A real government: Hope or another illusion?

The IV Berlusconi government seems like is going to be the first serious government seen in many years in Italy. I find rather amazing that this self made billionaire, full of himself, arrogant, sexist, witty, ill mannered, ridiculous at times, at his 3rd election victory is really trying to do something for the country. Since he took power a couple of weeks ago and after only one Council of ministers gathering, he has already started giving the impression that this time they are not joking and they want to make things work. Whether one agrees or less with what they are going to do, I have to admit, it is a strange feeling for me to read on the paper that an Italian government is actually doing something without caring too much of the people mood or the other parties. Let me say what they are doing so far, otherwise I will sound like those governments I always hated:
1. Illegal immigration is now a crime. Those who are living in Italy illegally will not be regularized but expelled if caught by the police.
2. The Rom emergency is going to be tackled immediately by some special envoys in the major cities
3. The rubbish emergency in Naples is going to be solved immediately opening some new storage and burners. The places will be protected by the army and people who will protest and oppose to the opening of these will be jailed. 
4. Italy will start, within 5 years, to build nuclear power stations
5. The Bridge between Sicily and Italy will be built again.
6. Tax on the first home is abolished
7. Overtime rates are now tax free for the employer and for the workers

Believe me, if they manage to do what they say I think that a few Italians will start believing that not all politicians are alike. I am one of those. Good luck Mr. President!

Berlusconi's third time. The dwarf's biggest victory! (Thanks to Veltroni)

The only one that expected the net victory of Berlusconi’s coalition was Berlusconi himself. While votes gets counted, thanks to Walter Veltroni’s simplification of politics, we will have no communists, pacifist, socialists, fascists in the Parliament. Is it positive? If Berlusconi had not taken some tiny political parties in his PDL, probably there would have been less fascists and pensioners (there is a party in Berlusconi’s coalition called Pensioners Party) and an even simpler Parliamentary situation. For the first time since the republic came to exist there will be no socialists, fascists and communists representing the Italians but my biggest satisfaction is the fact that there is no Catholic Organised Party, actually there is one but it is so negligible. The other shock is the victory of Bossi’s Northern League with something around 8.5% that if we consider collects votes only in Northern Italy, gives the idea of the big scale of this victory. For the third time Berlusconi goes to power and this time we will have him running the country for 5 full years and he will be able to prove how good he is as he has no excuse this time to accuse this or that allied. While Berlusconi goes through the list of the Ministers of his government, many political leaders have resigned. It’s funny to talk about new Italy when the leader is someone that has been around the political scene since 1994, but this time I feel like the Italians have preferred the old to the new. Let’s see what he is going to do now for my country. I stay away from it, I stay gladly away from Italy but we will have five tough years marked by unpopular decisions and a few strikes. Anyway, the disappearance in Italy of the socialists is the saddest part, for me, coming from a very socialist family and I will miss my old adversaries, the Communists. It’s a new Italy, as I said before but the people are still the same old ones and I hope, but I do not believe it, that there will be this big revolution that is always announced. So far from the votes counted we have Berlusconi’s coalition around 47% versus Veltroni’s at 37%. The only other party that should enter the Lower House should be the UDC that got a 5.6%. Senate: Berlusconi 47% and Veltroni 38%, UDC 5.7%. Still unknown the number of senator distribution due to the complex system but the numbers are very clear and Berlusconi has no problem in running the country has he pleases and I am looking forward to hearing about the excuses he will find now to justify his inaction. In the meantime the first steps of this government should be the solution of the rubbish problem in Naples and Alitalia’s bankruptcy as Berlusconi declared he would not have “given” Alitalia to France. Good luck Italy! You need it! And this time Mr. Berlusconi, you go no excuses to avoid reforms and you will have no communists to attack on just everything, you will have nothing stopping you from restart building nuclear power stations, you will have nobody stoping you from proving to be the man of the Providence, nobody stopping you from keep up with all the promises you have been making since you entered politics. However I hope that one of my dreams might come true and thanks to the Northern League we will assist at the division of Italy in at least two different countries. Of course I am a Southerner and I would love a Southern Italian passport..

Italy Votes: updates

The new political picture is taking shape. Italy seems on the verge of a revolution. Of course I am not talking about a proper one, because this kind of revolution is proposed by those against which Italians should overthrow. The revolution I am talking about is political and, I am sure, it will last the time of an election. Already in the past we have seen alliances or election pacts or parties merging to run the competition and, inevitably, they end up in failure. We have seen, in the past, the most colorful coalitions and in some cases they looked like destined to last forever. However, in all cases they have result into heavy electoral defeats and subsequent change of mind. Going back in time we see the Republican and Liberal parties running together, We have seen Fini’s National Alliance running with Mario Segni, a former Christian Democrat liked a lot by the leftists (please note that National Alliance is a right wing party), we have had all sort of alliances between Socialists and Green Party, Socialists and Radicals (the Rose in the fist, that should have created the first Liberal Socialist anti clerical party) and a few more that currently do not come to my mind.

I am not saying that the Democratic Party or the Popolo della Liberta’ will be dismantled after the elections but I am pretty sure that after the elections the other coalitions that are taking shape will certainly cease to exist. I am talking about La Sinistra (The Left) that sees 2 Communist parties, a leftist party, Democratic Left, and the Green Party. Or the one that is taking shape in the middle of the Parliament between the UDC, former Berlusconi ally and now enemy, and the White Rose, a party formed a few weeks ago by former UDC politicians that have left the party because of the controversial positions of UDC leader, Casini. Add to this the possible alliance with Mastella’s UDEUR and we will have the Former CDU which was the party that up to 1995 included these three components. On the right hand side of the Parliament there could be an electoral alliance between Storace’s newly formed The Right (Party) that has left Fini’s AN because too much towards centrists positions, and the nostalgic of an Italy that brought to the dissidents death and loss of freedom.

So in this picture Italy is going to the elections. It seems that at the Lower House Berlusconi’s PDL is going to win the 55% of the seats but at the Senate where the election law is different there could be a different majority.

However, the impression I get from the current situation is that if the PDL wins at the lower house but doesn’t get enough MPs at the Senate, it will be necessary an election law reform and this time we will assist, for the first time in the Italian history, a government that will include people coming from all parties ever represented in the Italian Parliament, fro mthe former fascist to the former communists passing via liberals, Catholics, radicals, socialist and so on. And probably it will be the only time that Italy will make some steps forward.

My hope is to have a hung Parliament so that the parties can talk to each other and not having small parties in the coalitions, they will be able to make some reforms without fearing of being blackmailed by a Mastella that with a 1% of consensus made the Prodi government fall…

I am really optimistic about this elections and despite my non-vote, I hope that there won’t be a clear winner and I would invite my fellow nationals to vote for the PDL at the lower house and DP at the Senate.

Italy Votes... again...

Well, well, well… You all know that the elections in Italy will be held between April 13th and 14th. Two days as it is tradition in my country. Still don't know why we are the only country in the world where people have two days to vote… Probably you don’t know that in Italy the polls are hosted in schools and this means that kids miss one week school every time we have to vote for an election or a referendum. This year, if things go the way the opposition wants will mean that kids will have a couple of weeks off for the National and Local elections plus another week for the second run of local elections if none of the candidate mayors or president of province or region governor obtains at least 50%+1 vote after the first run, plus another week for the referendum that should abolish the election law with which we are going to vote. So, around 1.2 billion euro costs plus all the disruption to families, schools and so on.

Does it seem normal that a country has to create such havoc? It seems like it never passed through anyone’s mind the idea of voting during the week using the public servants working in the boroughs and perhaps using prefab polls or the borough themselves or some football stadium… Who gives a shit! But I cannot really understand the fact of voting in schools and pay people to be there on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday! People that will get free days at work and will get paid as well for going through the trouble of serving the country. Bullshit! Even the people working at the polls are normally sponsored by the political parties. I have never received a call from my borough asking me to go to the polls and serve the country… Normally the parties sponsor the people that need some cash or some time off…

Anyway, I wasn’t going to talk about this but about the current situation, party by party.

PD – Democratic Party. They will run alone, so if they lose it will be by them and whatever result they will get will be a success for such a brave political party. The call to Berlusconi’s Forza Italia to run alone has partially worked. Berlusconi new founded party, the PDL, will host Fini’s AN and Forza Italia. The PD will try to find a formula to have an allied, Di Pietro’s IDV, a small centrist party led by the judge symbol of Bribesville. Candidate PM: Walter Veltroni.

La Sinistra – It includes 4 leftist radical parties: PRC, PDCI, SD and Verdi. The First two are communist parties; the third one is a newly formed party that has been created by the exit of some leftist groups from the PD. The Verdi are the Green Party. They would have like to run with some sort of agreement with the PD but, as said above, the PD has refused any possible agreement even if with the current election system it would have increased the chances of winning the elections at the Senate. Candidate PM: Fausto Bertinotti, current Lower House Speaker.

PDL – This is the new party founded by Berlusconi, all of a sudden, that attracted so many criticism by his own allies. Amongst which Gianfranco Fini, leader of AN that now, all of a sudden, not only is in favour of the alliance but seems like he is the main sponsor and he doesn’t exclude to merge into the PDL and say goodbye to the party he founded a decade or so ago. Strange beasts Italian politicians are. Let’s add to this party the lady with a very cumbersome name, Alessandra Mussolini. She left Fini’s party when this declared that Fascism wasn’t something good and that Mussolini’s grandpa, Benito, was not the greatest Statesman Italy ever had (he declared this a few years before). She moved into a racist, xenophobic rightwing party and now she is back with Fini. Not only, now it’s entering the EPP, European Popular Party, which is far light years from Mussolini. Another chap that left Fini last year due to his Christian democrat approach is called Storace that created another Rightist party, La Destra. He will not be joining the PDL because the Northern League has put a veto on the participation of someone that still doesn’t recognize Israel rights and has not denied the damages of the racial laws during the Second World War that led to the deportation of many Italian Jews. But the nicest guests will be Lamberto Dini, one of the guys who made the incumbent government fall and Clemente Mastella, the main conspirator. Currently Mastella claims that he doesn’t know whether he will be with the PDL or with the White Rose, another party. Candidate PM: Berlusconi.

CDU – This is Mr. Casini’s Party. The only party not openly invited to the PDL because recognized as a pain in the ass. Even if Mr. Casini has a very weak will… He wanted to support the idea of a technical government to make a new election law and some more constitutional reforms before going back to vote but, all of a sudden, he supported Berlusconi idea and there were no more numbers to go ahead with a Grosse Koalition. To thank him for the support, Mr. Berlusconi, literally screwed him and asked him, by phone, whether he wanted to be part of the new Party: take it or leave it. At the beginning Casini, one of the biggest hypocrites of the Italian politics, was annoyed but now he is rethinking about it after he lost some very good elements from his party that will be creating a new Centrist Party, the White Rose. PM Candidate: I suppose, Casini.

The White Rose – TWR is a new political party that has some excellent politicians in it, some coherent people and some very good economists. If they were not Christian Democrats I could have even voted for them. Anyway, they might attract Mastella’s UDEUR and the other Christian Democrats of the Democrazia Cristiana, plus the odd politicians that have left the PD, the UDC and the PDL. Candidate PM: Pezzotta, former trade union leader.

Lega Nord – The Northern League will participate independently but with a coalition agreement with the PDL. They will participate only in the Northern Constituencies to avoid vote dispersion to the allies. However the Northern League is very much against the entrance of Mastella in the coalition and the Destra of Storace. The reason why they are against Mastella is because this became Justice Secretary after Castelli, a Norhern League member, and criticized the reforms the latter made.

There are other parties that are still not known whether they will join some coalition or not. The PR, Radical Party of Pannella and Bonino, Decidere, another Radical/Liberal party of former Radicla Party Leader Capezzone, that could join the PDL, the Socialists of Boselli (those in the left wing coalition, because the other socialists will be in the PDL with Berlusconi) and I think at least another 20 to 30 parties…

Now, this is just an overview of the political fragmentation but not all. The PDL should include another plethora of parties (PSI, PRI, LIBDEM, a few Liberal bushes, some neo-fascist parties and a few centrist ones) while the PD should run by itself accusing the PDL of what the PDL accused the incumbent party: too many parties.
So, my dear readers… You understand that this country has one inevitable destiny and while our politicians spend every effort in running election campaigns, other countries think of running the Countries towards the future. We are Italian and we should be kicked out of any possible Organization, from Eu to Nato to UN. We are just a bunch of tossers and crooks. Up everyone’s ass, I will not vote again… Once again! Get lost!