Berlusconi acquitted

[Chris Burford]

At 16:06 11/05/00 +0100, you wrote:
>In message <4.3.1.1.20000510232741.05841980 at pop.gn.apc.org>, Chris
>Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> writes
>
>after I said
>
> >>Better that Italian voters decide who is fit to represent them than
> >>judges, in my view.
> >>
> >>After all, the elite do not need fascism if they can get away with
> >>suspending democracy through legalistic means.
>
>That it was
> >
> >A rather abstract view of democracy, that ignores the modern reality that
> >power lies with the ability to control the media.
>
>Well, if people really were automatons who simply voted for what the
>goggle-box told them, then indeed it would be fruitless to expect change
>to come from below, in which case it is perhaps better that experts,
>like judges should decide who governs. But my perhaps naive belief that
>presented with good alternatives, the people know best prevents me from
>drawing those conclusions.
>
>
> >
> >What is the legal intervention to which you are referring?
>
>I've forgotten now what I wrote in the first mail. Judicial intervention
>in the political process has been endemic in Italy, where judges, many
>of them members of a political body, the Magistratura Democratica, have
>substituted themselves for the electorate by deposing and jailing
>elected representatives. The charges against Berlusconi, following those
>against Craxi and Moro, are clearly motivated by politics not justice.
>
>Trying to have Berlusconi jailed is a way of side-stepping the need to
>argue against his ideas. In the end, it only makes him stronger, as the
>powers-that-be are seen to be trying to block him by rule-book trickery.
>
>This is the same kind of manipulation that left the EEPTU in the hands
>of the right for years. Nobody appreciates it when you try to side-step
>the voters.
>--
>Jim heartfield

I think Jim reveals himself as a radical bourgeois democrat in this 
contribution. He objects to legal regulation of funding of political 
parties, which is an important topical battle in all bourgeois democracies. 
It is ultimately a class battle, since capital  benefits from an absolute 
right to fund politics.

Of course I agree that Communist rigging of EEPTU elections was damaging. 
But it was brought to account by legal processes was it not?

I find Jim's naivety about the sovereignty of electors wilful.

This is radical cover for doing nothing about the Murdoch's, Berlusconi's, 
and Berezhosvky's of this world.

The law too may be an arena of class struggle.

Chris Burford

London