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Jun. 18th, 2011 04:24 pmIn the last few weeks, Italy has seen an important set of local elections - including the governments of the largest cities, Milan and Naples - and a set of national referenda. The results seem to have marked the moment when the long-expected collapse of Berlusconi and his party begin. All the referenda were lost, some humiliatingly: the referendum against nuclear energy had a 95% majority. Milan and Naples both fell to the opposition. Losing Milan, Berlusconi's own city, to a dim-witted left-wing Catholic who thinks that what the city needs most is a new giant mosque is beyond belief, and nobody can doubt that they have done it to themselves.
First, there is the leader's behaviour. Berlusconi's finger has been firmly on the self-destruct button for a few years now; I think, since his wife left him. Sex parties and the building of a genuine "stable" of available young women with their own flats are not what Italians expect of each other, let alone of their leaders. It's got to the point where it's not even funny, not even worth leering at. Nobody admires a man in his seventies who dyes his hair and pays teen-age Moroccan prostitutes. The fact that some of them have then proceeded to turn up in Parliament, in the local administrations (including the former jewel in the crown, Milan) and even in Goverment (four or five cabinet ministers of the female persuasion are more than suspect of having been part of Berlusconi's stable) does not help; the definition "mignottocrazia" ("whoreocracy") was swiftly coined and widely accepted. And then there are his endless feuds and insults - never resolved, never allowed to die down, never left alone, everlasting raised to poison the public mood. Who would think, now, that a few decades ago one of the defining characteristics of Italy was the widespread sense of humour, often bursting into the most fantastic and absurd practical jokes, carried out for the pure joy of carriying them out? Now everyone is grim, everyone is angry, everyone nurses a grudge. Berlusconi has managed to infect the whole nation with his own pathology; and his men complain that their opponents have it in for them. Who taught them?
He has forgotten why people voted for him: to have a stable government capable of making decisions and dealing with problems. The rubbish in Naples, cleared away in the early weeks of his government, is back, and nobody seems interested in making it an emergency this time. Promised reforms flop about weakly in Parliament like beached whales. At a time when the whole world is threatened by economic crisis, the main order of bsiness in Italian politics is the endless exchange of insults and accusations between the leader and all is critics.
God help poor Italy, because the scattered and hallucinating left is not fit to govern an ice cream shop, let alone a great city like Milan, and the right is swiftly falling into the same disarray, with poisonous elements from the former Fascist party (e.g. Gasparri) making life toxic for everyone else. It seems clear, for instance, that Milan Mayor Moratti's ruinous strategy of smearing her rival Pisapia with terrorist associations without leaving him room to reply - which backfired badly - must have been the result of some Fascist mind among her handlers; people who don't understand how free people think and act.
First, there is the leader's behaviour. Berlusconi's finger has been firmly on the self-destruct button for a few years now; I think, since his wife left him. Sex parties and the building of a genuine "stable" of available young women with their own flats are not what Italians expect of each other, let alone of their leaders. It's got to the point where it's not even funny, not even worth leering at. Nobody admires a man in his seventies who dyes his hair and pays teen-age Moroccan prostitutes. The fact that some of them have then proceeded to turn up in Parliament, in the local administrations (including the former jewel in the crown, Milan) and even in Goverment (four or five cabinet ministers of the female persuasion are more than suspect of having been part of Berlusconi's stable) does not help; the definition "mignottocrazia" ("whoreocracy") was swiftly coined and widely accepted. And then there are his endless feuds and insults - never resolved, never allowed to die down, never left alone, everlasting raised to poison the public mood. Who would think, now, that a few decades ago one of the defining characteristics of Italy was the widespread sense of humour, often bursting into the most fantastic and absurd practical jokes, carried out for the pure joy of carriying them out? Now everyone is grim, everyone is angry, everyone nurses a grudge. Berlusconi has managed to infect the whole nation with his own pathology; and his men complain that their opponents have it in for them. Who taught them?
He has forgotten why people voted for him: to have a stable government capable of making decisions and dealing with problems. The rubbish in Naples, cleared away in the early weeks of his government, is back, and nobody seems interested in making it an emergency this time. Promised reforms flop about weakly in Parliament like beached whales. At a time when the whole world is threatened by economic crisis, the main order of bsiness in Italian politics is the endless exchange of insults and accusations between the leader and all is critics.
God help poor Italy, because the scattered and hallucinating left is not fit to govern an ice cream shop, let alone a great city like Milan, and the right is swiftly falling into the same disarray, with poisonous elements from the former Fascist party (e.g. Gasparri) making life toxic for everyone else. It seems clear, for instance, that Milan Mayor Moratti's ruinous strategy of smearing her rival Pisapia with terrorist associations without leaving him room to reply - which backfired badly - must have been the result of some Fascist mind among her handlers; people who don't understand how free people think and act.
