Election Watch 3 – Monti succeeds Monti? The temperature rises. Berlusconi again, “The White Thing” and left in disarray.

The buzz is all about what sort of government Italy will have after the elections and the very unsecret consensus is that it will be Monti again – either as prime minister or heading another ministry or as a deus ex macchina leading the government’s policies.

For the rest, as is often the case in Italy, there is uncertainty.

The Americans know exactly when they will vote for their next leader and for the last few months, they have known the choice of individuals. The two men’s policies are less clear but over the next month we should have a better idea.

Here in Italy, we’re pretty sure about the policies but we do not know what sort of choice of leaders the Italians will have, nor which parties and their alliances, nor what sort of electoral system they will be using. We are not even sure when they vote – it will most likely be April but it could just be March or May and it might just be in November.

A second Monti government is top of the business community’s wish list along with the centrist UDC. At the annual meeting of economic leaders at Cernobbio, a straw poll was taken and 80% of those questioned declared themselves in favour of what is called in Italian, a Monti-bis. (“bis!” is the cry for “Encore!” in a theatre of concert hall as well as being “twice” in Latin.)

The man himself has said explicitly, once again, that his job (as prime minister) ends with the elections. Others across the spectrum have reiterated the need for an elected government.

There is, of course, another job up for grabs next year: the presidency. Until two months ago, it was clear that Napolitano had greatly enhanced not only the prestige of the presidency but also its power. Constitutionally, the Italian presidency is mainly symbolic, but its powers and influence expand as that of other institutions wane. The new president might have expected to step into a more than ceremonial role. But because of Napolitano’s clumsy effort to protect himself and the presidency from judicial investigation, his and the presidency’s reputations are under discussion.

As for candidates, right from his nomination as prime minister last November there has been speculation that Monti might take over from Napolitano in the Quirinale. This is still a possibility but former Italian prime minister, European Commission president and leader of the Italian centre-left, Romano Prodi has also been put forward as a possibility though he has denied interest. No doubt Silvio Berlusconi still dreams of finishing his career on “Rome’s highest hill” as the Quirinale is often called in a political rather than altimetric epithet, but that is not on the cards.

If presidential hopefuls are keeping their powder dry, the real politicals are even more careful about their own ambitions, at least until we know what the electoral system will be.

As we move closer to elections and towards a Monti-bis with or without Monti, the space in the political centre is becoming more and more crowded with undeclared wannabes. Corrado Passera went to the centrist UDC’s summer gathering, expressed his sympathy and redeclared his technocratic neutrality. Another media-positive figure, Emma Marcegaglia, has said she is a definite undeclared for politics. She was the first woman to lead Confindustria, the employers’ association and was popular and successful. Another definite maybe is Montezemolo but he has been hovering on the edges of politics for years now so even in the country of uncertainty, he is perceived as too indecisive. The prospect of some new, centrist, post-Christian Democrat (DC) party appears and disappears like a ghost at the party: la cosa bianca, the “white thing”, an as yet undefined successor to the old DC’s epithet of “white whale”.

On the right, they all wait with bated breath to see if Berlusconi will stand again or not, the Great Unknown. He is due to appear as the star act on a cruise organised by one of his family papers, Il Giornale. Obviously, there is intense speculation that this will be the launch of his new candidacy. Whether he goes centre stage or not depends entirely on the opinion polls. He is unlikely to win outright but he does not want to crash (anything less than 20%). Berlusconi’s candidacy is a heady mix. There are his interests, financial and legal. He needs to keep political power to maintain Fininvest’s role in the media and publicity and to condition the courts and law reform to protect himself from present and future prosecution. Then there is the psychodrama of the almost 76 year old who needs to show himself and the world that he can still make it; Europe’s answer to Chavez and Mugabe.

The centre-left does not have quite the theatre, but they are trying hard. Within the Democratic Party (PD), the debate is more about leadership than policies. The Italian left has a vocation for seizing defeat out of the jaws of victory and they are trying again now. For the last year, opinion polls have given the PD with or without allies, a clear advantage over any other party. Now they are fighting over primaries in which from the party establishment’s point of view, the wrong person might win. The “wrong person” in this case is Florence mayor, Matteo Renzi, a bumptious youth (he actually 37, a respectable age for leadership prospects in most countries but in Italy, hardly out of political nappies and now definitely guilty of lèse nomenklatura). He might just beat PD party secretary, Pierluigi Bersani if the party can decide when to run them and with what rules.

Outside the PD, there is continuous sniping between them and Beppe Grillo’s 5 Star Movement (M5S) which picks up most of the protest vote, mostly on the left but some on the right too. Bersani has accused Grillo of using “fascist” language and Grillo has called Bersani a “zombie”. At the moment at least the PD is ready for an alliance with the left wing Nichi Vendola’s Left-Ecology-Freedom (SEL) party and has given up an alliance with Antonio Di Pietro’s Italy of Values (IdV) but this geometry could still change. Grillo’s M5S is also riven with dissent over uncertainty of the leadership and policies, with members criticising Grillo’s concentration of power.

It is as if electoral politics had become an almost irrelevant sideshow while Monti and the grownups, above all the other Mario, Draghi and the European authorities are dealing with the euro crisis. The rest of the government is addressing but not solving the Italian employment crises.

For the moment at least, the political parties are as far away as ever from regaining public confidence.

Italy’s Other Crisis

The weak economy is visible to all but there is a parallel crack in the system which is at least as dangerous to the country’s wellbeing and stability and undermines the very structures of the country. It is the clash between the powers of the state; the law on one side and the executive and legislature (usually referred to as la politica) on the other.

Both crises have been a long time brewing. The material hardships are due to a declining economy over the last 20 years combined with an uncontrolled growth of public spending. The crunch came when the waves from the US and then European bubbles hit Italy.

The institutional crisis also goes back a long way; 30 years when Bettino Craxi first bridled at magistrates investigating corruption in his Socialist Party in Genoa; 20 years ago when the Milan magistrates began prosecuting the kickback system used by all the parties. The conflict between “the judges” and la politica has rumbled on since then with occasional squalls; the final storm has now broken and is likely to be a very rough and dangerous one for the ship of state.

The opening lightening was an appeal by President Napolitano to the Constitutional Court. He is asking the Court to declare that the calls made to him by a former minister under investigation (and now charged with perjury) should be destroyed. The former minister is Nicola Mancino (above, with Napolitano) who was Minister of the Interior between 1992 and 1994 when there were secret negotiations between elements of Cosa Nostra and politicians and law enforcement officer apparently to alleviate prison treatment of convicted mafiosi in exchange for stopping the mafia bombs. Mancino is not accused of complicity in the deal but he swore that as minister he knew nothing of the negotiations; this turned out to be untrue, hence his indictment for perjury.

While Palermo prosecutors were preparing their case on these negotiations last year, they obtained judicial permission to intercept Mancino’s phone. He made a number of calls to the Quirinale seeking Napolitano’s intercession in the case. Most of the these calls were to the president’s legal advisor, Loris D’Ambrosio. These have been published and are part of the court records; in them Mancino pleads with D’Ambrosio to ask the President to move his case from one court to another where he thought his position would be improved. D’Ambrosio for the most part stalls (and between the lines, it is clear that he is trying to get Mancino off his own and Napolitano’s backs) but he does give a generic assurance that “the President is looking into the case”.

Later, it came out that Mancino had spoken directly with Napolitano. The Palermo prosecutors have already said that the conversations were not relevant to their case and the recordings would be destroyed as soon as the investigating judge orders it (and after the defence had been heard).

We can only guess that Napolitano reassured Mancino but made no commitment and that Mancino did not admit to any knowledge of the negotiations. The two men have known each other for decades and have been in government together and if an old friend or acquaintance makes an improper request, it is probably brushed aside or ignored politely. Whatever they said, it was irrelevant for the prosecution.

This was not enough for Napolitano who has made a presumably banal albeit embarrassing exchange between two old friends into a constitutional issue which risks tearing apart some of the fundamentals of parliamentary democracy – the separation of powers.
Napolitano is trying to convert his constitutional immunity from prosecution for his presidential functions (normal in most constitutions) into presidential untouchability. If a legitimate telephone tap reachs the President, that call should not even be transcribed and destroyed, he argues.

The only parallel that I can think of is if Governor Blagojevich (of Illinois, who was caught trying to sell President Obama’s vacated senate seat and is now in gaol) had called Obama when his phone was already being tapped. No US court could grant the president inviolability from incoming calls from louche characters.

Instead, in Italy, the media, the judiciary and the political classes are divided. On the one side are Napolitano’s supporters who have introduced a new phrase “judicial populism”. They feel that the prestige of the President has been damaged by the knowledge that the intercepts exist. They do not admit it, but the subtext is once again that anyone in politica (elected members of the legislature or executive), should be protected from any interference of the law.

On the other side are those who can see no constitutional prerogative in the single case and are terrified that if the Constitutional Court decides in favour of the President (both are “Guardians of the Constitution”) this would be a major blow against any judicial monitoring of the political world. In effect making the President into an ancien regime absolute monarch.

Prime Minister Monti weighed into the fray with an interview in the Catholic paper Tempi calling the Mancino-Napolitano intercepts “a grave abuse”. The founder of La Repubblica, veteran journalist Eugenio Scalfari has dedicated his last two Sunday columns to defending presidential prerogative (a position weakened by faulty logic, incorrect data and the possibility that he might be one of the next life senators appointed by the President).

Judges and academic lawyers have defended the Palermo investigators’ procedure.

All the government parties support the president with some of them insinuating a conspiracy of the independent paper Il Fatto Quotidiano, the ex-magistrate Antonio Di Pietro and his Italy of Values (Idv) Party and the Genoese comic Beppe Grillo with his 5 Star Movement (M5S) that allegedly would want to install a government of judges.

The judiciary, once again, complain that the criminal law is only used when politics has gone beyond any reasonable behaviour, in order to clean up the Augean Stables.
Whatever the Court’s verdict (and we will probably have to wait until after Napolitano steps down next year), the Presidency, politics, the Court itself and the whole magistrature will come out looking weakened and somehow sleazy. In the meantime, the thunder rolls and the lightening flashes. This is not the sort of storm Italy needed when facing its economic woes.

The constitutional conflict is the most serious and most abstract part of the spat. At the same time, much more concretely, the Palermo investigations on mafia 20 years ago and today are weakened not only by Napolitano’s appeal but by a combination of inspections and rearrangements of personel, in practice dismantling working police and judicial networks carried out under the veil of everyday bureaucracy.

Even more dangerous is the message which has now been put forward that telephone taps should be further limited. At the moment in Italy (and elsewhere), they are the cheapest and most effective way of investigating almost any form of crime. They are carried out under judicial supervision and with a warrant. Until now, it was mostly Berlusconi and the right which wanted to limit taps – now it is a good part of the left as well and the bill is ready in Parliament and could be passed by Christmas. This would be a body blow not just to investigations into mafia and political corruption but just about any other sort of crime.

Again, not the sort of message to send to a world wondering whether to invest in Italy.

American and Italian Universities

Summer in Italy is not just sun and sea, pasta and pizza, there is culture too, music for all tastes but also quite serious discussions. This was one of those summer initiatives that Italy is so good at; a beautiful setting, a balmy temperature and a good roundtable debate sandwiched between a good meal and divine almond and then blackberry granite or granulated water ice.

For the last three years, the Reggio based online paper, Strill.it, has organised “Tabularasa” a month long series of encounters and debates on a wide variety of subjects. Local and visiting speakers sit on a stage overlooking the Straits of Messina with a public seeking the evening cool and perhaps some enlightenment.

On my evening, we considered the merits and faults of the Italian and American university systems. The panel was made up of Salvatore Berlingò, a Roman lawyer and rector of Reggio’s University for Foreigners, Francesco Russo, an engineer from the University of Reggio Calabria, Susana Cavallo, from Loyola University’s Rome Campus, Massimiliano Ferrara, political scientist and functionary from the Calabrian regional government and Phil Pullella, Reuters’ Vatican correspondent. The discussion was chaired by the two editors of strill.it, Raffaele Mortelliti and Giusva Branca. Some of us had experience in both systems, some only in one.

The two most important questions at the basis of any discussion on this topic have to be – what are universities for? And how should they be financed?

Italy is unclear on both questions. There is a presumption that universities are primarily research institutions and that faculty should above all be judged on their production. And yet successive governments have consistently reduced funding for research. There is also a lack of consensus on how faculty should be rated and two of the panel had a heated discussion on that point – today there are new criteria, more or less international, which are being used to grade academics but Italy is still a long way from adopting the UK quality assessment methods or the US outcomes assessment. Particularly in the humanities, there are many Italians who feel that supposedly “Anglo-Saxon” criteria of peer review and citations in scientific journals miss the point. Maybe, but they do not come up with more convincing metres. This was the division between the Roman lawyer and the engineer on our panel.

On the cost side, there is even less consensus. Italian students are beginning to pay real money especially when they also have to pay for bed and board away from home, though the costs are still tiny compared to the US or even the US, they are much higher than in Scandinavia, say.

Student loan debt in the US is apparently now greater than mortgage debt for houses. UK student enrollment is down because of rising costs. The prospect of starting one’s working life seriously in debt is already discouraging British students from going to university.

For all the disadvantages of costly education, the cash nexus does mean that students are much more central to universities’ raison d’être. The buzzword for decades has been “student-centered learning” in the US. In the American system, we have to concentrate on what we expect students to have learned or be able to do after a class, a course or a degree. Not what we are teaching. The substance is almost identical but the focus is reversed. Whereas in the Italian system, I am very conscious of colleagues concentrating on their own skills and erudition rather than what the skills or knowledge that the students should acquire.

The US is far more responsive to the market – not just for jobs or for who will set up an endowment fund but also to social demands. The pressures are more varied than in Italy: students, social demands, commercial and industrial demands, city, state and sometimes federal government demands. Pluralism in education, as in government contributes to democracy. In Italy, the pressure is limited to the universities and the ministry with occasional outbursts from students when the situation is already terrible. Today there is an increasing input from the private sector but it is still a long way from the American model.

The American system is more democratic in the pressures that move university policy but is seriously flawed in internal university governance which in the majority of cases is structured more like a heirarchical business corporation than the traditional European model of an universitas studiorum where responsibility lies with faculty rather than boards of directors formed by outsider appointed officials. This model is unfortunately taking over in many parts of Europe too. Even in Italy where the system went too far in the other direction with university barons running a feudal power system, today there are administrative boards made up of local businessmen and politicians who are beginning to dictate policy as well as managing teaching content, research and even employment .

Another difference that many Italians, even those who work in universities, forget about is the huge difference in quality within the US system. Italians often presume that all American universities are Ivy League schools. There is an abyss between them and a backwoods community college, or worse, some radical religious foundations or for-profit institutions, whereas Italian state universities and even and private or religious institutions show less difference.

A point which we all made is that American higher education is mostly residential so that students are able to take advantage of much more than lectures in classrooms; sport, culture and above all student social life in which in its best version, students from different social and ethnic backgrounds studying different disciplines exchange ideas and form lasting friendships.

Most importantly, the American universities are based primarily on merit which the Italian ones mostly are not; we also discussed legality in the systems. A colleague here at the American University of Rome, Francesca Conti has studied Italians who leave the country to work in Britain; a recurrant theme is the difficulty of being judged on merit in Italy. In an article to be published in the Bulletin of Italian Politics, she quotes a graduate from the south of Italy who had moved to Britain and who speaks for many of her respondants:

The United Kingdom has offered me things which I would have never had in Italy. What I adore about this country is that they judge you for what you can do; there may be internal games but, in my case, I think that I would have never managed to get to the same position in Italy.

As if to underline this point and the one we addressed at Tabularasa explain, the day after the discussion, one of the local papers had an article about the 26 year old son of a local boss providing help to pass university entrance exams. He had shown his own mettle by passing 9 exams in 41 days. It shows how the Calabrian mafia, the ndrangheta adapts to modern needs and loses no opportunity for power and profit; it also makes my point that merit is secondary quality, far less important than loyalty and having the right friends.

The bane of the Italian system is the raccomandazione.

All roads lead to Taranto

Today is Ferragosto when Italy normally sinks into a torpor and the most serious worry is whether there is space on your favorite beach or mountain path. But this year is not normal and the question of how to deal with the Ilva steelworks in Taranto cannot wait till September. Even Parliament is working in August.

It is rare that a single political issue has so many strands to unravel and even now, the battle lines are still muddled though they are becoming clearer day by day. The steelworks encapsulate some of Italy’s most intractable problems from the relationship between government and the courts (once again) to industrial restructuring (and the relationship between public and private responsibility), labour relations and health and environmental protection. It is a Big Issue, hot enough to override August lethargy. On Friday (17th. a very unauspicious day in Italian superstition), two cabinet ministers (Development and Environment but significantly, not Health) will be in Taranto to try and solve the problem while lawyers and engineers are working in Rome on other aspects.

The history is easily told. In 1965, the state owned Italsider company decided to set up a steel processing plant in Taranto. The economy needed steel in all forms for a booming economy, Taranto has one of the best ports in the Mediterranean to bring in the ore and the coal and take out at least some of the finished products and it is in the south which had a desperate need for jobs and development. It became the biggest steelworks in Europe.

But like any heavy industry, especially then, it was highly polluting. The combination of ferrous dust and coal smoke was and still is lethal. Cancers and respiratory conditions are significantly higher in Taranto directly correlated to the distance from the plant.

For years various authorities have tried to force first Italsider and the the Riva family which bought the steelworks in 1995, to reduce pollution to the legal limit, but without success. Court orders were ignored or promises made but not respected. Then a fortnight ago, the Taranto court ordered the judicial confiscation of the steelworks and set up a committee to manage the plant and see that anti-pollution measures were implemented, including if necessary plant closure. Management and government made new promises. The CEO, Bruno Ferrante, was appointed as the head of the court appointed oversight committee.

Then a week ago, the Investigating Magistrate, Patrizia Todisco, dropped a bombshell with an order interpreting the Court’s general verdict. She said first that Ferrante could not be part of the committee as he represents management which is responsible for the pollution and secondly, she said that “closure” means closure.

Today 11,500 are directly employed by Ilva, thousands of others depend on it indirectly and most of the other Italian steelworks depend on Taranto for semi-worked products. The Riva family has said they would have to close down their other steelworks in Liguria if Taranto closes, a thinly veiled threat. To turn off furnaces and close steel rolling mills would take months; many months more would be needed to install the anti-pollution measures and many more to restart. Years in all. In practice this would mean the end of steelmaking in Taranto and either downsizing or closure for the other plants as customers would not wait years for Taranto to restart. There is no doubt that fulfilling the court order immediately would be a major disaster, not just for Taranto and the Riva family but for the country’s whole industrial policy.

The Ilva question has once again laid bare the most serious issue in Italian politics today – the role, and rule of law. There are many failings in the administration of justice in Italy but the biggest in not the fault of the legal system. The Law is called upon to carry out functions it was never supposed to do. It is used as the remedy of first… and last resort for almost any conflict.

Health authorities and local government have a duty to apply anti-pollution regulations but in Taranto they have done nothing for years so that finally the courts were forced to intervene.

A government minister, Antonio Catricalà, has threatened to take the case to the Constitutional Court to resolve a supposed conflict between powers. He suggested that the magistrate had overstepped her powers and was managing national industrial policy. Since then, government has backtracked but if the Friday meeting does not stop the closure order, they might still go ahead.

Then there is the relationship between the Riva family and government over the question of who should pay for the cleanup. They contributed to both the major parties in the last elections which adds to public suspicion.

In civil society, the divisions are curious to say the least. Half the work force supports management demonstrating against the magistrate and overturning traditional labour relations. The more left wing FIOM has refused to demonstrate agaist the magistrates and supports immediate action to start the cleanup.

There is a surreal air to the whole business. In the shimmering southern summer heat steelworkers demonstrate on the Appian Way, Diocletian’s road to Egypt. They are demonstrating about a plant whose cycle is measured in years rather than closure tomorrow. With them management and government draw up appeals to different courts and yet another cleanup plan.

And meanwhile the red dust piles up and the people of Taranto cough and some die.
There is so far no Erin Brokovich who took on heavy industry and won but there is the great Apulian rapper, Caparezza who said it all in a 2008 number “Vieni a ballare in Puglia”, (“Come and dance in Apulia” “Tourist, you want iodine and sea air but you get the stink of sulphur; the devil’s arriving. You’ll get tanned with fright with Ilva’s dioxins, you’ll get red spots brighter than Milva’s hair”.

I don’t know where he’s playing today but it’ll take more than a good rapper to solve this August problem.

More haywire history – Italian war criminal honoured.

Italy has always had difficulty coming to terms with its past but with the passage of time, instead of the past becoming clearer, it becomes dirtier and dirtier.

It was bad enough when a street was named after a corrupt politician like Bettino Craxi. But it gets worse, much worse. (The new mausoleum - left, Graziani - below)

Yesterday the town of Affile in southern Latium opened a Commemoration Park and Mausoleum in honour of a convicted war criminal, Rodolfo Graziani. The mayor, complete with mayoral tricolour sash, representing the Republic of Italy inaugurated the monument accompanied by members of the Latium Regional government and a senator. He declared that he hoped Affile would become "the Predappio [Mussolini's birthplace and fascist cult turism destination] of Latium". After the ceremony, there was a conference given by a priest from the Roman curia entitled “The memory of the General”.

The general in question, or rather, Field Marshal, was sentenced to 19 years for war crimes by an Italian court in 1948.

His political and moral responsibilities were much greater.

Twenty years before he had commanded Italian forces in Libya where he earned a reputation for unmatched brutality and the title “the butcher of Fezzan”. He set up concentration camps for civilians where thousands died of disease and starvation as well as executing large number of insurgents. The war ended when Graziani captured and hanged the Senussi leader Omar al Mukhtar after a summary trial. Qaddafi made good propaganda use of the story but I doubt that anyone in today’s new Libya can be very pleased at Graziani’s new honour.

When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Graziani was given command of the southern front with Badoglio in overall command leading the invasion from the north. Italian forces used gas extensively despite having signed the conventions banning poison gas.

He was made viceroy of the new colony and in 1937 there was an assassination attempt which seriously injured Graziani. Thousands died in the reprisals (corpses on left) and in particular, Graziani ordered an attack on the monastery of Debra Libanos because he suspected that the Ethiopian Church had had a hand in the assassination plan. More than 400 monks were killed as a result (although some studies put the figure much higher).

In 1938, he added his voice to the support of the Manifesto della Razza, the declaration which served as a basis for the Racial Laws depriving Italian Jews of their political and civil rights.

After the September 1943 armistice, Graziani opted for Mussolini and the Germans rather than the king, Badoglio and the Allies. He was made Minister of War in the Italian Social Republic, the RSI or Repubblica di Salò, Mussolini’s neo-fascist puppet republic. As such he organised the anti-partisan war complete with torture and reprisal. His best known decree threatened any young man who did not answer the draft with execution and many were actually shot (poster, left). It was for these crimes that he was tried by an Italian court in 1948 and sentenced to 19 years. The British had worked very hard to prevent Italian war crimes suspects (in Libya, Greece, Yugoslavia and Ethiopia) from being prosecuted as it would have upset the new Cold War balance. So Graziani was never prosecuted for what he did in Libya or Ethiopia.

He is not a Goering or a Goebbels, not quite, but that is hardly a good reason to honour him today. (Can you imagine what would happen if a small German town honoured even a minor German war criminal?) This is a man who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Libyan, Ethiopian and Italian civilians and as a soldier ignored the Geneva protocols. He never recognised that there had been anything wrong with fascism and the year before he died, he reaffirmed fascist values. By honouring Graziani, the mayor of Affile and the Regional Government honoured what he stood for.

In Europe in 2012, this is a terrifying prospect, not because a village of 1,500 people has a not-so-crypto fascist mayor but that there is no indignation from political and civil society leaders.

To add two insults to the injury, the park cost €130,000 of public money, paid for by the Latium Regional Government. Regions are responsible for the health service in Italy and Latium like most others has been closing hospitals, cutting back on services and increasing the price of others. Honouring Graziani would have been an obscenity even if it had been paid for by a fascist benefactor and even if the benefactor had added a donation; but this use of taxpayers’ money is particularly dishonest.

The second insult is that today is the 68th anniversary of the Stazzema Massacre where German SS soldiers killed 560 Italians including old men, women and children in a reprisal. Graziani’s RSI troops worked closely with both the Wehrmacht and the SS. President Napolitano reckoned the anniversary was significant enough to send a message and Martin Schulz, German Social Democrat and President of the European Parliament, was present at the commemoration saying “I am German and the language I speak is the same as those who committed these crimes and I will not forget that.” Schulz, by the way, was the European Socialist leader who Berlusconi offered a movie part as an SS, so is particularly sensitive to issues of Italy’s fascist past.
Harry Shindler of the British Army’s Italian campaign veterans’ “Italy Star” association was shocked at the news and reminded me of the Stazzema anniversary asking “what did they all die for?”

There are millions of Italians that are profoundly shocked as well (if and when they know about the episode) but while the rift persists (and grows) Italy’s ethical identity becomes even more uncertain.

Election Watch 2

Instead of winding down for the summer break, Italy has a corruption scandal in the north, a major mafia investigation in the south and regional governments with serious budget deficits across the country. The euro crisis and Italy’s national debt are by now constants which only change by some degree day by day. And hovering over it all are the uncertainties of the general elections.

The first uncertainty is over the date of the elections. For the last fortnight rumours have been swirling around the possibility of early elections this autumn. Last week Enrico Mentana on La 7 television news even put a date to it – 4 November. Over the last few days, La Repubblica suggested 20 November. The justification is that prime minister Monti is supposed to prefer to have an elected government rather than extending the agony of market uncertainty for another six months.

Monti himself has not said a word; on the contrary, he has repeated that he will continue his mandate until its natural end next spring.

Berlusconi and the PdL have been wavering but on balance, since the opinion polls are against them, they would prefer to vote later rather than sooner in the hope that they can improve. Bersani and the PD would almost certainly come out as the biggest party but they are maintaining a position of “responsibility”, trying to create an air of calm and normality where little is either calm or normal. Only the opposition – Maroni and the Northern League (LN), Di Pietro and Italy of Values (IdV) and Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement (M5S) are openly in favour of early elections.

The possibility of early elections is actually hardly more than a summer storm. There is little chance of the parties agreeing on a new election law in time for November elections; elections would not resolve Italy’s economic or other problems and would risk worsening them if the M5S made a strong showing and the traditional parties were not able to formulate clear and confidence-building policies; and Italy has never had autumn elections and is a country where the system is very conservative. Finally, the parties and the would-be parties need more than three months to organise.

In theory, of course, Parliament could pass a new electoral law within a week. It needs a simple majority in both houses; the Senate speaker, Renato Schifani has offered to keep the Senate open throughout August if necessary and no doubt that Gianfranco Fini would do the same for the Chamber. The problem is that the parties cannot decide on what sort of law they want. The PdL has said they would like a 10% premium for the winning party (on the lines of the Greek system) combined with preference votes (voters express one or more preferences for candidates in a party list – this is the system that was abolished in Italy in 1991 because it made individual votes traceable). The PD is against it.

The parties which are already in Parliament actually quite like the existing law, especially the PD which would do very well with it – if elections were held today, they would take a majority in the Chamber with only 27% of the vote. The Senate would be different, but they would still do well. Party leaders would have absolute control over which candidates were elected. But neither the PD nor any of the others can admit to saying they like the so-called porcellum (roughly and politely translated as “pig’s dinner”). And until there is a new law, no one can plan possible alliances because the electoral system conditions the type of possible future coalitions. The risk is, as Antonio Polito pointed out in today’s Corriere that there will be a neo-porcellum.

So the minuet continues. Possible partners present themselves, do a couple of turns or wait till the next dance. The PdL and the LN voted together on a constitutional amendment proposal (direct election of the president and a “federal” parliament) and they are said to be working on a common proposal for the election law. Some members of both parties would definitely like to reform the old alliance.

Di Pietro suggested that far from planning a “Vasto photo” coalition as I suggested in the first “election watch”, he would now like to see an alliance between Nichi Vendola’s “Left, Ecology and Freedom” (SEL) and the M5S. Grillo replied without even mentioning the IdV, just saying that the Movement was not planning any alliances and had had no overtures.

In the centre there is also movement. Last week, the free market economist, Oscar Giannino was reported as preparing to set up a new party. It would be economically liberal, aimed at economic growth and in favour of privatisations and against across the board cuts. There was implicit support from the employers’ federation, the Confindustria which has become almost explicit today with full page ads in newspapers calling for a new centrist formation.

The trial balloon is a complicated mix. According to Claudio Tito in today’s Repubblica, the new thing (party? Movement? Formation?) would have Monti somewhere in the title even if he himself would not be a candidate. A possible candidate could be the present (young), mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi who finds his own PD too old, too left wing and too constricting for a man of his ambitions. The former president of Confindustria, Emma Marcegaglia, is said to be on the fringes but not yet ready to take the plunge. The party might also be led by Corrado Passera and include the support of Ferrari boss, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo and his thinktank/party in waiting “Italia Futura”.
In other words there is great uncertainty and everyone is manoevering on a field they still do not know.

Issues are still thin on the ground. Civil unions and gay marriage had the PD arguing last week, giving the measure equivocal support but they have quietened. As the elections approach it will return to divide the party and others. The government issues on the economy are in practice off limits as the three parties supporting the government cannot afford to differ too stridently.

As for the opinion polls, whichever one takes, around half the Italians are either undecided or have decided not to vote. This is a huge proportion and very unusual for Italy. The proportion will decline as the elections approach but it give substance to the alienation from politics. The PD is the biggest party at 25-27%, the PdL a long way behind around 18-19%. Grillo and the M5S is not far behind them at 16-18 with all the others around 5-6%.

We have a long way to go before we can even see the profile of the election campaign, let alone the results.

Single Transferable Vote - An Irish contribution to the Italian electoral system debate

It is obvious enough but has to be said: there is no perfect electoral system. If we want to elect a legislature, there are two major issues to resolve. Inevitably we have to compromise between representativity – giving every party or pressure group a voice – and effectiveness – creating a clear majority in the assembly so that they can actually take decisions. Secondly, we also have to build an acceptable form of responsibility into the system – who is the single legislator responsible to?

On the first issue, the most representative system is certainly the Knesset in Israel. The have a single 120 member constituency for the whole country with a threshold which used to be 1%, then 1.5% and is now 2%, still close to perfect proportionality. So in order to have a deputy, you only need to poll 2% over the whole country. Not surprisingly, there are usually between a dozen and 20 parties in the Knesset and forming a majority to support the government is normally a nightmare of bartering policy and position.

At the other extreme is the British model where there are 650 single member constituencies. The winner in each is the candidate who scores one vote more than the next candidate. Between 40 and 45% will normally give a party a large working majority around 60% of the seats. Until the last elections, Britain almost never had problems forming a government and the present government is the first fully fledged coalition since the war.

They have governability, the Israelis have representation.

On the second point, who chooses the single legislators and who are they responsible to, the usual (legitimate) answers are that they are chosen by their party or their electors and are responsible to them and their own consciences. Less legitimate answers include the lobby or pressure group that has supported or financed the legislator. Whenever the legislator votes, he or she has to weigh up the importance of the three responsibilities and if they are in conflict, take a decision over which one to follow.
The perceived failure of the present Italian electoral law is in the total lack of connection between legislator and elector. The members of parliament hold the post only through party loyalty. In many countries this is not seen as a problem but because of the personal character or many Italian parties, not only Berlusconi’s, a deputy or senator depends on the caprice of the Leader. And that is not healthy for any democratic polity.

There has been talk of adopting the French double ballot system or the German system of a list plus single member constituency or re-introducing the preference votes where voters may give one (or more) votes to individual candidate(s) of their chosen list.

One solution which has not been considered is the single transferable vote (STV) used in both the Republic and Northern Ireland, Malta and extensively in Australia. It is flexible and gives voters maximum choice in individuals and parties and ensures a small number of parties that have a good chance of forming a working government.

Constituencies are multi-member but small (three to five usually); this in practice gives an electoral threshold of around 15% though there is no official threshold. This limits the number of parties and prevents the formation one- or two-man parties as in Israel. In Malta, there are actually only two parties so that one has a majority.
The voters list their choice of candidates, normally the number of legislators to be elected and not limited to a single party. So one can vote for candidate 1 in party A as first choice, candidate 2 in party B and second and 2 in party C as third. A quota is calculated based on the number of votes cast and the first choice votes are counted. If candidate 1A polls more than necessary, his second choices are then counted and distributed to the other candidates; they are transferred until another two candidates reach the quota. If none reach it, then the lowest scoring candidate is eliminated and his votes transferred.

Voters have a choice of candidates and parties and the system minimises wasted votes. The legislator is closely linked to the electorate and to the party. The territorial link does makes for some clientelistic or pork barrelling practices but this is not just a function of the system. The number of parties is limited and will normally be able to form a government.

The only disadvantage is the complication and slowness of the count, a small price to pay for an excellent compromise. In order to give their candidates the best possible chance, Irish party workers develop mental arithmetic skills in probability that befuddle the average observer, a curious byproduct.

At the end of the day, no system will guarantee good government; the best cook cannot make a good dish from rotten material but a bad cook can ruin good raw materials.

This was published on 25 July in Italian in Europaquotidiano “Sistema elettorale, la legge di Dublino”

Borsellino and the mafia - 20 years on

Twenty years ago, the Sicilian judge, Paolo Borsellino and five police were killed by a huge car bomb in via D’Amelio in Palermo. Of the three mafia murders that Italy is commemorating this year, Borsellino’s is the most disturbing today because we know enough to confirm our worst suspicions of complicity between mafia and state authorities.

For the other two, the judge Giovanni Falcone, killed in May 1992 and carabiniere general, Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa, killed in September 1982, we can only say unequivocally that they did not have the full support of the state. The worst that we can say (and that is bad enough) is that no one in the higher echelons of government and law enforcement made it clear to mafia bosses that the two men had the full support of government and the ministries. Both were killed because they were too dangerous for mafia to let them live.

For Borsellino, on the contrary, we know that there were negotiations going on between mafia and state authorities at least from the time of Falcone’s murder in April. Borsellino knew about these negotiations and was furious. He vehemently opposed to them both as a matter of principle and strategically. Negotiating with mafia was not only a betrayal of everything the he and Falcone and other colleagues had fought for but also a losing strategy.

Yesterday, Palermo investigators indicted 12 men on various charges ranging from subverting state institutions to perjury. There is a suspicion that at least some of the state authorities had more than an inkling of the impending massacre. The full story of who ordered the killings, put the bomb together and carried out the attack is still not known but much more will be revealed when the Palermo case is tried and when two other investigations come to trial.

Italians use the shorthand “the state” and “mafia” in accounts of the negotiations but both words also refer to single individuals with names, ranks or titles and responsibilities. They include carabinieri officers, secret service men and women and ministers as well as the mafiosi and various go-betweens. Since 2007, thanks to a mafioso who turned state’s evidence, some of Borsellino and Falcone’s colleagues have been investigating these allegations. Of the 12 due to stand trial in Palermo, six are mafiosi, all big names like Totò Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Massimo Ciancimino, the son of former Palermo mayor, Vito, longtime link between mafia and the Christian Democratic party. Six were from “the state”; three carabiniere officers and three politicians, one ex-minister of the Interior, Nicola Mancino, an ex-minister for the South, Calogero Mannino and Berlusconi’s close associate, senator Marcello Dell’Utri who has already been convicted of links to mafia.

They are alleged to have negotiated the release of hundreds of mafiosi from special prison terms known as “Article 41 bis”, introduced to isolate convicted mafiosi from their business interests and power base. In return, the mafia did not kill Mannino and various other politicians threatened because they had not given the mafia the promised protection. In other words, it was a typical mafia racket, extortion-style but on a much grander scale than promising a shopkeeper that his store will not be blown up if he pays protection.

If all or even some of the accused are convicted, it will be a bombshell for Italian institutions. Even without convictions, and with what we already know, the effects on public institutions are devastating.

For decades, actually from the birth of the Italian state, there had been an intermingling of mafia and the political and state authorities, something much more intimate than a cops-and-robbers, live-and-let-live set-up. Political and business interests overlapped in the upper- and underworld with no clear border between the two. Mafia immediately recognised the potential of electoral politics and has exploited them for a century and a half. With the growth of the public sector, they used their political levers both for profit and for power.
The cosy relationship was punctuated by occasional trials of lower level mafiosi for crimes of violence. The break came in 1986-7 when the so-called maxi-trial convicted over 300 mafiosi accepting the prosecution’s case of a mafia organisation. This prosecution was led by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino which is why they became prime targets for mafia.

Now, 20 years on, there is some chance that we will know about one episode of collusion between mafia, politics and law enforcement agencies.

But we should not hold our breath; in the most disturbing recent development, President Napolitano has demanded that two intercepted conversations between the former minister Mancino and Napolitano should be destroyed. Mancino had called the president’s legal counsellor seeking the president’s help in having his perjury case transferred to a different court (these conversations are on the record). Mancino then actually spoke to Napolitano and since his phone was under surveillance, the call was recorded. The prosecutor has said that the call is irrelevant for his case, but procedure demands that it is a judge who decrees the destruction of material after the defence has been able to intervene.

Instead, President Napolitano has taken the case to the Constitutional Court arguing that even when a person under criminal investigation calls the president, that call should be subject to presidential privilege.

Even more disturbing than Napolitano’s action, is that most of the press and political parties support him. The President represents Power and should not suffer the indignity of having his conversation recorded even when he is called by someone accused of a serious crime.

It was this lack of respect for Power in whatever form (and its converse, the respect for the Law) that killed Borsellino and Falcone and general dalla Chiesa a decade earlier.

Nine months to Elections. First Election Watch Blog.

By my calculations, allowing for Easter, Pesach, Liberation Day (25 April) and May Day, the Italian elections should be on 14-15/4 or 21-22/4 or maybe 28-29/4.

If I’m right, then we have nine months before Italians go to the polls to elect a new Parliament and, possibly, a new government. All elections are crucial for someone and they all are hyped as make-or-break-contests. More often than not, the results are banal and change little and there is a serious danger that the 2013 poll will be both make-or-break and change little.

This time, the elections are not just of interest to Italians. Between now and April, Italians and their politicians have a big responsibility on their hands. First of all, the country’s well-being, future growth and social peace depend on what the government does between now and April and how the political parties conduct the campaign; on those two points depend confidence in the euro and its future. Connected by a longer thread is the future shape of the EU itself because if the euro disintegrates, the Union will change shape; if the euro continues, it will mean a new integration and development of the EU.

In the much shorter term, but indirectly, Obama’s re-election depends at least partially on Europe showing signs of a recovery which would enhance an American recovery. Even more indirectly, the emerging economies depend on Europe and North America expanding again.

Most Italian voters do not realise the burden they are carrying (but some do). Much worse, most Italian politicians cannot see beyond the need to get re-elected and maintain their privileges. All important legislation in both the Monti government and before under Berlusconi has been passed as decree laws with votes of confidence. In practice the Houses have been reduced to a school playground where the children can shout and scream for half an hour and then when the whistle blows, they line up for a roll call.

Under Berlusconi, the showtime was extended to television talk shows where representatives of government and opposition would talk (or more usually shout) over each other, neither side listening or answering the other’s points. It was a Colosseum without the blood. Today, in deference to Monti’s “sobriety”, they are much more restrained but seldom any more to the point.

With Berlusconi’s promise or threat to return to active politics, television producers are rubbing their hands together at the prospect of a new series of bouts.

But whatever rules they fight by, their hands are tied. The three big groupings, known until last week by the acronym ABC after the three leaders (now perhaps BBC) are Berlusconi’s PdL on the centre-right (nominally led by Angelino Alfano), Pierferdinando Casini’s centrist UDC and Pierluigi Bersani’s PD. They have to fight a campaign in which they are rivals but are all supporting the same government. This will require considerable restraint and sleight of hand.

The present opposition groups are hardly better off. The Northern League is licking its wounds (caused by internal division and external prosecution for corruption) and the new leader, Roberto Maroni would like to manoevre back into some sort of alliance with the PdL, or at least leave that option open. On the left Di Pietro with his Italia dei Valori, and Nichi Vendola’s SEL (Sinistra, Ecologia e Libertà) are highly critical of the Monti government but they too dream of a possible coalition with the PD, the so-called “Vasto photo” (left) of Bersani, Vendola and Di Pietro smiling together at Di Pietro’s summer conference.

Then on the edge, there is Beppe Grillo, much more than a joker in the pack. The Genoese comedian’s “Five Star Movement” (M5S) is the second party in most opinion polls at the moment with around 20%. A PD leader, Enrico Letta, said yesterday that he preferred Berlusconi to Grillo which brought a storm of criticism from most of the rest of the party. All the parties, nonetheless, are terrified that Grillo might steal their votes and bring out otherwise alienated electors. And be a real force in the next Parliament.

All bets are open. The actual alliances will depend on what sort of electoral system they will use, probably more than the actual policies they propose or which leaders they choose.

At the moment, the PdL or rather Berlusconi wants a French semi-presidential system but there will not be time to pass the necessary constitutional amendment so they are aiming at a premium for the party that polls highest (like the Greek system) with 40% of the candidates in a fixed list (so chosen by the party) and 60% elected with preference votes (voters give a vote to a party and then to one or more candidates on the list, so they chose which candidate is actually elected). The PD would like the premium to go to the winning coalition and want a double ballot system like the French one which gave the Socialists a majority in the National Assembly.

Despite President Napolitano’s admonitions to get moving on electoral reform, there is a good chance that nothing will happen and Italians will again use the much criticised porcellum, the pig’s dinner law, which gives a premium to the winning coalition and has fixed party lists – those elected depend on the party (and its leader) rather than voters.

So over the next nine months I will write an election watch blog every two or three weeks (more often as things get hotter) looking at the electoral system debate, proposed policies, choice of leaders, influence outside of Europe and opinion polls, plus, of course the debate over who will take over as President, one of the first jobs for the new Parliament. Just before or just after Easter, we will host our usual Italian Election conference at the American University of Rome

The Mummy Returns

When Margaret Thatcher made an unscheduled speech to a Tory election rally in Plymouth, the local cinema was showing “The Mummy returns”. She started her speech by mentioning this and adding “It turns out you did know I was coming after all” a nice self-deprecating touch for someone who was normally not very modest. This week has seen a flurry of speculation that another mummy, Italy’s most famous embalmed creature (and admirer of Mrs. T), Silvio Berlusconi, might be making his return.

Last week, Silvio Berlusconi told one of his family papers, Il Giornale, “I’m going on a diet, I’ll lose five or six kilos and then in September I’ll decide” while the rival L’Espresso put his possible return on the cover. Then his designated successor, Angelino Alfano gave the game away by saying that he would be the first person to support Berlusconi as a leader in the next elections.

It is not exactly clear what role Berlusconi will play in the campaign. The journalist and parliamentarian, Furio Colombo who cannot abide Berlusconi, is sure that he will not go as far going for the prime ministership because the likely defeat would be too painful. I am not so sure.

He has two major interests to safeguard; control of the RAI, its programming and publicity or if not control, then a strong influence. Secondly, being able to condition and pilot any changes in the criminal law or procedure. It is true that he can look after these without being centre-stage. Indeed, over the last few weeks there has been a bitter struggle over the RAI’s new president, director-general and board which at the moment Berlusconi is winning but without appearing in the first person. His people have key posts in the parliamentary committees which would oversee any law reform so, again, his position is strong.

But at the same time, he has an impelling psychological need to be the centre of attention. He has always been a performer and is clearly not going to give up now. Add to that, power is probably the strongest drug available and once tasted it is very difficult to kick the habit. It would be wonderful to savour the taste of victory in the company of world leaders who have so obviously shown their distaste for him.

It was clear from the start that Alfano was a lightweight, a dummy made of papier maché, not meant to eclipse his master intellectually, politically or even, despite being half Berlusconi’s age, physically. The dummy was ready to be shifted whenever necessary and this is what has happened. The possibility that the PdL might have some form of primary to chose their leader has been dropped completely now with Berlusconi the undisputed chief. However they might have run it, a primary would have been very divisive as all the potential leaders have been showing undignified squabbling. Opinion polls done for Berlusconi apparently show that with Alfano as leader, the PdL would poll 8-12%, with B as elder statesman in the background 17-20%, and as leader, a full 28%.

Berlusconi has been taking an increasingly active part in public life. Last month he suggested that Italy might leave the euro. He has weighed in to the debate over electoral and constitutional reform, repeating that he would like to see a French style semi-presidential system with, of course, him as the president. He gave specific instructions to the PdL senators that they a should attend the debate on semipresidentialism, an issue much closer to his heart than any change in the electoral system.

As a matter of fact, Berlusconi never went away.

From Paradise to the stocks - wasting public money and private time

If I am lucky I can park my car in Paradise – piazza del Paradiso, so named for a mediæval inn known for its gastronomic delights. One day in March, there was a space which I eagerly took, forgetting that I had not renewed the resident’s permit. The resulting fine sat on my pile of chores to be dealt with… later.

On 6 June, not even two and a half months later (instantaneous by Rome standards) the city council sent me a raccomandata or recorded delivery letter. I went to the post office to pick up a letter from a city office in Pomezia, 30 km away. The post office is close enough, the wait a mere ten minutes and fairly cool. Instead of telling me where and how to pay the fine, the letter tells me that there is another document waiting to be picked up in another city office. This is turning out to be a reverse treasure hunt.

The next stage is an office near the Circus Maximus so I at least have the river, Sta Maria in Cosmedin (near the Bocca della Verità), and the little temples opposite

(pictured on left). The office, too, is empty and two women look up from the magazine they were reading (their only activity) to search for my envelope out of a huge bundle of other malefactors’; they give me the documentation and the way to make amends. My bank is another 10 minute cycle ride away, on the flat, and mostly shaded. Only when I get there, I discover that they are not enabled to pay traffic fines… only two banks can and even then, it is not easy, you have to punch in 18 digits in order to pay at an ATM.

Instead, I discover that state lottery agencies also have the franchise and happen that my nearest Lottomatica is in… piazza del Paradiso, where I go and pay.
My little saga begins and ends in Paradise. It has cost me €52.43 and couple of hours, which with a bicycle, a decent temperature and Roman monuments were not unpleasant. But I could have been doing something more productive. The cost to the city was the computer, printer and operator in Pomezia to send me the first notice; another computer, printer and clerks in Rome to give me the full documentation and then the lottery agency to take the fine and the software to tell the city accountants that I have paid.

This is a banal and boring story matched by thousands elsewhere in Italy and no doubt other countries. The point today is that the government has just passed a decree cutting public spending by reducing public employees (at national, regional and city levels). There has been the predictable outcry from the unions and most of the left on the iniquity of such measure but I fail to see how the human resources employed to get me to pay my fine are doing anything useful. This is the Roman equivalent of paying people to dig holes and then to fill them in again, but without the Keynsian consciousness… or irony.

Only later did I discover that piazza del Paradiso had previously been called piazza della Berlina Vecchia – the place where those guilty of misdemeanors were exposed in stocks or cages, so maybe I got off lightly after all.

Follow me on Twitter @WalstonJames

If at first you don’t secede… Celtic fringes in Italy and Britain

As bad puns go, this one is old and stale, I know, but the would-be seceders are not exactly fresh, some more than others. The Lega Nord (Northern League, LN) has for most of its 20 years aimed at an independent state of northern Italy, Padania. Roberto Maroni has just take over from Umberto Bossi as secretary and immediately reiterated independence as the party’s strategic goal.

Maroni has a tough job on his hands. He has a divided party within where Bossi and his supporters (know has “the Magic Circle”) are loath to give up the power, perks and influence they have got used to. Even as he was stepping down, Bossi could not resist sniping at his successer and longterm rival. He compared his action to the judgement of Solomon – the message is that he is the true mother of the Lega and Maroni is an opportunistic fake. Bossi status has indeed been drastically reduced by the scandals and his condition but he is not going to retire gracefully; grace has never been in Bossi’s repetoire and he is not going to start now.

The investigations into allegations of misuse of public funds will continue; they will damage the Lega as a whole but more Bossi and his friends than Maroni and no doubt the lead up to next year’s elections will be punctuated with more details of the Bossi family’s expenses charged to the party.

Politically Maroni’s job is no easier. Much of the protest vote at the local elections went to Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) while those who wanted a steady centre-right party in or near government didn’t vote. For 20 years Bossi convinced up to 10% of the electorate that the Lega was an anti-system, anti-Rome party of protest at the same time as being a responsible party of government. Maroni was minister of the interior until eight months ago. Now he is adamantly against the Monti government and has even canvassed the idea of abandoning Rome altogether; a contrast worthy of Bossi (still known as il capo).

They also have to decide whether they really want independence (or even devolution) or just to look after the interests of the conservative part of the north – the Bavarian model CSU as both Ilvo Diamante and Angelo Panebianco pointed out.

For the moment at least, Maroni his playing down Bossi’s invented Celtic traditions but there are some superficial similarities with the Scottish National Party (SNP).

They both have declared the goal of complete independence and both feel that they are giving more to the rest of the country than they are receiving. Both have been prepared to play long, waiting games, the SNP even longer than the LN.

But there the similarities end. The SNP is a social democratic party (some would say further to the left) while the Lega is a populist, xenophic centre-right party. In terms of national identity, SNP leader Alex Salmond has a huge advantage over Roberto Maroni. His future independent Scotland has a navel, in Ernest Gellner’s term, while Padania most certainly does not. Gellner divided modern nations into those with precursors or “parents” (and therefore a navel) and those without. Until 1707 Scotland only shared a king with England and even now the Scots have a different legal system and they still have banks of issue. Devolution gave them fiscal powers different from the rest of the UK.

In the UK, Salmond’s announcement of an independence referendum earlier this year led to a flurry of articles about the costs and benefits of an independent Scotland and if he really does move towards a vote, then these arguments will surely trump any memory of Bannockburn (he wants to hold the referendum on the anniversary of the battle in which the Scots defeated the English in 1314) in the same way that Scotland accepted the Act of Union in 1707 for economic reasons.

The breakup of the UK is still a long way off but the possibility is genuinely on the political agenda; an independent Padania is so much hot air.

Both cases as well as Catalonia and the Basque Country might make us face two questions: who decides on a divorce? The smaller would-be independent state or the whole? Only in Czechoslovakia “velvet divorce” was the split genuinely consensual (at least for the two governments). Secondly, how to deal with EU and euro membership assuming that either still exist in their present form in 2013. Do the new Scotland, Padania, Catalonia have automatic membership or do they join the queue with Turkey and Montenegro? Neither national governments nor the European institutions are prepared to address the question until it is posed in a very concrete way.

For the moment, though, these big questions and comparisons will disappear before the campaign questions. First of all, what sort of electoral law will Italy have by April next year? That will condition Maroni’s alliance gameplan. And then, how to capture the dissatisfaction of rising taxes without looking like a aging copy of Beppe Grillo.

True born Italians - a reply

A long and thoughtful response from Andrea (and my own comment below):

E' triste e vagamente irritante sentirsi ancora, e ancora, e ancora costretti a riflettere su temi come il razzismo e l'intolleranza. Perchè ne avvertiamo, all'un tempo, la stupidità e l'importanza.

Avvertiamo con imbarazzo la futilità di ripetere a noi stessi e ad altri riflessioni tanto ovvie quanto ahinoi sempre nuovamente attuali. Ci irrita dover formulare esplicitamente quelle considerazioni che dovrebbero essere patrimonio fondamentale di umanità e obiettività per chiunque, e invece non lo sono.

L'esercizio di accettare l'evidenza che viviamo in compagnia di estranei non ha nulla di moderno: i Minoici consideravano gli Achei dei bestioni ignoranti, i Latini che fondarono Roma si consideravano rivali degli Etruschi di Veio. Passiamo la vita ad elaborare concettualmente le appartenenze (nostre e degli altri) a questo o quel raggruppamento identitario, che sia definito su base linguistica, religiosa, geografica o ideologica. Alcune "appartenenze" sono addirittura a geometria variabile, e limitate a certi periodi della vita o momenti sociali: ci riconosciamo (e riconosciamo altri) alternativamente automobilisti e pedoni, consumatori, pensionati, studenti, romani, inquilini, viaggiatori, maschi, anziani, metropolitani, europei, romanisti, comunisti, bianchi, baby-boomers, intellettuali, figli, meridionali, contribuenti. E in ognuno di questi ruoli consideriamo come le nostra e le altrui caratterisctiche ci definiscano per appartenenza a un gruppo e diversità da altri.

La riflessione diventa delicata - e rivela tutte le sue più pericolose implicazioni- quando dalla considerazione di appartenenza si cerca di far conseguire un diritto: "in quanto" appartenente a questa o quella categoria di persone "ho diritto" a qualcosa di diverso e speciale rispetto agli altri.

Il collegamento fra appartenenza e diritti era più facile da elaborare e accettare come principio generale quando le comunità erano meno eterogenee ed evanescenti nel tempo e nello spazio: per secoli e secoli, per la gran parte degli esseri umani l'dentità definita dalla nascita definiva all'un tempo gran parte delle caratteristiche potenzialmente rilevanti per definire un'appartenenza in termini di razza, religione, residenza, lingua; e perfino, in larga misura, interessi economici, prospettive di sopravvivenza, legami di parentela. In tali condizioni, è fin troppo semplice per chiunque riconoscersi in quanto parte di una comunità e "diverso" da chiunque differisca anche solo per un aspetto fra questi. Colore, credo, dialetto e campanile definiscono all'unisono chi siamo e da chi ci distinguiamo, e lasciano ben pochi dubbi su quale sia "la nostra parte". Ma il progredire della storia ha significato per gran parte dell'umanità la progressiva e sistematica istruzione delle identità di appartenenza. Sotto molti punti di vista, essere "moderni" ha significato per gli uomini essere sempre meno spesso capaci di definirsi in quanto parte di una comunità definita e riconoscibile.

La definizione di noi stessi per appartenenza e differenza è, ci piaccia o meno, una componente profondamente radicata nella nostra psicologia. Siamo pur sempre una specie che si è evoluta vivendo in tribù. Per questo il razzismo emerge così facilmente nei nostri comportamenti, perfino dove sembrava essere estraneo alla cultura dominante da generazioni.

Per questo, anche, è così facile per chiunque, in ogni epoca e in ogni nazione, trovare gente entusiata e pronta ad aderire a qualsiasi iniziativa che richiami un qualche valore identitario, non importa quanto ridicolo e infondato. Riconoscersi parte di una tribù esercita su di noi un'attrazione irresistibile, come anche stabilire un criterio sbrigativo per identificare i nostri rivali.
Serve fare esempi?

Ma insomma, James.... cosa ne vuoi sapere TU, che sei INGLESE? solo perchè VIVI a Roma e PARLI italiano, credi di poter dire a NOI che siamo razzisti? Ma guarda un po', questi INTELLETTUALI, che pensano di capire IL POPOLO essendo nati in un'altra CLASSE. Che vuoi che m'importi se Balotelli è negro, quando la verità è che è BRESCIANO (e nato in SICILIA, poi...). Come TUTTI i GIOVANI d'oggi, non capisce neanche a chi deve dire grazie; che il suo stipendio lo paghiamo NOI CONTRIBUENTI.

Vedi com'è facile? ;-)

Un saluto a tutti,
Andrea

(pubblica quel che vuoi, se vuoi)

My reply: It is certainly irritating to have to repeat the same things over and over again but as long as human beings carry on doing the same dumb (and sometimes intelligent) things, we are all going to have to continue coming to terms with them… and ourselves.

That's why, Andrea, you quote ancient Greek examples, why their dramas and political analyses are as valid today as they were for Pericles or Aristophanes and long before.
And I am certainly not accusing Italians, all Italians, of being racist. Italy so far has dealt with immigration much better than Britain, Germany, France and the US. The Balotelli case is important precisely because it should help Italy avoid the mess that other countries have been through… or at least create new and different messes. Balotelli has multiple identities like the rest of us - he is claimed as an Italian and Bresciano, and maybe as a Palermitano and also by Ghanaians who would like to see him playing for the Black Stars. But he's also a son as I pointed out and is soon to be a father. I was just looking at one aspect.

A true-born Italian.

In a couple of hours, Italian strikers Balotelli and Cassano will try and repeat their prowess against Germany and win the European Championship for Italy. But whether Italy wins or not Balotelli made his mark in the semi-finals. Not as a player, which was never in any doubt despite his ups and downs. His mark is on Italian society. In a striking way, he has changed what it means to be “Italian”.

Like so many other prominent sportsmen and women, particular black or brown ones, Balotelli represents a country which is uneasy and equivocal about whether he is truly “Italian”. Racist and crypto-racist Italians have no difficulty rejecting Ghanaian fruitpickers exploited by the camorra and the ndrangheta in the south. Most of them are irregular, their Italian is poor and above all, they’re poor and black. Ergo, they are not and cannot be Italian. Balotelli in contrast, was born in Italy, he is (now) an Italian citizen, he is a wealthy celebrity who scored the two Italian goals on Thursday. But he’s still black and like English footballers a generation ago, the racism comes out… on the field and off.

Before the Italy-England match, the Gazzetta dello Sport had a cartoon of Balotelli as King Kong on Big Ben rather than the Empire State. Like Silvio Berlusconi who called a journalist an “imbecile” when he suggested that Berlusconi calling Obama “suntanned” was racist, the Gazzetta was sorry that anyone could have been stupid enough to take offence at the cartoon, not that the cartoon itself was offensive. The episode was nicely analysed by Simon Martin in the Independent where he took some flack for even talking about it.

Eighty years ago, an Italian middle-weight, national champion, Leone Jacovacci whose father was Italian and mother Conglese, was greeted on the ring and in the press with the slogan “there are no black Italians” (sometimes repeated about Balotelli). That was under fascism a few years before Mussolini “Fascist scientists” decreed that there was an “Italian race” (and that Jews were not part of it) in adocument they called The “Manifesto della Razza” which was absurd in scientific terms and would have been comic if it had not been for the Racial Laws which followed and their tragic consequences.

Italians were then as racially mixed as any other nation. Daniel Defoe’s satire on English “purity” could easily be adapted to Italy.

Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het'rogeneous thing, an Englishman:

In eager rapes, and furious lust begot

Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.

Whose gend'ring off-spring quickly learn'd to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:

From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,

With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.

In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,

Infus'd betwixt a Saxon and a Dane 

While their rank daughters, to their parents just,

Receiv'd all nations with promiscuous lust.

This nauseous brood directly did contain

The well-extracted blood of Englishmen.
Daniel Defoe, 1701

He wrote this 300 years ago in defence of the Dutch king William of Orange. A century and a half ago, the prime minister of Britain, Benjamin Disraeli, was the son of an Italian Jew. But Britain still went through sometimes violent moments trying to integrate the millions of post-war, non-white immigrants and all is still far from perfect today despite the progress. Today, the Belgian prime minister is a second generation Italian, Sarkozy is also the child of immigrants and of course there is Obama. Surely there are enough role models for well-integrated societies? Especially in sport and show business where the rules are more relaxed.

Well no. We know that there are still problems about who is a “real” Italian (or Englishman, Frenchman or whatever). This is why Balotelli is so important to push the boundaries of “Italian-ness”. There are two iconic photographs from Thursday’s match.

The first is just after his first goal when he took off his shirt to display an exceptionally well-sculpted torso (in a curious role-reversal of the Gazzetta cartoon, one paper had a cartoon of a bare-chested Mario Monti in Balotelli pose, flexing his muscles towards Europe and Chancellor Merkel). Balotelli has a fantastic body by any standards and in a country which puts much store in physical beauty, that counted.

The second is him hugging his mother. A natural enough gesture and again particularly significant in a country where “la mamma” is fundamental. In this case the picture is even more striking because he is black and she is white; it is a simbolic moment but between real people – it helps to exorcise whatever residual phobias there are over “miscegenation”.

The question of “Italian-ness” is not only about colour. There are more than half a million children born and brought up in Italy, speaking Italian as their first language, who are not Italian citizens because their parents are foreign. There are bills before Parliament which would change this but they are unlikely to see the statute book in this session.

In the meantime, Mario Balotelli is an icon and model for millions of Italians (as well as those Ghanaian fruit pickers) whatever else he does… and if he works his magic this evening, that will be another step as well as making a whole country jubilant for a few days.

Legality

In his speech yesterday commemoration Giovanni Falcone, President Napolitanto exhorted young people to come out on the streets in favour of “legality”. He really meant it and his voice almost broke with emotion as he read that part of the speech.

Then there were indeed thousands of young people who had arrived in Palermo by boat and bus as part of a campaign for “legality”. They gave the ceremony in the Bunker Courtroom in Palermo an almost festive air and their presence gave a substance to the the commemoration way beyond that of the official speeches.

That was yesterday and I like millions of others was moved by the ceremonies and above all Falcone's contribution to the rule of law and justice.

Today, in a very different part of the woods, I am stopped by a young carabiniere who was stopping cars and pedestrians in a very narrow-streeted part of Trastevere in order to allow a carabiniere bus through a one-way street… in the wrong direction of course.

To bring a big bus into Trastevere is unwise at the best of times – to drive against the traffic of a one-way street is just arrogantly bloody-minded. Laws (and rules of all kinds) exist either for common convenience or to protect the weak, at least in democratic societies so for the law enforcement officers to break them (without a hint of emergency – the bus had no passengers nor flashing lights or sirens) sets a bad example.

You might say “there is no connection between putting 500 kilos of TNT under a road and killing five people and driving the wrong way up a street”. Of course, for the gravity of the action but we know well enough from the “fixing broken windows” theory (and practice) that legality breeds legality and even minor breaches of the law encourage others.

I am sure that the next time a carabinere stops me and does not fine me for a traffic offence, I will take it as normal or be very angry if he does fine me. But today the contrast was too striking especially coming a few days after the PdL tried to stop an anti-corruption bill going through Parliament.

Giovanni Falcone, Capaci 20 years on.

1992 was a traumatic year for Italy. This year has seen a wave of commemorations of those events. The most dramatic and most traumatic (but not the last) was 20 years ago today, 23 May when Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three of his police escorts were killed by a massive bomb put under the motorway that they were travelling on (picture left). And the most traumatic element of the commemorations is that there are almost as many mysteries surrounding the murder today as there were 20 years ago.

Normally anniversaries are opportunities to comment on how much has changed since then but with this years’, there are threads which tie us to the past in web which is part metaphorical and part very concrete.

The arrests and deaths of two decades ago signalled the end of an era and the beginning of what looked like renewal. Today we are again in the throes of a major transformation in Italian society and politics. There are arrests and scandals which are undermining the traditional parties and on Saturday a bomb exploded outside a school in Brindisi killing one girl and injuring many others.

It all looks grimly familiar.

Twenty years ago in February, Milanese prosecutors arrested Mario Chiesa for corruption setting off the “Clean Hands” investigation which put an end to Bettino Craxi’s bid for the premiership and led to the end of both his Socialist Party and the Christian Democratic Party as well as of the smaller parties. In March, Giulio Andreotti’s man in Sicily, Salvo Lima was killed as part of an internal mafia feud. This ended Andreotti’s hopes of becoming President of the Republic and was a potent sign that the mafia had declared that previous deals were off and had raised the stakes. Two months later they killed Falcone and in July, they killed Falcone’s close friend and colleague, Paolo Borsellino. For Lima, both victim and method were traditional mafia – a single gunman and an obvious and identified target; for Falcone and Borsellino, the targets were very clear but the method was new and demonstrative as well as lethal. They did not just want to kill the two men, they wanted to show their arrogance and power.

The following year, they used the same method but on very different targets and for even more demonstrational purposes. There were bombs in Rome, Florence and Milan aimed to frighten a wider public and the government, a threat of worse possibilities to come.

Thankfully, those threats were not realised and some of the bosses of the Sicilian mafia at least, were arrested in due course. The men who actually prepared and set off the bombs have been convicted but there is still a thick fog around who might have been behind the Falcone and Borsellino killings and the 1993 bombs. It has now been definitely established that there were contacts and possible deals between senior police and civil servants and mafia over the summer of 1992. It seems very likely that Borsellino discovered what was going on which was at least one of the reasons that he was killed. It is the connections between organised crime and local and national politics which distinguishes Italy from any comparable western democracy.
Today President Napolitano and Prime Minister Mario Monti were at the commemoration ceremony in Palermo and Napolitano made a moving appeal to young people especially to fight for legality. Tomorrow he will take part in the state funeral for Pacido Rizzotto, the trade unionist killed by the mafia in 1948 and no doubt there will be more moving words. But it takes more than worthy speeches to defeat mafia (even though the rhetoric is important). The ndrangheta or Calabrian mafia is more powerful than ever and has spread its tentacles deep into Lombard soil and even further afield. The camorra, despite some knocks is still a force to be reckoned with and Apulian organised crime, the Sacred United Crown, Sacra Corona Unita, very likely had some hand in Saturday’s Brindisi bomb. Corruption is if anything worse than in 1992. Hence the importance of figures like Giovanni Falcone.

Falcone’s legacy was, above all, a commitment to the rule of law and to justice in the widest sense; in Italy, he is often presented as one who “served the State”. He did that certainly but he also served the community, his own Palermo and Sicilian community as well as the wider Italian society because he believed that the arbitrary violence of mafia was not inevitable.

He also introduced methods for dealing effectively with mafiosi who turned state’s evidence and encouraging them to collaborate and he developed the methods that had been started by his former boss, Rocco Chinnici who himself was the first victim of a Beirut-style killing nine years before.

Paradoxically, given how he died and what has happened since then, he also inspires hope. He had a smile (Falcone and Borsellino pictured together) which was in glorious contrast with the pressures he faced and which seemed to indicate an inner serenity more than a passing moment of happiness. And then there is his most famous remark that “the mafia is a human construct and like all things human will come to an end some time”.

He did not say when and we are still a long way from that date.