An amnesty is understood as cancelling criminal records for a series of crimes and freeing all prisoners who were condemned for those crimes. It's like starting over with a new slate.

A pardon is a presidential prerogative that is applied to a single person who has been definitively condemned and imprisoned.

An indulto is a measure of leniency broadly applied to most crimes that reduces sentences by a number of years. In this case a three year reduction of most sentences was voted into law.

A study conducted for the magistracy indicated that a one year reduction of sentences would have been far more effective. It would have released nearly the same number of prisoners without causing an avalanche.

Thanks to a previous law passed in 1998, the last three years of detention are passed in semi-liberty under a program of reinsertion into society. The present law immediately cuts off this passage into society for those prisoners currently involved leaving them out on a limb. Moreover, because of the 1998 law, any prisoner who has six years to serve may immediately benefit with a regime of semi-liberty.

It's improbable that the Berlusconi coalition would have accepted a one or two year reduction of sentences. That would only have touched common and petty criminality which makes up a significant part of the prison population.

In conclusion, Mastella's law has at least three scandalous provisions:

1)    A three-year reduction of all sentences which means that Berlusconi's condemned henchmen such as Cesare Previti will be turned over to social services in a matter of days;
2)    The specific inclusion of white collar crimes against the administration; corruption, fraud and bribery; and vote buying from the mafia;
3)    The application of the law to crimes committed before May 2, 2006, and not yet discovered by the magistracy.

In other words most crimes committed while Berlusconi was in power.

Now, in context, a citizen expects a ruling party or coalition to get to work on realizing their own program. Prodi has taken steps to realize his economic policies. However, he is betraying his program on justice, not only in this specific case.

His government did not pass an urgent decree to suspend Berlusconi's devastating law, the so-called Judiciary Reform Act. The law has since gone into effect. Despite well publicized promises nothing has been done yet.

Mastella has also proposed a first draft of a law that will limit freedom of the press on the false pretext that too many wiretap transcriptions end up in the press. This law was already in the making by his predecessor, the racist Roberto Castelli. Leaks to the press of the law's draft is far worse than feared, since the law also seeks to further hamper investigative judges from using legal interceptions as case evidence.

I have previously discussed the farcical pretexts behind this initiative. Let me cap it again. Last year Berlusconi's daily, il Giornale, published transcripts of conversations between Consorte, indicted in the Unipol financial scandal, and Fassino, secretary of the Left Democrats. Berlusconi immediately launched a much-publicized attack against judges and reporters in cahoots to publish transcripts. He called for a law to curtail this grave violation of the defendant's rights and privacy. His Minister of Justice immediately sent inspectors to Milan to investigate the PM's allegedly responsible for the leaks.

The Ministry investigators reported back that the transcripts published by Berlusconi's paper had never been in the hands of the Milan magistrates.

The Consorte- Fassino transcripts had been ordered to be destroyed by the Milan magistrates as being irrelevant to their investigations.

The transcripts, therefore, had been illegally copied and passed on to Berlusconi's newspaper.

As I have been reporting these past weeks, the Abu Omar case has uncovered a vast network of illegal wiretapping that involves the Italian Secret Services at the highest levels as well as several reporters who worked for both the Sismi and Berlusconi's papers.

However this does not end up on the front pages. What counts on the front pages is the plight of poor uber-citizen and wannabe king, Vittorio Emanuele III, unjustly dragged before the public for his raunchy chats.

Yes, a law to severely sanction the press and hamper judiciary investigations is top priority.

When in the hell is Mr. Prodi going to get around to working on his own program instead of giving top priority to Berlusconi's program?

The majority coalition party of Antonio di Pietro, the Italian Party of Values, voted against the law, along with members of the post-fascist Allianza Nazionale and the Lega Nord.

Di Pietro "auto-suspended" himself as Minister and took to the street organizing demonstrations against the law. Although the vote was secret, Di Pietro published the names of all deputies who voted the law on his site.

When the vote passed the Senate, di Pietro declared he respects the institutions even when they take decisions with which he does not agree.