'Pianisti' curbed as MPs fingerprinted for votes

PARIS - Under pressure from a public sickened by the taint of corruption that hangs over the legislature, Italy's Lower House of Parliament has called on MPs to register their fingerprints before they can vote.

The high-tech electronic system aims to curb cheating by absentee MPs, who get a mate to lean over from an adjacent seat and press their voting buttons on their behalf.

Caught many times on television, the button-pressers have been dubbed "pianisti" - "pianists" - for their sinuous arms and dextrous hands.

The practice, politely called "plural voting", has stoked ire. The public's already sour mood towards MPs - viewed generally as sneaky, lazy or on the take - has been compounded by the economic recession. Yet despite the anger over the "pianisti", no vote has ever gone to a recount or been declared invalid.

"Deputies have a duty to vote only for themselves," the Speaker of the House, Gianfranco Fini, said last week as he unveiled the new system. "It's a matter of public morality."

With the help of "pianisti", absentee MPs can be recorded as present in official records, and this entitles them to claim the daily parliamentary attendance allowance of 250 ($650). The "anti-pianisti" system requires an MP to press his finger on an electronic fingerprint reader during the vote.

The new system was put to the test yesterday when the House voted in favour of a resolution calling for China to respect human rights in Tibet.

Although the fingerprinting is voluntary, rightwing deputies kicked up a media storm, declaring it a form of surveillance and a semi-criminalisation of MPs.

"With these methods, the representatives of the people are being violated and it's unacceptable," said Paolo Guzzanti, a member of a small group, the Liberal Party, and one of 19 MPs in the 630-seat legislature who refused to be fingerprinted. "I condemn the 'pianisti' but the solution is worse than the problem."

Fingerprinting carries special stigma in Italy because last year the country began to fingerprint Gypsies in a bid to crack down on crime, child begging and illegal immigration. The campaign was attacked by the European Parliament, which described it as "politically motivated and based on prejudices".

Guzzanti noted acidly that Italy was joining "only Albania and Mexico" in using electronic fingerprinting in parliamentary votes. This discredited Italian democracy and helped the rise of extremism, in the same way that fascism arose in the 1920s, he argued.

James Walston, professor of international relations at the American University of Rome, scoffed at Guzzanti, accusing him of failing to address the real issue - public trust that has hit rock-bottom.

"In Italy, the saying is 'as soon as the law is passed, somebody finds a way around it'," Walston said. "I can't think of a way around [the fingerprint voting system], apart from cutting your finger off and lending it to a friend. Whether they will or not, the general presumption in Italy is that they will."

One of the top-selling books in Italy in the past two years has been La Casta (The Caste), a tell-all book about Italian politics.

With salary and other emoluments, legislators typically clear 12,000 ($30,500) a month, making them the highest paid in Europe, it says. Additional privileges include free or highly discounted air and train fares, bodyguards, bullet-proof chauffeur-driven cars, personal tennis lessons and a large pension that is paid from 60 even if an MP has served for as little as 30 months.

Two dozen MPs in the present assembly have criminal convictions, according to Italian press reports.