Berlusconi’s Advice

March 14, 2008 · Filed Under Italian politics · 4 Comments 

Mr Berlusconi, the man who would be Prime Minister of Italy (again), and one of Italy’s potentially top five sinners, dropped a slight clanger on prime time TV, yesterday, I think it was.

In an interview he told a young worried female ‘precarious’ worker that she would be able to solve her financial worries by simply marrying a millionaire. He even offered his son as a potential partner.

By the way, ‘Precarietà’ is an Italian word used to describe those who do not have a full time work contract.

Veltroni, Berlusconi’s number one election opponent was, understandably, quick to turn this off-hand comment into vote catching capital. Veltroni observed, quite reasonably, that in a country in which more and more youngsters are worrying about their futures and their finances, Berlusconi’s ‘advice’ showed just how out of touch the media magnate was with Italy’s populous and its problems.

Meanwhile, and unsurprisingly, Berlusco has been playing his ‘advice’ down as being ‘tongue in cheek’. Trouble is that many Italian youngsters may now be rather wary of voting such a joker in.

Still, if Berlusco does manage to get Italy’s top political spot for a third time, if nothing else, he will keep the Italian people amused.

Oh, the Italian electoral circus - pure entertainment.

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The Vatican is Anti-Berlusconi!

March 12, 2008 · Filed Under Funny · 4 Comments 

Yep, it’s official, well almost. There have been quite a number of news stories about the new 21st century sins that the dear old Vatican has come up with. And here they are, the sins, that is, in no particular order, at least I don’t believe so:

  1. Environmental pollution - Change you car - or burn in Hell.
  2. Genetic manipulation - Create Chimera and be damned.
  3. Accumulating excessive wealth - Go bankrupt and head for paradise.
  4. Inflicting poverty - Make people poor and end up beneath the floor.
  5. Drug trafficking and consumption - Doing and dealing drugs is bad for your soul.
  6. Morally debatable experiments - Experiment morally, or face the heat.
  7. Violation of fundamental rights of human nature - Act like a devil and meet the Devil personally.

As you can see, sin number three, accumulating excessive wealth, appears to indicate that the Holy See does not see eye to eye with wealth accumulating Mr Berlusconi.

The question is, what with the Italian general elections just round the corner, will the Italian people decide to vote in an excessively rich sinner in the country that is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church?

I can see the new election posters that will surely appear: ‘Don’t Vote for a Sinner’, ‘Do You Want a Sinner as a Leader?’, ‘Sin is Bad - don’t vote for Sinners’. or ‘A Sin A Day, Makes the Voters Go Away.’ ‘Rich People are Sinners, not Leaders.’ et al.

Oddly enough, the Italian media appears to have remained quite quiet about this. I wonder why….

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Italy has No Government…well, not quite

February 12, 2008 · Filed Under Italian politics · 9 Comments 

Cara Jo, a fellow blogger from over the pond, was a little disappointed to see that I had not written about Italy’s current state of non-government. Well, I’ve decided to attempt to explain the current political situation in Italy.

First of all, it’s not true that Italy is without a government, in that Prodi’s crew still run things, however, his government, or rather coalition, is unable to create new laws. It can administrate the country up until the results of the elections of 13 and 14 April are known.

Now, as to what happened. As many will know, the actions of one Clemente Mastella, the leader of one of the parties that made up Prodi’s fragile coalition, effectively destroyed Prodi’s government’s tiny majority. This meant that Prodi’s government could not continue, and Prodi lost a confidence vote. He therefore felt obliged to hand in his resignation and step down as prime minister.

This is where the fun starts. As you may be aware, the electoral system in Italy is based on a complex proportional representation system, meaning that governments are destined to be based a coalition of bigger and smaller parties. The bigger parties are not large enough to command a total majority and so they need to rely on the support of other smaller parties to obtain, hold onto power, and to push through new laws. This reliance on big/little party coalitions has led to the recurring instability that Italian governments have experienced since the second world war, incidentally.

In an attempt to resolve this situation, Berlusconi introduced a reform which meant that parties with much less than 5% (I’m ready to be corrected on this - I have been corrected! Thanks Cristian.) of the vote could not obtain seats in parliament, thus reducing, very slightly, the influence of the smaller parties on the larger ones and introducing a theoretical touch of stability. The fact that this reform may also have helped Berlusconi’s coalition to retain power, is neither here nor there.

Anyway, moving back to Prodi’s situation. Prodi’s gang wanted to introduce more electoral reform in order to further reduce the ‘little’ party effect on Italy’s governments. Only his government collapsed before such a reform could be passed.

However, despite the collapse of Prodi, talks about carrying out electoral reform went on, and there was an apparent wish to introduce such reform before elections for a new government were held. But, although it appears that such a reform would have been feasible, it could only have been pushed through with the consensus of just about all of the parties having seats in the Italian parliament.

So what happened is that all the parties had a think and a re-think, and many, including obviously the little parties, decided that it would not be particularly advantageous to them to agree to such a reform.

As it had become evident that a form of deadlock had been reached, meaning that electoral reform could not be introduced, Italy’s president, Napolitano, was obliged to initiate the election process and set a date for the elections. Indeed, elections have now been set for the 13 and 14 April, although the warring factions, otherwise known as political parties here, are not even happy about the election date - so it may change.

In summary: Prodi’s government collapsed, but there was still the slim possibility of introducing electoral reform before the general elections. However, nobody wanted the reform to go through, so a general election was called.

What all this means for poor old Italy, is that the chances are that the next government may well be as short lived as Prodi’s, and so Italy’s revolving door governments will continue. Unless the next government actually manages to introduces electoral reform, in which case there may be a chance that the subsequent government is quite stable.

OK, I hope that has clarified the situation. I did check out my facts with my ex-politican student, but I’m prepared to be corrected. So correct away (Rob, Man of Roma - this means you!).

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