Sparks at Giuli’s audition. M5s attacks, the minister: “Suffer it, my heart”

Sparkling finale for the hearing of the Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giulito the Culture commissions of the House and Senate meeting in joint session. The controversy comes from the five-star senator Luca Pirondini who, not satisfied with the answers provided to the parliamentarians’ questions, interrupted the owner of the Roman College several times. Pirondini goes straight: “If you don’t know the answers, tell us you don’t know them”, he says, referring to the situation of the opera and symphony foundations. “Maybe we’ll talk about it elsewhere”, replies the minister.

Pirondini insists and this time he is stopped by the president of the Culture commission of the Chamber, Federico Mollicone: “I kindly remind you that once the parliamentarians have asked their questions they must listen to the minister’s reply and no dialogue is permitted. I am the president and I give the floor, you don’t have the floor and you do me the courtesy to keep quiet. There are rules, you are making an unauthorized intervention.

But the controversy does not end. And it is here that Giuli, disheartened, quotes the words of Ulysses in the Odyssey: “Bear it, my heart”. And he ends like this: “I believe I have answered everything and I consider my symphony finished.”

A note from Pirondini will arrive later: “The behavior of Minister Giuli is unacceptable who today in the hearing before the Culture commissions did not answer any of the questions posed by the M5s, as well as others. In particular, I asked him to give precise information on the possible transformation of opera foundations from their current private to public legal nature. Well, in his only hint in response he made an unforgivable blunder by saying that they are already public.

And on Mollicone: “I was intimidated by the president of the commission who even called the parliamentary assistants to take me out of the room. This behavior inside Parliament is unacceptable and constitutes a dangerous precedent. Ministers have the duty to respond to parliamentarians and we we have the duty to ask the questions on behalf of the citizens”, closes Pirondini.