Interview with G8 Commissioner Delegate Guido Bertolaso
Guido Bertolaso, an Italian civil servant and medic aged 59, heads up the Civil Protection Department which answers to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, or Prime Minister's Office. He is also the Commissioner Delegate for the organization of the G8 Summit.
What is the most abiding impression you're left with now that the G8 Summit in L'Aquila has been over for three days?
Like many of us, I too am starting to come back down to earth after a moment of pure satisfaction. Every time an important result is achieved, the aftermath always brings with it a sudden change in the way we feel. Everything that we'd been focusing on, with a hint of fear that things might go awry, disappears after the last round has been rung, making room for completely different thoughts.
The first thought is that we're still here, still on our feet, with all the spotlights, the hugging, the slaps on the back. So we've won, we must have won, we made it! The smiles you see all around you make you smile too, and the weary look in the eyes of those around you who are completely worn out after not managing to catch a wink of sleep for days, turn into a hazy look of total happiness: It's over, and it all went well.
Many people agree that it all went well. So what happens next?
What happens next is that you're tempted to shrug off your exhaustion, all the effort. We're professionals, we start over again from scratch. Staff meeting tomorrow morning at the usual time; nothing special's happened, we've just done our duty. But that game only works in part. Your body rejects your brain's attempt to consider everything as just being part of the routine. We've won a very important match, and we scored a really good result. We put every ounce of energy and soul that we had into it and now we're going back to our routine activity, but only after paying the right price for the fact that we're normal people.
How much did achieving this result cost you?
We're not robots, machines, computers. We're men and women. It feels as though we spent the past few days under water, holding our breath. We always had to be a step ahead of the others, to watch over the whole area of this police college that has now chalked up so many records, but also to watch over our own and others' schedules, putting everying into making sure the shortest time went by between any kind of question being asked and our coming up with the right answer. We almost got to the point where we felt it normal to answer before anyone had even asked the question.
Everything now seems to be over, and to have gone off well.
This is the time when you feel really good, both within your own self and with the people you've been working with. Amidst this chorus of congratulations and compliments, in which our illustrious guests joined in quite spontaneously too, you wonder what impact this success is going to have on you, and you're happy because you kept your word. We didn't betray the trust that we demanded they give us. We showed them that we're equal to the task and worthy of the excellent reputation we've forged for ourselves by working so hard for so many years. Then you realize that, when all is said and done, the thing that really makes you happy is that you can look back and assess the results in the light of what many people no longer even consider to be a yardstick these days: we made our country look good. I'm talking about Italy, not just about the government, the prime minister or the governing majority, but Italy; all of us, every one of us, every single person in this country who loves Italy and who feels good when their country "looks good".
Has no one been singing out of the chorus?
We know very well that we're surrounded by people who use different criteria to judge by, focusing on themselves and their own ideologies, on a political rationale based very much on an "us and them" approach. It's not very different from the old maxim whereby some people used to say that "we were better off when we were worse off!" We know that they were disappointed, and we're not at all said that they were. They weren't just disappointed because of us and of the results that we achieved, they were angry with nature, too, for coming down on our side and lending us such a huge hand: not a drop of rain, not a single major earth tremor, only the beauty of these wonderful surroundings in a parenthesis of absolute normality.
So do you think that the position adopted by those who criticized the decision to move the G8 Summit to L'Aquila on the grounds that it would shift the focus away from the earthquake victims' problems, is now obsolete?
I think events have made it obsolete. Now we can carry on serenely with our traditional job of taking care of this quake-struck region, of the people of L'Aquila who came here yesterday for a short break, walking with us around the places that hosted the Leaders, and of those who haven't yet come, those who are still in tents or in hotels, those who accepted the G8 Summit even though they haven't yet got a precise schedule to help them track their future over the coming months or years. A lot of people understood the move and told us that the G8 Summit in L'Aquila was a gamble that we took on their behalf, a card well played that has won us not only sponsors and restoration projects (which are always welcome, of course!), but above all, it has won us the result that we were out to achieve, which was to publicize this region, to find our way into the hearts of thousands of potential guests who may never even have heard of Abruzzo before, to foster unique opportunities for contacts, relations, dialogue and interest in the fate of L'Aquila and of the other towns and villages that suffered in the earthquake.
Is there anyone you'd like to thank in particular?
My thoughts go to all of those in Coppito who've made the excellent result we achieved here possible, to our veterans and to all of those who've worked here with us for the first time, managing the thousand and one aspects involved in hosting the World's Leaders and their entourages, in guaranteeing their security, and in generally running the myriad things that made the event what it was. My thoughts are a mixture of simple gratitude and the satisfaction of giving so many colleagues and helpers the chance of a truly unique experience, the kind of thing they'll be able to talk to their friends and families about. And I would extend that gratitude also to all of those who've been working on the G8 without even coming to Coppito, holding the fort on other fronts, in other situations, so that the people organizing the G8 could feel free to get on with their job without the fear of neglecting other and equally urgent problems. My special thanks go to them too. They're not on the family photos of the Summit, but that's the only difference.
How about those who are still in Coppito?
We've achieved a great deal, but there's still a whole lot more to do. We won't be leaving, we haven't finished our job here yet by any means. In fact, we carried on doing that job without a break even in the thick of the G8 Summit, and we're carrying on doing it today with undiminished urgency, with the same care and the same determination. But with one difference. We'll be taking down the flags of all the countries we hosted here, but the Italian flag, our flag, is going to continue flying proudly over Coppito. And when we look at it, we're going to feel just a teensy bit prouder than in the past because we've honoured it with a good job done.
