stalemate that has paralyzed the supervisory body for months.