Talk:Roberto Formigoni/Archive 1

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The note about his virginity was added only because: True or not this might be (as a matter of fact, no decisive proof was ever produced...), it had to be reported to correctly describe why he is (also) famous, thus this is not a violation of his privacy.
 * 1) Formigoni himself repeatedly declared it, and used it as a political theme;
 * 2) This fact effectively had public consequences on his popularity and (most commentators say) on his career.

About votes, reported in the previous version of the article, I wasn't able to find a confirmation for them, so I could not be precise on which election they were related to, by which method the elections were held and what - essentially - they could mean. I therefore removed them. --Gianfranco


 * As to the vote tallies, they are referenced here http://www.regione.lombardia.it/governo/presidente.html.


 * As for "In 1990 he was involved in a never completely cleared affaire regarding a mission to Iraq, ended with the freeding of some Italian technicians who were hostages of the local government.", I ask, cleared by whom? And, you added, "Formigoni has been accused twice of irregular management (of a foundation and of a public trash administration)." I assume you refer to the "mani puliti" issue?


 * In that none of these allegations resulted in any culpabilty and malicious charges meant to defame rival political figures are a mainstay of politics, I submit that their inclusion violates NPOV and will be removed and the vote figures reinstated.


 * As an addendum, "mani puliti", if referenced, should become an new entry replete with political agendas, motivations and cast of characters and outcome; not simply a reference that Formigoni was "accused".


 * Excellent edit, otherwise, Gianfranco! David dePaoli


 * Thank you, David, for keeping a keen attention on the NPOV.
 * To be honest, this is why I started editing your version, not because it was non-neutral by your side (I think that your recent contributions are really valuable additions, so - please, believe - I never thought of an eventual partiality of yours), but because it was non-neutral in the sources that you evidently had read: Formigoni will certainly be a fully successful and good and honest person, but something in the article sounded (to me) much more celebrative than the same supporters of his are used to propose.
 * He is, indeed, a discussed politician (also, there has never been in Italy a non-discussed politician). So, whatever one might think, he has supporters and opposers. I just tried to report what the ones and the others say about him, because this is "my version" of the NPOV.
 * Who had to clear what happened in that famous mission? Certainly not a tribunal, since (apart from jurisdictions) there were no claims or charges for any crime. What really was not clear, is what was (curiously) not reported by official spokesmen and journalists, for instance:
 * -Why were these technicians kidnapped, really?
 * -What was Italy doing there with those technicians?
 * -Which part of Formigoni's history could let us discover that he was so influential in Iraq or in Italy to become an international mediator?
 * -Why then was he named a mediator in this affaire?
 * -Why then was he accepted as a mediator in this affaire?
 * -Which were the exact pacts that he was allowed to subscribe?
 * -Which pacts did he concretely subscribe???
 * You know, I'm telling this being sure that all is fine, and that he represented out country at his best. Finally, these unfortunate technicians are now free, so we are lucky that Formigoni was involved. But... is it clear to you what really happened? Completely?
 * I hope so: you'll be so kind to explain me too ;-)))


 * Of course, your points on the Iraq affair are valid, 100%. Also, I could have been more eloquent in my editing by perhaps wording it less tersely while preserving the precious NPOV, such as "...his critics have many questions about Formigoni's involvement in the Iraqi affair which were never fully explained. " I believe this would adequately expose that while questions remain unanswered, it is not necessarily so because of any wrongdoing.


 * Just one point: one doesn't need to be a Formigoni's critic to be worried about those unanswered questions... Everyone would like to be able to decipher what happened, his friends too.


 * "Mani pulite" is a way to look at what happened in Italy in the 1990s. Another way is to look at it through "Tangentopoli". The first name regards a team of milanese judges, the second identifies a bad bribery habit that is unfortunately traditional to Italy ("Tangente" is the price of the bribery). Milanese judges were not able to avoid some doubts about their effective ideological indifference (that should be a requirement strictly connected to the function). SOme of them have now a party of their own, others directly hold personal polemics with some political parties or leaders. In a word, they were - and are - discussed, in the sense that a unanimous approval of their behaviour is yet to be achieved, at any level of observation.
 * A neutral article about those fact could then be focused perhaps on the systemic seriousness of bribery in Italy (Mani pulite / the judges pride is undoubtedly to have discovered its infinitive proportions), and named Tangentopoli, unless you have a different word for it. But, please consider the hypothesis that to be really neutral, one perhaps would not start by the consideration that those judges were the paladins of correctness and honesty and all the other folks were terrific criminals. In medio stat virtus, Romans said, and intermediate positions could not deserve to be excluded a priori.
 * In the article I reported that he was accused because I wasn't able to find (with a quick search, at least) what finally happened of the charges. You know, we have had most of the politicians accused of something, and thousands of trials are still currently active about bribery (trials in Italy are so usually long that the Justice Court of Den Haag censored our system many times), I can't really follow each one of them. If you know he was discharged, well: add it, I am not aware of this, but I'll believe you. I have no problems in recording it. Better for him and for Lombards. The fact of reporting a similar accusation is not against NPOV, nor against privacy, given that when a politician is accused of bribery, this is a public fact following the choice he made of (freely, I guess)candidating himself to a public charge.


 * Again, Gianfranco, I agree with your point insomuch as including these facts as describing events that surround him, and again my only umbrage taken is if such charges are described, but the circumstances surrounding the charges are not fully explained. In other words, yes, of course he was charged with impropriety. One would expect that a politician, especially in Italy and especially one who has so many political enemies on the Left, would be the target of such charges.  However, even though you state that you don't follow politics as closely as you once did, you must admit that if he was actually found to be guilty of any charges, you would certainly have heard about it because his detractors would be shouting such news from the rooftops. In essence, then, without adding a lengthy background such as one that might be based upon the excellent and knowledgable points you make in this discussion, I feel it is more neutral to simply leave allegations alone unless they have some sort of precedent- setting quality about them. As you may probably agree, there is nary a politician, Italian or otherwise, in any free society who does not have detractors constantly making allegations and charges about him or her. As I 'm sure you're also aware, often an allegation of wrongdoing can inflict political damage even if the allegations are subsequently disproved, and political professionals are well aware of this fact. Unlike the virginity issue, which as you correctly added and as you see I did not edit, that was a platform which he created for himself. Everything else, especially spurious charges made by opponents, until proven otherwise, are dubious at best and I feel are politically, not factually, motivated.


 * Of course, I personally don't use such allegations as a denigratory argument. And in Italy these charges are not considered of such seriousness, indeed. Bribery is not completely considered a serious crime, here, and we know that a trial can end in many ways depending of the accused's power and the judges' friendships. It is a deviation of the correct sense of legality, but a charge is somehow relevant as an indication of "absence of evident innocence"; referring to our Formigoni, it does not mean that a crime was really committed, but it indicates that attention is needed on the subject. I might personally not agree with this, but if I have to report what happens here, that is.
 * About roofs, ...no place left any more, and in the resulting noise it is sometimes hard to clearly identify any melody. I really wasn't aware of his discharge, mainly for lack of interest. I'd also like to add that the proportions of the phenomenon are perhaps quite unknown abroad: in the last decade a presumable number of 10,000 politicians were investigated by police and judges (also because our judges love to follow fashions), often for more than one hypothesis of crime, and - due to their positions - they were all famous, all well known, all of them were then necessarily named in newspapers or in TV news together with their charges. In some cases, like for Andreotti, there was a greater attention, in some other cases no journalists at all followed the trials. Finally, you only follow what happens to your friends, if you are able to do it (usually, if your friends tell you), and if you have such friends...
 * And all this is still going on. ;-)


 * Votes: a 62% is evidently a success in an election in which many candidates are in competition. While instead only two candidates are voted, this is not as meaningful as before. Sincerely, I don't know by heart which electoral system the Lombardy region adopted (this is a fault of mine, I know, but I'm now too old to follow our funny politics up to the technical details on how power is conquered and detained here). It should however be derived by the new general law, so it should be a ballot result. Sorry, I have to remember you that you could have added your source to the article, and I would have left it there. :-)
 * Just to be completely clear on my side, I'm not pro Formigoni and I'm not against him: I am not a christian in a country in which Christianism is part of the culture and the heritage which I'm proud of. So, I respect everybody and hardly ever find someone to follow, I just ty to watch with a non-emotioned eye. In this sense I can find funny (at least) that he is mainly famous for his virginity and that this fame is part of a process that brought him to become a local governor, because the essential scheme would be in my ingenuous mind: "you have the qualities needed to govern, you govern". I therefore only have an opinion on the elegance of all that (was this really transparent in the resulting article?), but being the Italian political class quite rough in its generality, this doesn't make me a partisan of opposers rather than of supporters. :-)
 * I'm very far from politics, as the most ancient Wikipedians perhaps will remember, so I have no political agendas to follow. I am still able (and luckily free) to consider both that Enrico Berlinguer was a talented politician and that Amintore Fanfani was another valuable figure of our country, at the same time.


 * I don't think there are any "bad" Italians. I just think some are better than others;)


 * Now, I really thank you for your note. I'm just curious about how did you hear about Formigoni (given that I didn't suppose he was famous abroad)?


 * If I told you, you wouldn't believe me;)

Greetings --G

E buona notte a voi, signore! David dePaoli

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