He has resigned from his post Piero Tatafiore, spokesman for Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli, following the Pd ’s protests against the dissemination on the Ministry of Culture’s official website of three communiqués containing statements by the minister in open support of Edmondo Cirielli, the right-wing candidate in Campania’s regional elections and a leading figure in Fratelli d’Italia. The releases were later removed from the MiC website shortly after they were published. “The press office of the Ministry of Culture,” the Pd deputies of the House Culture Committee said in a note yesterday, “has issued three communiqués in support of Cirielli’s candidacy for the presidency of the Campania region, reporting, moreover, false data on the government’s action in the Campania region. This is a shameful act, which has never occurred before: a very serious institutional tear. Giuli is using institutions and ministry offices to campaign with citizens’ money. We will demand accountability for this and submit parliamentary questions.”
Late in the afternoon, protests also came from Campania’s Pd secretary, Piero De Luca: “We will demand an account in the appropriate venues of Minister Giuli’s use of ministerial offices for political purposes. The communiqués issued today by the Ministry of Culture’s press office, expressly calling for a vote for the Cirielli candidate, is a very serious matter, which cannot go unnoticed. Minister Giuli will have to account for what has happened. It is unacceptable that public offices, funded by citizens to carry out institutional functions, should be bent for political propaganda purposes. An episode that raises deep questions about respect for rules and the autonomy of the public machine.”
In the evening, Giuli’s spokesman announced his resignation in a statement circulated to agencies in which he explicitly acknowledged the error. “I have just communicated to the minister of culture, Alessandro Giuli, my immediate and irrevocable resignation from the post of head of the Mic press office. The use of institutional instruments for communications of a political nature was an improper mistake on my part, for which I apologize first of all to the minister, whom I thank for the opportunity for professional growth that he has granted me, and to the entire cabinet.” Ministry sources relaunched by ADNKronos let it be known that for Minister Giuli, Tatafiore’s resignation was a due act: “For the minister it was a due and irreversible act, the public political commitment of a minister expressed by Fdi or any other party legitimate and unquestionable, but for Giuli it is unacceptable any shadow of suspicion on a use of institutional communication tools for activities that it is up to the agencies, if anything, to report.”
Tatafiore’s resignation formally closes the case, but it does not resolve the broader issue: defining the boundaries between institutional information and political communication, an issue destined to resurface whenever the balance between the two spheres appears compromised.
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| Giuli spokesman resigns over communiques supporting Cirielli |
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