New clash in the Covid Commission, Fdi-Speranza sparks

River hearing, but no progress. The Commission of inquiry into Covid returns to audit the then health minister, Roberto Speranza, for the second time. New questions, new requests, new documents filed, but the scenario does not change. In fact, a few minutes were enough to ignite tempers, forcing President Marco Lisei (Fdi) to suspend the session when the first round of discussion had not even begun. He will do so more than once due to protests from the opposition precisely because of the management - as a "military tribunal", underline the opposition - carried out by Lisei himself ("If you don't like how I preside - he reiterated from the presidency bench - that's the door").

The hearing restarts where it left off at the end of October. And it doesn't seem to go away from there. Fdi senator Antonella Zedda immediately thinks about making it clear what the score of the hearing will be and bluntly accuses Speranza of "clumsy" attempts to "absolve himself". Zedda's sights are on "his serious responsibilities" in "the refusal of the Eli Lilly company's free donation of doses of monoclonal antibodies" which brought "enormous costs in terms of human lives as well as economic ones".

Accusations of "lack of transparency" which are also made by the Melonian group leader in the Chamber, Galeazzo Bignami who provocatively asks: "what is Mr Speranza hiding?".

The former minister speaks of "unfounded and completely unacceptable theorems" recalling that he was "the minister who pushed the hardest, among those of the 27, for there to be a joint purchase of vaccines at a European level". Nothing to blame himself for, as the majority representatives in the commission invite him to do. Indeed: "I stand with my head held high for the work I have done in my country. We have a clear conscience", he underlined.

But Italy, Bignami contested, was the nation "with the highest number of deaths from Covid" and "Speranza did not respond, taking refuge in the usual self-acquittal litany that he has been repeating for 6 years". But Bignami - revealing that he "was vaccinated with all the doses that could be given" - also asks to "pacify the climate with respect to this contrast between 'no-vax' and 'yes-vax'. He does so, however, in the light of expelled doctors. A theme at the center of the controversy after the Chamber's approval for their possible reinstatement: "we have not officially reinstated anyone; we have provided with a rule that doctors removed from the Medical Association can reapply. Can't even ask the question? But are we crazy?".

The opposition is united and shields Speranza. And with the leader of the dem group in the Senate Francesco Boccia they also ask that "this torment end" and that the cycle of hearings be completed as soon as possible. With whom? With Conte and Arcuri. And if there is an indicative date for the first - November 23rd - for the second the agenda still needs to be fine-tuned.