10 September is Mussel Day. The day of the unauthorised parliamentary mussels. “Parlamento Pulito" {Clean Up Parliament} is no longer enough. It’s not only the definitively convicted that have to go, but all of those who have dug themselves in inside the Palace. Like mussels they cling to their privileges, like a pension after one legislature, to election financing. There is not one single mussel in parliament that has renounced his pension and his “reimbursements” from the public purse. There’s no need for a law. It’s enough to write a cheque to the Treasury for the amount received. Compared to his successors, Craxi had more dignity. At least he didn’t take you for a ride. In Parliament he explained that if he was stealing then everyone was stealing and if someone didn’t agree then they should get on their feet. No one stood up. The hands of the parliamentarians were clinging to their seats. Behaviour like true mussels of the rocks.
Early in the afternoon of 10 September I will ask for an explanation in piazza Montecitorio for the silence on the “Clean Up Parliament” law, with the 350,000 signatures for a new election law locked up in the basement of the Senate since December 2007. The popular initiative law is an “anti-mussel law”. It wants to expel the convicted mussels, to get rid of the mussels after two terms of office from the chambers of parliament and to allow citizens to elect a candidate and not a mussel. The filthy Calderoli law was approved by the Berlusconi government in 2006. He was succeeded by Prodi who didn’t change it in two years, and he didn’t even try. No one protested. Now, instead of having a debate on the “Clean Up Parliament” law in the Senate, the same people that didn’t lift a finger when they were in government, are suggesting we have a referendum to overturn the law. Smoke in your eyes for a people with no memory. If the current law were to be repealed, the convicts could still stay in parliament together with the mussels that have served more than two terms of office. Whereas, the “Clean Up Parliament” law would send them all home starting with the Party Secretaries. This is why they are not putting it in the parliamentary timetable. Every parliamentarian is a mussel. They have to be reminded every day. When he’s walking around with his pack of newspapers under his arm, his back slightly bent and the expression of one who doesn’t need to ask, he is doing a perfect imitation of a mussel. He’s transformed into a mussel with tie.
For these people coins are an honour, a privilege that they don’t deserve. Better are the mussels taken out of their shells, molluscless, with the name of the parliamentarian written on it. They have a symbolic value. They are a sign of the times. They can be handed over to the deputy in the street, or left in front of the home that Scajola is unaware of, deposited in front of Montecitorio or Palazzo Madama as an invitation to get out.
The dish of peppered steamed mussels is ready. I repeat: The dish of peppered steamed mussels is ready.