The Ferramonti Foundation and Memory Policies in Italy

On Wednesday the Pitigliani Centre in Rome hosted a conference “For Ferramonti. Memoria 70x25” organised by the International Network for Ferramonti and Teresa Grande from the University of Calabria.

Ferramonti was a Fascist internment camp in Tarsia in Calabria which operated from 1940 to 1943. Some 5,000 people went through it with an average population around 2,000 at a time. The majority were foreign Jews interned at the beginning of the war – not all were “enemy aliens” as some still had their German or Austrian citizenship but the law was bent in order to intern them “if their own country has racial legislation”. There were some Greeks after the Italian invasion of Greece and some Hongkong Chinese and Nigerian sailors from British ships caught in the wrong place at the outbreak of war. In September 1943, it was the first Fascist concentration camp in continental Europe to be liberated. After the war its very existence was forgotten.

In the ‘80s a young pediatrician working in Cosenza, Spartaco Capogreco came across stories about the camp from older people from Tarsia and became curious about it. So much so that in 1987 he published the first account of Ferramonti and the following year set up a Foundation to look after the memory of the camp and the very little physical remains that were left. Wednesday’s conference was a celebration of the 70 years since Ferramonti’s liberation in September 1943 and of the 25 years of the Foundation.

The conference coincided with the 25 April holiday celebrating the Liberation of Italy in 1945, a holiday which for more than 20 years has been a spur to debate Italy’s memory and vision of itself. Until the early ‘90s almost all of Italy paid lip service to an antifascist ideal and the 25 April was a moment to reaffirm those values. Since then, there has been a slow erosion of Italy’s core antifascist values and a revision of the memory of Mussolini and the 20 years of fascism.

So Capogreco and the Foundation’s patient historical work is an antidote to the attempts at wilful amnesia.

It is memory and the consciousness of the past both individual and social that distinguish us from other species. Only humans can bridge the gaps of generations by leaving written records and unwritten remains that can be interpreted but often that interpretation provokes argument and debate. Orwell addressed the question of state-sponsored amnesia as a fundamental element of 1984. This is underlined when O’Brien proposes a toast to Winston:“’What shall it be this time?’ he said, still with the same faint suggestion of irony. ‘To the confusion of the Thought Police? To the death of Big Brother? To humanity? To the future?’ ‘To the past,’ said Winston. ‘The past is more import¬ant,’ agreed O’Brien gravely .

Today, it is the Chinese who are working hard to forget. As Yan Lianke wrote recently in the New York Times:

In China, memory deletion is turning the younger generation into selective-memory automatons. Memories of history and the present, yesterday and to¬day are all going through this uniform process of deletion and are being lost without trace. … In today’s China, amnesia trumps memory. Lies are surpassing the truth. Fabrications have become the logical link to fill historical gaps. Even memories of events that have only just taken place are being discarded at a dazzling pace, with barely intelligible fragments all that remain for people to hold on to

.

Archæologists quip that “only the future is unchangeable”. For them and for historians, the past is constantly re-interpreted. It is also learnt or re-learnt through work in archives and the spreading of that knowledge to specialists and then to schools and a broader public.

When I did some work on Ferramonti and the other Fascist camps in the ‘90s, I asked one American class what they knew of the internment of Japanese American after Pearl Harbour. All were from the east coast and of European origin so had no family reasons to know about the internment but all of them did, one had even done a high school project on it. The sample had no scientific validity but I would guess that any reasonably well-educated American, an undergraduate not necessarily in history, knows about that not very positive moment of recent American history. Their Italian peers have no such general knowledge of the Italian concentration camps, hence the importance of Capogreco’s work.

Elie Wiesel wrote in Night “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” And after a more recent genocide, Simon Norfolk, a photographer working in Ruanda wrote ‘Forgetting is the final instrument of genocide.’

The Italian camps were not a genocide even if Fascist Italy was for the most part a willing partner in the Nazi plan. Some, like Ferramonti, actually saved Jews from deportation and likely death in the German camps. Survivors mostly remember Ferramonti as a haven of tranquillity and security where internees suffered the same heat and cold and malaria as the local population. There was barbed wire, to be sure, and most of them arrived with the regulation chains on their legs and manacles, but inside the camp there were schools and synagogues, a Jewish artist painted an altarpiece for a nearby church, an eye surgeon performed operations which had never been possible before in an isolated part of Calabria.

Capogreco and colleagues have recounted the story of this and other camps in Italy. Something similar to the story of Ferramonti happened in the Italian camp for Jews on the Adriatic island of Rab while a few miles away, in another Italian camp, Yugoslav internees were dying in thousands. They were not being exterminated as in Treblinka, for example, but the lack of food and water, shelter, clothing and medical facilities meant an appalling death rate. On the mainland at Gonars in Friuli, conditions were similar.

But none of this is part of mainstream knowledge here. Official Italy, including the educational system, has an excellent memory of the torts committed by Yugoslav partisans at the end of the war who summarily executed real and imagined opposition in carsic caves called foibe and encouraged or forced up to 300,000 Italian speakers to leave Istria. But there is amnesia about the torts committed by Italians before and during the war in the concentration camps, reprisal killings and forced “Italianisation”.

At the Italian commemoration of the foibe and the exodus from Istria this year, ambassadors from Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro did not attend and the Slovenian ambassador, Iztok Mirosic wrote to Foreign Minister Terzi asking that the results of a bilateral commission be published in Italian. The Italo-Slovenian commission’s report on historical relations has been published in Slovenian and is part of the school curriculum in Slovenia but not in Italy. This, again, is where history and historians can make an important contribution.

Two recent events give cause for just a little optimism. The Mausoleum for war criminal Rodolfo Graziani in the Latial town of Affile was financed with public funds from the Latium regional government. Last week the newly elected president of the region, Nicola Zingaretti suspended the second tranche of funds on both moral grounds and because of the irregularity in the application for funds for the monument (the funds had been allocated for a monument to the Unknown Soldier – Graziani is all too well known). Yesterday, Zingaretti took the opportunity of 25 April to write a letter to the people of Affile explaining the decision. The newly elected deputy Cécile Kyenge has already tabled a motion for the Graziani monument to be re-dedicated to "those killed by Fascism in Africa". She took part in another Ferramonti conference pushing for historical respect.

In Brescia, where the local council would like to re-install a statue entitled “Era Fascista”, protests have forced them to delay the work at least until after the upcoming local elections.
For all these reasons, Capogreco and the Ferramonti Foundation have an essential role in illuminating the past in order to improve the present and the American University of Rome’s Center for the Study of Racism and Migration in Italy looks forward to working with them. We started the Center to analyse racism in 1938 and 2008 and continue in the hope of contributing to the policy debate as well as doing research.

Enrico Letta; Italy’s Prime Minister Designate

These last few days as Enrico Letta became the favourite for prime minister, the question from all but serious political nerds was “Who is Letta? I don’t know anything about him”. That is the point.
President Napolitano made it very clear in his inaugural speech on Monday that the only possible government is a coalition between the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and the centre-right People of Freedom (PdL). The PD has the majority in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies but needs an ally in the Senate.

These are two parties that have considered each other as an absolute opposite since their foundation in 2007 (and their predecessors felt the same way). From November 2011 to December last year, they were uneasy bedfellows in the Monti-led grand (technocratic) government. But even there, they sniped at each other and prevented the implementation of policies they didn’t like. Since then, both during and after the February elections, the rhetoric and the substance of their antipathy has gone up many notches.

Hence the appointment of Enrico Letta as one of the few people who has the personal and political qualities that just might be able to put together a working government.

First of all, he is a centrist and a Catholic leaning to the left, not a Marxist or ex-Communist or Socialist. He learnt his politics with the leftish Christian Democrat economist, Beniamino Andreatta and then worked with Romano Prodi. In the PD, he has never been closely associated with a single faction. His thinktank VeDrò has annual get-togethers in which politicians and policymakers from both sides discuss issues in convivial surroundings, discussions which continue throughout the year in Rome.

At 46, he will be the third youngest Italian prime minister if he succeeds and so represents a generational renewal. His family connections also bridge gaps; his uncle Gianni Letta has for long been Silvio Berlusconi’s eminence grise.

As the PD deputy secretary, he is the natural successor of Pierluigi Bersani who stepped down after his multiple failures.

Over the next few days, he will talk to party leaders and draw up a list of cabinet and junior ministers.

The jostling has already begun but will be muted until Friday when Berlusconi gets back from Texas, a guest at the inauguration of the George W. Bush library, because in the PdL it is Berlusconi who has the last word (and usually the first too). He wants the key ministries of Justice, Interior and the Economy. The first is essential to have some influence on his trials, the second to influence public order and antimafia policy and the third to condition taxes and overall policy in order to safeguard his family holding company Mediaset and curry favour with the voters in elections which are not far away.

In the PD the everpresent risk is that once again the choice of ministers will render the internal splits very visible. Today there are many grassroots PD branches which are in open revolt with the party’s centre.

But despite these difficulties, the division of the ministerial spoils is the easy part of Letta’s job. In the old days of the so-called First Republic, there was precise tabulation of the worth of different jobs known as the “Manuale Cencelli”. This little virtual handbook measured ministries in terms of prestige, money and vote control (Foreign Affairs prestige but no money or votes, Post and Telecommunications lots of vote gathering but little prestige or funds, Treasury, Budget or Finance all gave control over funds and some prestige but not a lot of votes). The electoral strength between parties and internal party factions determined which prizes you won. Letta and his staff are no doubt working on a new edition of the Cencelli at the moment.

The real obstacle is the programme. For months PD and PdL have been listing their different policies. For the last week, Berlusconi and his people have been repeating the election promise of abolishing Monti property tax, the IMU and re-imbursing last year’s payment. No matter that he and the PdL approved the tax only a year ago.

The PD and Monti’s Civic Choice (SC) see no way of balancing the budget with the IMU and have said so.

On the other hand, the PD would like to see more stringent conflict of interest and anti-corruption laws, something which is anathema to Berlusconi.

Napolitano’s committee of Ten Wise Men produced an agenda which will probably be the basis of Letta’s programme but their issues were shared between left and right and are hardly compatible.

Finally there is the electoral law reform, an issue that Napolitano has been hammering on for more than five year to no effect. All pay lip service to the idea that the law should be changed but no one has an idea of what to put in its place… or rather they all have many ideas, the best recipe for doing nothing.

I had a couple of queries, one from Irene Metropolou of To Vima in Athens and one from Camila Maia of Brazil’s Agência CMA What are the biggest challenges in terms of politics and the economy? The electoral law and the path to growth and recovery (austerity v. spending, liberalisation – the same issues of the last five years). Will it be stable enough to press on with reforms? Highly unlikely, because of the internal contradictions. They were not able to do so under Monti and probably won’t do any better under Letta. And what about the future of the PD? Will it implode and split? Have the changes harmed or strengthened the party? It will (it already has) change physionomy. Fabrizio Barca is trying to re-invent it from the left and Renzi from the right. There is no guarantee that their visions will coincide.

Maia also wants to know if Berlusconi has any chance of returning to power. At the moment the opinion polls give him a substantial lead which he can and is using to his advantage in government formation. He can threaten withdrawing support and bringing about early elections but real elections are a risk as Bersani learnt to his cost. And policital instability would lead to economic instability which would hurt his already weak Mediaset. So he will probably not be back in power this year.

And finally, will Napolitano dissolve parliament? He has two powers; one is dissolution of parliament, the other is his resignation, putting the responsibility firmly at the feet of the parties. He will only use them if Letta fails in his task and even then, he will look for just about any way out to avoid what would be the meltdown of the political system with serious effects on the economic and financial systems.

The Equivocal Calm Between Storms

For a brief moment, the helterskelter is in a trough, calm and waiting for the next climb to be followed inevitably by another downward hurtle.

Yesterday Pierluigi Bersani’s Democratic Party (PD) and the other traditional parties did not know where to turn so one by one they went up the Hill (the President’s palace on the Quirinal hill is known as “Il Colle” or “the highest hill in Rome”) to beg the 87 year Giorgio Napolitano to get them out of the mess. Most accounts confirm that it was Bersani who convinced Napolitano by telling him that no one else could guarantee a united PD vote. After the two very loud failures of Thursday and Friday, the party and more importantly, the country could not afford another open wound and inconclusive ballot.

Silvio Berlusconi and the People of Freedom (PdL) added their support along with the centrist Mario Monti (Civic Choice, SC) and even the Northern League’s (LN) Roberto Maroni. The PD’s ally, Nichi Vendola’s Left, Ecology and Freedom (SEL) decided to vote for the Five Star Movement (M5S)’s candidate Stefano Rodotà.

After lunch, Napolitano said that he accepted the candidature and by late afternoon, the count confirmed that Napolitano had won 738 out of 997 votes. This is the first time that an Italian president has been re-elected. There is no constitutional ban on a second term but none of Napolitano’s ten predecessors had used the possibility so that most constitutionalists presumed that there was an unwritten amendment prohibiting a second term.

Tomorrow he will be sworn in and has promised to set his own terms for his second presidency. Most likely he will set a time limit and make it very clear that the condition for him to stay on is that there is a reliable government. But whatever conditions he does put on himself and the politicians, they will be self-imposed. For the moment, he has a 7 year mandate limited only by the constitution.
After the result, there was exultation in the centre-right; Napolitano has been very supportive of Berlusconi both with regard to his prosecutions and to the idea of a PdL-PD coalition. There was quiet satisfaction from Monti and relief from Bersani. The left of the PD, SEL and of course Grillo and the M5S were furious.

Grillo’s immediate reaction was to call the vote a “coup” and say that he was coming to Rome and hoped for a million people on the streets when he arrived. His own supporters were forced to backtrack on the leader and admit that a regular vote in Parliament was hardly a coup d’état and the whisper of the phrase “march on Rome” with its explicit Fascist association forced him to delay his arrival and cancel the nightime demo. Still, there will be one this afternoon. The M5S candidate, Stefano Rodotà is a lawyer, former member of Parliament and former head of a public watchdog agency and a man of the left; not surprisingly he condemned Grillo’s clearly, quickly and forcefully.

The “coup” and “march on Rome” were only slight hiccoughs in Grillo’s continuing success. He could not have hoped for more than an alliance between the centre-right and a terminally fractured centre-left. Depending on what parties come out of the PD left, Grillo and the M5S could take a large portion of very unhappy PD voters. The more the M5S people, the grillini come into the media spotlight, though, the more they advertise their lack of ability and coherence – charming naiveté at first but not a good reason to vote for them. So there is a sort of race between the grillino learning curve and the ability of the PD to reorganise itself. Where these two curves are when the next elections take place will determine the result.

The other winner is of course Berlusconi.

He has kept his cool most of the time – it was curious though that while Grillo cried foul yesterday, Berlusconi said on Friday that if Prodi were to be elected it would have been “undemocratic” and he and the PdL would have taken to the streets; a bit rich coming from the man who had designed the present electoral system which should have led to a Prodi victory. In the event the PD was more than capable of shooting itself in the foot and Berlusconi did not have to take to the streets. A fortnight ago, a satirical paper had the cartoon of Berlusconi sitting on a river bank, waiting. It was a prescient drawing; the corpses of Bersani, Prodi and the PD have already floated past. More will follow. He has been assured of a friendly presence in the Quirinale and in all probability, a government in which the PdL plays a major part. If there are early elections, polls suggest that the PdL would be the first party. No wonder he was smiling yesterday.

The government will most likely be a “political” one, led by a party person, not a technocrat. Its likely platform will be the report produced by Napolitano’s committee of “ten wise men”, a composite of contradictory issues put together by PD, PdL and SC. The names that are being put forward are Giuliano Amato, the eternal bridgebuilder, part politician, part technocrat or Bersani’s deputy, Enrico Letta, sufficiently anodyne not to offend the PdL. Whoever it is he will have to deal with the same economic issues as before and the growing rejection of the political system. The 74% of grand electors who voted for Napolitano are very far from showing that three quarters of Italy supports a PD-PdL coalition.

The helterskelter ride is beginning again.

Chaos Squared

It would be difficult to imagine a more disastrous way of running a party or a country. The Italian Parliament yesterday was petty spite elevated to party policy under the banner of “let’s cut off our noses to spite our faces”.

The story of the numbers is easy to tell. The Italian president is elected by the two houses of parliament plus representatives of the regions.

For the first three votes, the winning candidate needs a two thirds majority (672/1007). If no one is elected, at the fourth ballot, a simple majority (504/1007) suffices.

The Democratic Party (PD) with its left-wing allies Left, Ecology and Freedom (SEL) on paper have 496 votes so they had the responsibility of proposing candidates.

For almost two months since the 25 February general election, the PD secretary, Pierluigi Bersani made it clear that he was not going to form a government with Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL). He tried to work out some sort of alliance with Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S), failing that, he was trying to at least create a non-aggression pact which would have allowed a PD led government to carry out some necessary reforms – the electoral system, cutting the costs and subsidies in politics (today yet another spending and corruption scandal exploded in the Piedmont regional government), and initiating a recovery package for the economy.

Then on Wednesday evening, 14 hours before voting for the president was due to begin, Bersani announced that he had come to an agreement with his archenemy Berlusconi for a presidential candidate. The day before Grillo had announced that the M5S candidate was Stefano Rodotà, an academic lawyer respected by all, a man of the left but not tied to any single party… a plausible candidate for the PD. Grillo had also said that they could consider Romano Prodi as a potential candidate, if Rodotà and other failed. Instead, Bersani came to a deal with Berlusconi to the fury of a good number of PD voters and parliamentarians. It allowed Grillo to say that this was Berlusconi’s candidate which was partially true.

The Bersani-Berlusconi candidate was Franco Marini, a Catholic (important in the old logic of alternating secular and Catholic presidents, but no longer relevant in the changing architecture of Italian politics). He was a union leader, a senator and speaker of the Senate and, essential for Berlusconi, had never expressed strong antipathy for Berlusconi. In theory, PD and PdL should have polled 761 together. That would have allowed for a hundred defections in the secret ballot. In the event, Marini took an insulting 521. He was burnt instantly. Rodotà, who should have had 163 M5S votes, actually polled 240, all presumably from SEL and the PD. A picture of Bersani with his arm around the shoulder of Angelino Alfano, the PdL secretary became the symbol of the misplaced alliance; an embrace that did not augur well for Bersani.

In the second ballot on Thursday and third on Friday morning, the majority put in blank votes, holding their fire before the fourth ballot.

Yesterday morning, the PD electors met and agreed on Prodi as their candidate for the fourth ballot, intending to pick up the missing 8 votes from Mario Monti’s Civic Choice (SC) or Grillo.

As the votes were counted, PD voters grew ever more ashenfaced and the centre right exulted. The final result was 395 votes for Prodi meaning 101 PD or SEL voters had welched on the agreement. Nichi Vendola’s SEL had renounced the secret ballot by promising to write “R.Prodi” on their ballots (rather than just “Prodi” or “Romano Prodi”) and the number of votes for “R.Prodi” matched the SEL voters. So the 101 were all PD voters.

What had happened was that the PD had used the elections for the president as if it were a party conference. There were settling old and new scores and readjusting internal party balance all of it covered by a secret ballot and with the effect of not only destroying their own party but leaving the country rudderless once again.

The most likely culprits are almost certainly Massimo D’Alema and his supporters who have a personal antipathy towards both Prodi and Bersani and would prefer to see some sort of arrangement with Berlusconi for both the presidency and the government. The other possible culprit could be the mayor Florence, Matteo Renzi. He was runner up in the PD primaries in November and since the PD’s non-victory in February has been closing in on Bersani as the next party leader. He is not one of the voters but he has substantial support in the party and many could have voted against Prodi as a way of hitting Bersani. But the result is the likely disintegration of the whole party.

Yesterday evening, the party president, Rosy Bindi had resigned followed soon afterwards by Bersani who promised to step down as soon as the president has been elected.

This is not only the end of a party which five months ago was presumed to be the dead cert for the next government (they were already arguing over who should take which cabinet post) but it is yet another blow the country’s credibility at a time when Italy needs confidence and credibility more than ever.

A new president will not mean that a new government will follow automatically, even less that the government will be effective. But without a president, there can be no government.

The effects are likely to be dire for Italy which will be unable to get out the economic mess it is in and also dire for the rest of Europe which watches aghast as petty personal squabbles put the whole continent at risk.

Italy’s body or soul? The choice for president.

Tomorrow, voting will start for President Napolitano’s successor, a crucial figure given the political stalemate. For most of the 65 year old Italian republic, the president has been a largely symbolic figure, cutting ribbons, attending funerals and welcoming victorious athletes. But his powers are like a concertina; they expand and contract depending on how well the political and judicial powers are working.

Over the last two years, they have expanded enormously. Most recently, a fortnight ago, Napolitano commissioned “ten wise men” to draw up proposals for a future government. Quite apart from the substance of their proposals, this was a major innovation – the President attempted to set the agenda for a government and condition it as Andrea Vannucci clearly pointed out in his recent contribution to the blog.

Napolitano has also intervened heavily in the judiciary, asking for and getting the guarantee from the Constitutional Court that any presidential conversation may not be recorded, far less cited, even if a person under investigation calls him. That was last year; two weeks ago he successfully pressured the Milan courts to change their schedules so that Silvio Berlusconi’s trial hearings would be postponed until after the presidential election.
All of these are much more than the constitution’s general mandate for the President to be the final guarantor of the constitution. On top of this, the new president will have to either encourage the parties to come to a deal and form a government or call early elections, a very real and immediate power.

The president is elected by an electoral college made up of both houses of parliament plus representatives of the regions for a total of 1,007. In the first three ballots a two thirds majority is necessary (672) from the fourth, a simple majority (508).

There are some who argue that the President should have three qualities apart from being an Italian over 50 (a constitutional requirement) not barred from holding public office. He or she should have a good grasp and working knowledge of the Constitution, be respected abroad and hold any prejudices towards any part of Italy (and vice versa). The last requirement is a not very veiled way of saying that the new president should not consider Berlusconi as the devil (or be considered as an enemy by Berlusconi).

The alternative is to think that the President should indeed be reasonably authorative on the constitution and respected abroad but that s/he should actually lead – ethically and politically. He or she should not be a distillate of Italian virtues and vices, an Everyman or woman, someone who fudges issues in order to maintain a semblance of unity but someone who has the personal moral stature to defend the ethical values of the constitution first of all by the example of what he or she has done in their previous life and then by reminding today’s actors of what the Republic of Italy stands for… at least according to its constitution and its politicians’ rhetoric.

This is not a pious hope – most presidents were elected as a muddled compromise of incompetence but there have been “moral” presidents, men who were elected as real figures and then acted on principle even if they came from the Establishment, especially at moments of crisis: Einaudi at the beginning, Pertini in the midst of terrorism, Scalfaro and Ciampi in very different way more recently.
Instead, after negotiating on points of principle for two months, Pierluigi Bersani and the Democratic Party has put forward a collection traditional compromise candidates. Not what Italy needs to get it out of the swamp it is in.

With just over 12 hours to go before the electors meet to vote, Bersani’s PD plumped for Franco Marini… former president of the senate and once head of the mainly Christian Democrat union, the CISL. Worthy and unsullied by scandal but never having taken his distance from it. Their second strings are Massimo D’Alema, who tried to cut deals and compromise with Berlusconi and always lost (so is acceptable to Berlusconi), Giuliano Amato, defined by most at a “man for all seasons” who piloted Italy through political and economic storms 20 years ago, an expert constitutionalist and respected academically and politically abroad but also a man of compromise. There are many in the PD who have already said that none of these alternatives is acceptable so as well as proposing dodgy candidates, Bersani is splitting the party as well. They know as does Bersani, that an alliance with Berlusconi will mean death at the next elections whenever they are.

Berlusconi himself has so far not committed himself or his followers but he has endorsed Marini so if all the PdL and PD voted together, Marini might just make in the first round.

This might not happen as Grillo has played a very canny game. He proclaims transparency and total rejection of the political establishment and instead made a complete mess of the primary vote for the M5S’s presidential candidate (first round annulled, no figures for the second round) and put forward some hardly radical candidates. There was Romano Prodi, twice prime minister and former president of the EU, Gustavo Zagrebelsky, former Constitutional Court judge and Stefano Rodotà, academic lawyer, former deputy in the PCI (without being a member) and its successors and former president of the Privacy Oversight Agency. (there were others but even if not members of old political parties, they were also part of the establishment). The three are very worthy but not outsiders. Rodotà has now accepted to become the M5S candidate and is very well-regarded in much of the PD so tomorrow they will have to choose.

Tomorrow (and mostly likely the day after and maybe Monday) will be a battle for the soul of Italy. It’s result will condition which way the body moves.

Riflessioni sulle proposte dei saggi

I'm happy to welcome Andrea Vannucci back to the blog with a very perceptive (and depressing) analysis of the work of the "ten wise men" written on 13 April.

Le osservazioni e le proposte contenute nei documenti conclusivi diffusi ieri dai gruppi di lavoro istituiti dal Presidente della Repubblica meritano di essere lette. Esse appaiono chiaramente - a chiunque abbia anche solo una modestissima conoscenza dei fatti politici, sociali ed economici - largamente e saldamente fondate nelle argomentazioni, lucide e precise nella diagnosi, ottimamente focalizzate nell’indirizzamento verso le azioni risolutive necessarie.

Su alcuni punti ognuno potrebbe magari trovare qualche spunto di parziale perfettibilità, o divergenza di opinione (io ad esempio avrei sperato di leggervi qualcosa di più in termini di limitazione generale del carico fiscale generale e individuale, e magari qualche indicazione più audace in materia di limitazione della professionalizzazione della politica e regolamentazione dei conflitti di interesse, temi questi appena accennati).

Ma è fuor di dubbio che le circa settanta pagine redatte in dieci giorni dai dieci “saggi” contengono indicazioni concrete, fattive, generalmente e largamente condivisibili. E non sorprende (né sminuisce l’autorevolezza dei dieci “saggi”) riconoscere in queste stesse osservazioni molti spunti già espressi da numerosi eminenti giuristi, economisti, sociologi, politologi, e perfino spesso da tanti, tantissimi ben più modesti e normali cittadini di buon senso e dotati di sensibilità civile (compresi noi stessi), che responsabilmente si interessano della vita delle nostra nazione.

Nell’introduzione di entrambi i documenti, i dieci “saggi” insistono a precisare che il loro contributo non vuole essere un programma politico, né sostituirsi alle funzioni e prerogative delle istituzioni costituzionali competenti per le materie trattate. Ma proprio questa precisazione evidenzia piuttosto il contrario: i due documenti, così meticolosi, precisi ed efficaci, evidentemente colmano una grave carenza di indirizzo programmatico da parte delle istituzioni, sia considerate singolarmente che nella loro collegialità.

Da queste constatazioni deriva quindi una riflessione piuttosto amara e preoccupante: come mai un esercizio così chiaro, ben strutturato, esaustivo e ponderato, di evidente fondamentale indirizzo politico, è stato condotto oggi in una modalità così assolutamente straordinaria? Prodotto da un organo totalmente avulso all’architettura istituzionale, convocato secondo modalità del tutto irrituali da un Presidente alla fine del mandato? Con il contributo di persone selezionate secondo criteri del tutto discrezionali, che hanno lavorato in logica emergenziale, in appena dieci giorni? Perché nulla di neanche appena simile si è prodotto invece come normale e fisologica espressione di quelle istituzioni (camere, governo, organi consultivi, magistrature, autorità, sia da sole che in concorso fra loro) che dovrebbero normalmente e fisiologicamente, garantire il prezioso servizio di guidare la vita nazionale?

Cercare una risposta a questa domanda è inquietante, e ci porta a considerare quanto profonda e diffusa è la malattia che ha pervaso le nostre istituzioni, cristallizzate nelle loro ormai croniche debolezze, capillarmente inquinate dalla presenza di troppe persone mediocri e meschine, e condizionate da organizzazioni corrotte nelle loro funzioni e finalità, che ne hanno progressivamente paralizzato le normali funzioni.

Purtroppo, il buon lavoro fatto dai “saggi” viene consegnato proprio a queste istituzioni, a queste persone, a queste organizzazioni; chiaramente poco capaci di provvedere alla tutela dei nostri diritti di cittadinanza, di assicurare la costruzione del nostro benessere, di costruire responsabilmente il nostro futuro. Come un messaggio in bottiglia lanciato da un naufrago, il documento prodotto oggi al Quirinale ricorda più un disperato appello rivolto ad interlocutori disinteressati e distratti, che non un utile memorandum posto all’attenzione di chi dovrebbe fattivamente dargli adempimento.

Fra pochi giorni il Presidente Giorgio Napolitano terminerà il suo incarico, avendo lasciato alla Nazione quest’ultimo memento. Io guardo ai partiti e ai loro leader, ai burocrati inetti che da decenni raccontano che faranno cose di cui evidentemente non sono capaci, alla schiera di sostenitori ossequienti che alimentano il potere di questi, nella meschina e inane speranza di trarne un vantaggio personale. E non riesco proprio a immaginare chi, fra questi tanti da cui ahinoi dipende il nostro futuro, leggerà il documento redatto dai “saggi” con un qualche sincero interesse e capacità di agire.

Faites vos jeux – if you dare.

One of the plagues afflicting Italy at the moment is a dramatic increase in betting – scratch cards, the lottery and on line Texas Hold’em. But despite the national gambling obsession, no one is putting any money on who is going to form the next government, or when it will be formed. The odds are simply too long and variables too many and uncertain, worse than the lottery.

In a normal sporting accumulator bet, the events take place in succession and independently of each other. In the Italian game, the events take place concurrently and influence each other. One decision (or “win” in gambling terms) sets off a dependence path which conditions the way the game is played out.

This is the short answer to a question which was thrown at me by a Canadian journalist “But it's not clear to me and some colleagues what the deputies are doing without a government!”

The long answer is more complicated.

There are three players in Parliament, two of whom have to work together in order have the numbers for a majority in the Senate, the essential condition for a government.
Up till now, the biggest group, the Democratic Party (PD) and its leader, Pierluigi Bersani put forward a limited programme (8 points) aimed enticing some members of Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) to support him. It didn’t work with Grillo repeating again and again “what part of ‘no alliance’ don’t you understand”.

Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom (PdL) has been saying that a PD-PdL grand coalition of national unity is the only alternative to early elections but they are aiming at sharing power and positions rather than a clear programme, or at least not a programme that the PD could accept.

That was the scissors-stone-paper stalemate until now – there is less than a week to go till Parliament starts the process of electing the new president on Thursday and who they choose will be one of the “dependence paths” which will change what follows. The 1,007 electors (both houses of parliament and representatives of the regions) or rather their leaders are trying to decide who to support.

In the PD, Bersani’s uncompromising position is beginning to show cracks. With his 8 points, he showed himself to be a politician of principle and policy rather compromising for positions and power. Perhaps if he had published them before the election, the results would have been different. Still, since then, he has stuck to his guns and is prepared to step down or aside rather than get into bed with Berlusconi and the PdL which shows that he has completely freed himself from the shadow of Massimo D’Alema, the former leader of the centre-left for whom Bersani fronted for a long time. D’Alema was always prepared to compromise with Berlusconi, usually with disastrous results for himself and the party. Bersani has refused partly for principle and partly because he thinks the party would lose badly if it went into a PD-PdL coalition.

Earlier this week, Bersani finally met Berlusconi but repeated that he was only prepared to talk about possible presidential candidates and not about a grand coalition. Cautious communiqués came out of the meeting but nothing remotely close to real names or a plan of action on either front. Bersani has held his ground against a grand coalition.

Others in the PD are not so sure, hence the cracks. The runner-up in the primaries, Matteo Renzi, mayor of Florence, is stepping on Bersani’s tail, telling him to get a move-on or get out of the way. Others would like to see some sort of deal at least for the presidency and probably for a government with Berlusconi. There is a growing risk of a split in the PD which would mean a collapse in early elections and severe damage even elections were not until next year. One of the ministers in the present government, Fabrizio Barca has offered his experience as an economist and should strengthen the left of the party.

In the M5S, there are small cracks appearing. There was always going to be some slippage in a new and heterogeneous movement; Grillo himself reckoned on 10-15% which was more or less the number that did not turn up to a secret meeting on Friday. Opinion polls also suggest that some of his support has moved back to both the PD and the PdL. In their primaries to choose their own presidential candidate yesterday, they came out with egg on their face annulling the online vote "because of hackers"; there is no independent monitoring so something was presumed to be fishy.

The third group is the PdL. There are no visible cracks but Berlusconi has two trials coming to judgement over the next few weeks, one for having sex with an under age prostitute (the so-called “Ruby” case) and the other for tax evasion (“Mediaset”). In both he could be found guilty. The “Mediaset” verdict is from the Court of Appeal and if they confirm the sentence at first instance, he could be barred from holding public office. On top of this, a model agent interviewed on television asserted that Berlusconi had had sex with another 17 year old, Noemi Letizia in 2009. And investigations continue in allegations that he paid €3m to a senator in 2008 to vote against the Prodi government.

The centre-right is almost as fragile as the others.

On the PdL’s fringes, the Northern League’s is divided between supporters of the new and the old leaders, Roberto Maroni and Umberto Bossi. They almost came to blows last weekend and there is talk of the party splitting so they are in no state to fight an election.

So three parties could go in at least two directions upping the odds. They have to decide on who to elect at president next week so our reluctant punter would first have to bet on the president, at the moment even more obscure than last month’s conclave. Then will the new president be able to cajole the parties into forming a government? There could be a side bet on the Rome’s mayor, a very open four-way race with first round voting on 26 May

In theory of course, the new president could call early elections as soon as he or she is elected but no one seriously wants elections because of the uncertainty and above all because without changing the electoral system, there is the near certainty of a new stalemate.

This would all be much better illustrated with a Prezi presentation but neither I nor my blog are up to it yet.

But whether with words or slick illustrations, it is clear that all bets are off for the moment.

Fascism in Italy – Old and New.

Like the odour of a stale changing room, the smell of fascism keeps on reappearing. Stale sweat and cheap cigarettes just need some springcleaning but while Italy’s houses tend to be spotless, the political house leaves a lot to be desired.

Two hundred and fifty metres from the spot where a fascist bomb in Brescia killed eight people and injured a hundred 39 years ago, the city council wants to re-install a statue with the disturbing name of Era fascista.

The statue is a 25 foot tall colossus of Carrara marble (above left), a male nude who stood in the central Piazza della Vittoria from 1932 until he was removed in 1945. He was known locally as Bigio and Mussolini thought very highly of him. After Liberation, there were antifascist attacks on him and the new administration along with the British decided to remove him.

The present council is centre-right People of Freedom (PdL) and Northern League (LN) and the idea of returning Bigio to the square comes from the two members of the council with far-right antecendents according to Manuel Colosio of Brescia’s Radio Onda d’Urto, Mario Labolani who started his political career in the neo-Fascist MSI’s youth movement and Andrea Arcai son of the magistrate who led the first, unsuccessful investigation of the 1974 bombing. Their intentions of rehabilitating the Fascist era by erecting a statue with just that name are clear but they were helped by the lack of any serious opposition.

The previous (centre-left) mayor, the PD’s Paolo Corsini, had aired the idea of returning Bigio to Piazza della Vittoria in 2007. Ironically, Corsini is an academic historian of fascism so understands the symbolism of the statue more than most. As a deputy, he was a member of the Parliamentary Commission which examines terrorist bombings so he knows more than most about the 1974 Brescia bombing too. The main opposition is from the partisans’ association ANPI while the PD complains more about the cost €460,000 than the political implications.

The cost certainly adds insult to injury on the day when two pensioners committed suicide because they couldn’t manage on her pension of €500.

Last year there was a similar episode in a town south of Rome when the Fascist war criminal, Rodolfo Graziani was honoured with a mausoleum costing €130,000 of public money.

Both initiatives have been met by a dull silence in the Italian mainstream media. I only heard of the Brescia story when the Guardian’s Lizzy Davis called me about a piece she was writing. Colosio at the Brescia radio reckons that the national papers like Corriere della Sera or La Repubblica are not interested if they can’t have some sort of scoop – if the local papers have already run with it, then it’s old news. And he adds that the antibodies against fascism in Brescia have weakened over time.

And not only in Brescia.

Last week, a Rome high school teacher admonished a Jewish student telling her “in Auschwitz, you’d have been more diligent” when the girl left class because she was feeling sick. When the class accused the teacher of being racist, she made things worse, “I’m not racist – I just meant a place that was well-organised”… eh? To make matters even worse, the headmistress said “the teacher didn’t mean what she said and… she didn’t want to offend anyone and so she wasn’t reprimanded.

On Thursday, the mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno organised a demonstration in front of the Coliseum in favour of the Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen. For a start, he ignored an order from the Superintendent of Fine Arts not to put up a stand (authoritarian if not fascist) and then, alongside the San Marco Brigade pennant (the marines) and the city flag was a banner of the Decima MAS, the brutal special forces which worked alongside the SS in Mussolini’s puppet republic between 1943 and and 1945 murdering partisans and civilians. The mayor did nothing to move the banner-wavers on and he was happy to have Mario Vattani alongside him. Vattani was the Italian diplomat transferred from his post after giving the fascist salute during a nazi-rock gig.

In Britain, when a premier league team employs a self-declared fascist, Paolo Di Canio, who gives the salute and has DUX tattooed on his back, there is a national outcry.

The antibodies are weak in Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) as well. Their Chamber of Deputies spokeswoman, Roberta Lombardi wrote on her blog that fascism was positive because it had “a strong sense of the state before it degenerated”. That was three months ago when no one knew who she was and she since defended herself saying the remark was taken out of context but it was a surprising interpretation for what was a radical movement. Grillo himself has been accommodating with Casa Pound, the Rome-based “respectable” version of the extreme right and has made disparaging asides about Jews.

For 40 years after the war, almost everyone was at least nominally “anti-fascist”. Public discourse was rigorously anti-fascist. The few nostalgici kept their heads down except in very well-defined parts of certain towns (Prati and the Colle Oppio area in Rome for instance, were neri, black for the fascist shirts). Memorabilia was available but like pornography once upon a time, sold under the counter in brown paper wrappers.

Rehabilitation began in the ‘90s with the presence of four “post-fascist” (nice euphemism invented then) ministers in Berlusconi’s first government. It has continued apace since then.

I became conscious of the change when looking for a CD of “Ciao bella ciao” the iconic partisan song. I had to search through collections in well-stocked stores but at the same time, my local CD stall in the square had various collections of the fascist trademark songs “Giovinezza” and “Faccetta nera”.

The political dirt was swept under the carpet after the war with a very cursory springcleaning and the risk is that along with 80 year old statues, the ideas that created him and which he represents will also come back in their modern versions.

Where to next?

The electronic tumbrils are beginning to roll. On Friday, the Five Star Movement’s (M5S) spokewoman in the Chamber of Deputies, Roberta Lombardi upbraided her opposite number in the Senate. He had addressed her as “Honorable”, the usual term for a deputy. Horror! Instead of M5S’s regulation “Citizen”.

We are still a long way from seeing real blood in the streets but the M5S does have plenty of revolutionary elements in its methods and aims. The brains behind Beppe Grillo’s throne, Gianroberto Casaleggio, believes that they have the answers to all our problems and can lead us there through well-manipulated web. In practical terms, this means doing away with the executive and leaving all power to the legislature which would run the country. Grillo has proposed either this, no government, or a government headed by someone proposed by him… but he’s not going to say who until he has the mandate.

This is a revolution. To be sure, it is very different from Paris, Petrograd or Tehran which did change the world, or more modestly, the ongoing changes in Tunis and Cairo where we still don’t know where they and we will end up; the Grillo revolution might fizzle out at the next elections or it might follow the Leopard strategy (“we have to change everything in order to keep things the way they are”) or it might genuinely change Italy and maybe Europe.

At the moment, it is only President Napolitano who seems to know what he wants and which direction the country should go in but even he is far from sanguine about his chance of success.

A week after giving Democratic Party (PD) secretary Pierluigi Bersani a limited mandate to form a government, Napolitano spoke again.

He refused Bersani’s request to test his strength in Parliament. Bersani wanted to challenge the other party leaders to prevent him forming a government and do it in the Senate where with a secret ballot and maneuverings to lower the quorum, he might just have won a vote of confidence. It was a very risky strategy but a courageous one in which success or failure would have been visible. Bersani is a man of integrity and honesty who actually has wanted to change Italian politics and did so within his own party but he is without enough appeal to win either the February elections or the vote of confidence he was looking for last week and probably would not have got.

But even if he had won, it would have been a very, very fragile government, something that Napolitano was not prepared to countenance.

The president knows that there has to be a reliable majority in order to protect the Italian reputation on the world bond markets and to protect the political system and he is not prepared to do anything which might upset the applecart more than it’s upset already.

His choice was to appoint two committees made up of “10 wise men”, to draw up proposals that a new government might implement. Four are to look after political matters (electoral and constitutional reform), six for the economy. They are all linked in some way to the old parties, worthy, certainly but neither original nor independent.

There are various reasons why Napolitano is cautious (the polite word – pusillanimous is the ruder one). First, he is the President of the Republic, an inherently conservative role and normally, purely symbolic. Secondly, there is his age, 88, not one in which people usually launch into uncharted territories. Thirdly, and most importantly, he spent most of his political life in one of the most regulated organisations of the 20th century – the Communist Party. The Italian Communist Party (PCI) was far freer than most others but it was still a place where “anarchism” was as much anathema as freethinking was to Jesuits. Alongside the PCI was the Italian system which almost always chose a muddled compromise with spoilssharing rather than open battles. Finally, he presumably also has at least a touch of understandable conceit seeing himself as the last barrier before chaos engulfs Italy.

Next to these “big” ideological and psychological reasons are the short-term “small” political reasons for caution. The easiest way out of the swamp would be to call new elections but Napolitano is constitutionally barred from doing so because he has only six weeks of his mandate to run (the president may not dissolve Parliament in his last six months in office - the so-called semestre bianco, “white semester” unless Parliament had reached the end of its normal mandate). So if there are to be new elections, they will have to be called by Napolitano’s successor whose election process will begin on 15 April.

Then there is continuing stalemate between the three bigger groups in Parliament. They are still playing scissors-stone-paper with the country. Berlusconi and the PdL want some sort of guarantee for Berlusconi two of whose cases will come to verdict even before a July election (and if one goes against him, he might be barred from holding public office). They have said they are willing to make an alliance with the PD but not with a programme that includes a conflict of interest and corruption laws.

The PD have a programme but no allies (some Grillini might face Grillo’s wrath and vote with the PD on selected issues) and they know they face further losses in early elections if they ally with Berlusconi. And the cracks are beginning to show.

Grillo and the M5S are in difficulty because of their success. They either go for the least bad option (the PD) and lose the revolutionary charge, or they hold out against any of the old parties and risk increasing the effects of the economic crisis.

The elephant in the sittingroom is the revision of the electoral law – everyone agrees that the present law should be changed but no one agrees on what the new law should be.

Napolitano has chosen to delay the day of reckoning, a tactic which worked for Fabius Maximus, Cunctator, against Hannibal 2,200 years ago but is less suitable to quell internal strife today.

Sisiphus Bersani

President Napolitano has finally spoken – almost four weeks after the elections. He took the only option open short of resigning himself (to allow his successor to call early elections) and that was to give a mandate to Pierluigi Bersani leader of the Democratic Party (PD). But it is a conditional mandate – not directly to form a government but to see if there is the possibility of finding a stable majority to support his government. Then Bersani must report back, probably before Easter though there is no explicit deadline on the mandate.

In an unprecedented speech after giving Bersani the job, Napolitano spoke at length albeit vaguely, about the need for national unity and the need to deal with the pressing economic problems rather than having devisive elections. It was a not very veiled appeal to Bersani to talk to Silvio Berlusconi (centre-right People of Freedom, PdL), to Beppe Grillo (Five Star Movement, M5S) to talk to Bersani and to Berlusconi to actually compromise.

The speech set the tone for Bersani to start the official part of his job (he’s been working on it unofficially since the elections).

His game plan is to end with the parties rather than start negotiating with them from the beginning. First he will seek declarations of support from civil society – the trades unions and employers both of whom want stable government – from associations, Catholic and secular, trade and professional who can also endorse his government. At the same time, he is putting together a lineup for a streamlined cabinet (15 rather than 18 in Monti’s) of people who are either new faces or older ones well outside the party nomenklature; people who are certainly not closely linked to the PD like the present minister of the interior, Anna Maria Cancellieri, the runner-up for the top employers’ federation (Confindustria) job, Alberto Bombassei for Economic Development.

The basis of his programme will be the 8 points he proposed immediately after the elections. As they stand, they are pretty anodyne but the PdL is concerned that new anti-corruption and conflict of interest laws are aimed at Berlusconi (which of course they are). Grillo says they are all within the M5S programme so ignores them.

Grillo’s game plan is not at all clear. Yesterday the M5S Senate spokesman, Vito Crimi first said that if the PD gave up all their public financing “we can talk” and in the evening said “we will not vote a Bersani government confidence motion – what language do you want me to say it in?” Grillo and the movement are in a catch 22 dilemma; they are like a dog that chases after a car and then doesn’t know what to do with it when it’s caught it. If Grillo negotiates with Bersani and comes to a compromise, the pure protest vote will cry “sell-out” and leave him. If he refuses to compromise and forces new elections, then the moderates will return to the PD. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. But for the moment, he holds the cards.

But if Bersani can present a cabinet of clean faces and a programme which matches at least some of the grillini’s main objectives, he might just persuade enough of them to walk out at the vote of confidence.

Silvio Berlusconi and the PdL are playing a double game. Yesterday, their spokesman, Fabrizio Cicchitto said that they were available to work towards a broad coalition to deal with the economy and national interests. Today, Berlusconi and (he hopes) half a million others will fill piazza del Popolo in a protest against the judiciary, a curious position for someone who proclaims himself only interested in national unity but entirely consistent with his previous record. He is at his best in an election campaign or at least at the centre of attention and at the moment he has neither. The PD knows that an alliance with Berlusconi is the kiss of death in an early election so keep him and the PdL at more than arm’s length. And Berlusconi knows that the longer a Bersani or “President’s” government lasts, the more chances there are of him being convicted again and possibly expelled from Parliament by a PD-M5S vote. Time works against him personally and against the very uncertain unity of the PdL.

So he has to return to centre stage either in a Grand Coalition or in early elections.

His allies in the Northern League (LN) say they will not come to a separate deal with Bersani but if Bersani can offer them a constitutional reform which creates a Senate for the Regions, then LN leader, Umberto Maroni might give partial support.

To succeed, Bersani has to translate conditional support into something solid and remove the reciprocal vetoes.

Sisiphus is maybe the wrong metaphor for Bersani. The founder of Corinth had to push a rock; whatever effort he put into the task would hardly damage it while Bersani has to put Sisiphus’s energy into the job but with the precision of a watchmaker. And if and when he completes the fragile structure, he has to persuade Napolitano that it is robust… at least enough to last till next year.

Unlike Sisiphus, though, Bersani is not condemned to an eternal game of government formation. If he doesn’t make it by Easter, as the comic imitator, Maurizio Crozza said in his sketch last night, “after the Easter holidays there’s a ton of bargain package holidays for you to take”.

The Grand Old Duke of York in Italy or quer brutto pasticiaccio in Kerala

As every English schoolkid knows

Oh, The grand old Duke of York,

He had ten thousand men;

He marched them up to the top of the hill,

And he marched them down again.


And when they were up, they were up,

And when they were down, they were down,

And when they were only half-way up,

They were neither up nor down.

The Italian Defence Minister, Admiral Giampaolo Di Paolo has only two marines but they have been back and forth between Bari and Kochi in Kerala and Rome and New Delhi with as much uncertainty as the Duke of York’s men.

The two men are accused of the illegal killing of two Indian fishermen in February last year and have been the subject of very complicated wrangle ever since involving international law, national politics, diplomacy, corruption and multi-million euro deals.

After having told the Indian government very publicly on 11 March that Italy would renege on the deal by which the two men had been given a month’s parole, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Giulio Terzi decided yesterday to send them back to India to face trial.

From the beginning, the whole episode has been a chain of mistakes and misjudgments which have not enhanced Italy’s reputation as a world player.

On 15 February last year, two fishermen were killed by shots fired from the MV Lexie, a tanker flying the Italian flag with six Italian marines on board as defence against possible pirate attacks. The marines mistook the fishing boat for pirates. Two of them Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone were identified as being responsible for the killing.

Even after 13 months there is still some doubt as to exactly what happened and where the vessel was when the incident took place as no immediate report was made. The Indian coast guard brought the ship into Kochi and there are conflicting reports as to whether it was an “invitation” or an obligation. There is also confusion as to how the two marines were actually apprehended. They have said to journalists that they were tricked into leaving the ship. It is also possible that the Lexie was outside Indian territorial waters and outside the contiguous zone where India has a right to intervene.

If the ship was in international waters and the Indians forced it into Kochi and forced the marines to leave the ship then it was almost certainly an illegal act but no Italian protest was lodged at the time nor since then.

Once on Indian soil, clearly the federal and Kerala state authorities had the right to investigate an incident whose victims were Indian but the final jurisdiction of the case is far from clear.

Trying to maintain good relations with Italy, the Indian courts granted Latorre and Girone house arrest and then gave them parole for a Christmas visit. This allowed both Kerala and national opposition to accuse the government of favoritism due to Sonia Gandhi’s Italian origins so the case became part of the domestic political game.

The two men were granted a second parole for a month to cover the Italian elections with the Italian ambassador standing surety for them. When Terzi said that they would not be returning, in effect jumping bail, the ambassador found himself in practice a hostage, prevented from leaving the country, his diplomatic immunity unilaterally removed. This is contrary to all the diplomatic conventions but then the modern world has not seen diplomats offer themselves as bail guarantors.

The decision not to send the two men back was seen by just about everyone here has a mistake which made Italy look very bad internationally, unreliable and two-faced.

It certainly has not helped the issue that the two men have been feted as heroes – met at Ciampino airport by the defence and foreign ministers and then received by President Napolitano.

Although there has been no statement from the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy Catherine Ashton, (apart from her spokesman putting out an anodyne hope that Italy and India resolve their differences) one can guess that she was in despair at both the Italian and Indian actions and put some discreet pressure on Terzi and Monti to keep their word.

And given the other area of tension between Italy and India where Agusta is accused of paying bribes in a helicopter deal with the Indian air force, Italy certainly did not want to risk the lucrative deal with a serious diplomatic row.

Rule of the Law – Rule of the Outlaw

Yesterday consultations begin to see if it will be possible for Pierluigi Bersani or someone else to form a government. It is an arcane ritual dictated by the constitution in which all of the players in the political game and some of the former players are consulted. Leaders of minor parties, the Speakers of the two chambers an ex-President Ciampi went up to the Quirinal. Today it was the turn of the three big groupings and this evening or on Friday, we should know whether President Napolitano reckons that Bersani has a chance of winning a vote of confidence or whether he will ask someone else or whether we will have early elections.

In the meantime, there is a matter which colours the whole political scene, an issue which has been around since the early days of Bettino Craxi but like all chronic illnesses, it goes through acute phases and we are in a very serious phase at the moment. Are politicians above, below or just removed from the law…

On the day that former British cabinet minister, Chris Huhne and his wife Valerie Pryce were being taken off to serve 8 month gaol sentences for perverting the course of justice, the President of Italy said that the judiciary should not prevent Silvio Berlusconi from acting as the leader of a political party. The President’s admonition came immediately after Berlusconi had been given a one sentence for contempt of court in one case and after another court had sent the court’s physician to check his state of health after he pleaded conjunctivitis as a legitimate reason for not attending a summons.

The President is the titular head of the judiciary so is therefore supposed to act in their interest… or at least not against it. So it was very surprising to read the President’s statement last week expressing his concern at “the tension and contrast between politics and justice”. The comuniqué continued “It is understandable that the line-up that came a close second in the 24 Feb. elections is worried that its leader is guaranteed that its leader can adequately participate in the the complicated political and institutional phase that we are in” .

Like any democracy, Italy proclaims that it is governed by the rule of law and in every court, there is a grand proclamation “The Law is Equal for All”. Instead, the President admits that there is a contrast between “law”, the judiciary, and “politics” or rather one individual politician who has been prosecuted for a variety of offences and convicted on some (so far not to the third level of judgement).

Unlike any democracy, we have a former prime minister who came close to winning again last month who calls the judiciary “a cancer” and whose party secretary (a former Minister of Justice!) stages a protest in the Milan Palace of Justice along with a group of members of Parliament.

It was an extraordinary scene; these were not 1970s students or Red Brigades sympathisers or 1920s fascists with clubs and castor oil. But because it was Berlusconi and his supporters, the President felt he had to be somehow “even-handed”. It is an extraordinary position for the head of the judiciary which implies that politicians are equal to other citizens before the law.

One friend wrote last week: “Hopefully your next posting will look at Napolitano's craven statement yesterday essentially telling Italy's judiciary that Berlusconi has a right to be left alone for a while given how important he is to parliament. Incroyable!”

Only too believable; and as the days of judgement draw near, Berlusconi and his people (who are indeed almost a third of the population) are becoming increasingly desperate. The judgement in the “Ruby” trial (under age prostitution and abuse of power) has been put off but only for a matter of weeks while the other immediate problem for him, the De Gregorio case where he is accused of bribing a senator to change sides and bring down the 2008 Prodi government has been put on the normal track instead of the fast track. There are others and the noose is closing – not round his neck as he will not go to gaol if sentenced but a ban on holding public office is probable and Grillo has said that he would vote in favour of allowing Berlusconi’s preventive arrest.

His reaction has been to call for a demonstration on Saturday once again against overzealous judges and to make overtures to the PD to secure the Presidency presumably with an eye to delaying unwanted legislation and having literally a get-out-of-gaol card in the form of a presidential pardon.

Berlusconi has long complained that his cases were remote-controlled and timed to coincide with elections for maximum damage but he has so many prosecutions that one is bound to coincide with some elections. Instead, one of the reasons for withdrawing support from Monti’s government in December and provoking early elections was to have the campaign and vote before the Ruby verdict.

Not so much a rule of law more a rule of outlaw.

El Papa Porteño – faux naïf.

In one of the galleries of the Vatican, there are a series of stunning 17th century maps covering the whole world then known in Rome. They are an appropriate decoration for the Dicastery for Relations with States, Vaticanspeak for Foreign Office, MFA or State Department. But they obviously show some errors or lacunæ due to the then state of knowledge so in one of the rooms leading off the gallery a modern map was painted in the 1950s. The shapes of the continents are perfect and the names all in Latin (or Graeco-Latin). The capital of Bolivia becomes Paxia and of Chile Sancti Iacopoli. Even Canada’s Algonquin capital is Latinised to Octavia. But the most curious name for a place of diplomacy is the one found on the bottom left of the Atlantic Ocean “Insulæ falklandiæ”. I wonder if the next time I visit it will have become “malvinæ”.

Facetiousness apart, Cardinal Bergoglio did say that the Falklands/Malvinas had been “usurped” in a speech last year but the issue is hardly at the top of his papal priorities.

In the few days that he has been pope, he has confused many, endeared himself to most (believers and non-believers, clerical and anti-clerical) and probably frightened a few (in the Curia and maybe some comfy clerics).

So far, obviously, he has actually changed very little of substance but he has already made enormous changes in the form of the papacy. Starting with himself – he is the first non-European (since the 8th C), the first South American, the first Jesuit and first to call himself Francis. A part of the Church heirarchy changed just by electing him and he rose to the occasion, from what we have seen so far, just by being himself.

In his first homily, he refused the red stole embroidered in gold; he shocked everyone by going back to his hotel to pay the bill and went around without the papal escort. Seventy years ago it was the “vento del nord” the north wind of antifascist partisans that changed Roman politics, today the breeze from the other side of the Tiber is setting an example for politicians already struggling with Beppe Grillo’s tsunami. The new speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, went to the Quirinale yesterday for an official visit to President Napolitano; she walked and was without an escort. No doubt she would have done it anyway but she was certainly comforted by the Pope’s example. The concepts of “poverty” and “service” are part of the rhetoric on both sides of the river – if Jorge Mario Bergoglio can change his side, it will have an inevitable effect on the Italian side.

He wears the same worn black shoes that he wore as cardinal refusing the crimson papal slippers that were the satirists’ delight with Benedict XVI and he wears an iron crucifix rather than the golden papal one.

Some of his traits are reminiscent of Angelo Roncalli, John XXIII including his physical features (even if Roncalli was shorter and plumper). John XXIII once described Vatican rituals as worthy of a “Persian satrap”. Roncalli had an easy manner with everyone – his smile was disarming and so is Bergoglio’s. Francis presents himself as the simple and ingenuous priest when he is actually complicated, contradictory and it would seem, very much on the ball.

At Saturday’s meeting with the 5,000 journalist covering the conclave he was relaxed and outgoing, joking gently with them “you’ve worked a bit, haven’t you?” and then in stark contrast to his predecessor whose bugbear was “relativism”, his word for agnosticism, Francis blessed the journalists “in silence because some of you are of different faith and some have no faith”, the first time, I think, that a pope has acknowledged atheists in a non-hostile manner.

On the issues, for the moment, he has concentrated on poverty, admitting that this is a political issue – it could hardly be otherwise. He has worked all his priestly life to alleviate poverty, supported striking workers but at the same time criticised the liberation theology which his south American brethren did so much to develop and propagate. There are aspects which appeal to the left but he is far from being a left-wing pope which also should not surprise us. There is still some doubt about what he did under the Videla regime in the 70’s; there are some accusations that he reported two Jesuits to the authorities who then arrested and tortured them and counterclaims that he actually saved them. Now that he is pope the real story will appear through the fog.

There are conflicting accounts of what he did last week when he met Cardinal Bernard Law, accused of covering up pedophile scandals in Boston; he may or may not have told him to withdraw from his position in St. Mary Major.

On what is legal for the rest of the world, we can hardly expect any change; no to legal abortion, no to gay sex between consenting adults (and probably straight sex between unmarried consenting adults), no to married priests. Cardinal Bergoglio was a conservative, Pope Francis is not going to change in 4 days nor in 400 and probably not in 4,000.

But he will certainly work to reclaim Latin America from the evangelical Christians and secularisation and has already begun the job just by being elected.

The biggest question mark is on how he will deal with the Vatican’s administration – its banking and the Curia. This is a civil service that has had 1,500 years of experience (actually more like 2,500 as they are the heirs of the Roman Empire and Republican administration). They make Sir Humphrey Appleby look like a parvenu and many a would-be reforming pope has ended up being able to do little or nothing or being consumed by curial politics like Francis’s predecessor.

Vatican legend has it that John Paul I was removed by a spiked tisane – Il Fatto Quotidiano’s satirical supplement yesterday listed Francis’s positive features and concluded that the tisane had already been brewed. Whether it’s an infusion or just political poison, Francis will need all his own political skills to do what he wants to do.

Playing Chicken with a Country

Until yesterday, it looked very much as if Italy’s elected representatives were playing chicken with their country. In the original version of the game, two drivers drive at each on a straight road and the one that blinks and swerves is chicken. If neither yield, both die. It was a favorite metaphor used by game theorists in the ‘50s and ‘60s to analyse nuclear stand-off which would have led to the well-chosen acronym of the time MAD or mutually assured destruction.

For the first players, the risk was that two people would die, usually young males – Bertrand Russell calls them “youthful degenerates”. In the second the whole world might have been destroyed. Today’s Italian variety is closer to the first as the threat is not of physical destruction and affects only one country directly and the rest of Europe only indirectly. The players though, are far from “youthful”.

The challenges are various and linked – each one has the parties careering towards each other on collision courses and each crash avoided means another challenge tomorrow or the next day.

There are three big tournaments facing the political class.

The first was the election of the speakers of the two chambers which took place yesterday. The second is the formation of a new government which will begin on Wednesday and the third is the election of a new president of the republic which will begin on 15 April.

Each process has different procedures and electoral systems but apart from the lower house, no one has a clear majority anywhere. In a normal political set-up, the four groups would negotiate over sharing the positions and the policy points to pursue – a more or less equitable balance of pork and principle which is the foundation of any government in normal times… but we are not in normal times.

Until Friday evening, Pierluigi Bersani’s centre-left Democratic Party (PD) had two worthy but very much old-style party apparatchiks as candidates. One, Anna Finocchiaro had been photographed (above left, caught by a Berlusconi gossip magazine) using her police escorts as porters in an Ikea shopping expedition. On the day that the Pope refused an escort, those photographs had become a serious liability. The PD has its own internal game of chicken as Bersani and the runner-up in party primaries, Matteo Renzi spar over who will lead the party in the likely elections in June or a year from now.

Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) put forward their own candidates and said they would never support any of the traditional parties.

Mario Monti’s Civic Choice (SC) should have been Bersani’s natural ally but as Bersani tried to negotiate with Grillo, Monti started to play dog in the manger, putting forward his own name as possible senate speaker and wanting to resign as prime minister (and leave the country in the lurch). His lack of success at the polls seem to have instantly transformed him from the respected non-partisan expert to a mean and petty jobbing politician just out for short-term gain.

On the centre-right, Silvio Berlusconi’s first aim is to prevent any more of his trials coming to verdict. He and his People of Freedom (PdL) party are not going to support any government which has anti-corruption and conflict of interest measures in the programme as Bersani’s does.

The result until Friday was stalemate over the medium term negotiations. There was always going to a result of some sort as the PD has a majority in the Chamber and in the Senate after three inconclusive votes, they move to a run-off between the two leading candidates so someone had to win but it would not have been a consensus candidate. In chicken terms, the smash had just been postponed as there was no negotiation on the much more difficult and important issues of government and president.

Then between the Friday and Saturday ballots, the PD put up two new candidates, former UNHCR spokeswoman Laura Boldrini for the Chamber and former anti-mafia prosecutor and judge, Piero Grasso. (top left) Both were elected for the first time last month and have no odour of stale parties; Boldrini has been an outspoken defender of refugees and the weaker members of society and reiterated her position in her acceptance speech. She is a woman and relatively young at 51 and was elected in Nichi Vendola’s Left, Ecology, Freedom (SEL) party. By putting her up as candidate, Bersani made more than a nod to M5S and other protest voters.

The anti-mafia Grasso was faced by another Sicilian, the outgoing speaker, the PdL Renato Schifani, a lawyer whose firm defended mafiosi and who was himself indirectly implicated in mafia dealings. The result was going to be very close and there was a slim possibility that Schifani might have won. The M5S Sicilians knew they could not go home responsible for electing Schifano over Grasso… and they blinked. Twelve of them (more than just the Sicilians) voted (in a secret ballot) for Grasso and against Grillo’s dictat. Grillo himself threw brickbats at them from his Jupiter like position outside Parliament.

Bersani still doesn’t have a majority in the Senate but he is just a little stronger than he was yesterday. For the moment he will have to work alone, without open negotiations with the other parties – he will prepare a list of possible cabinet ministers, a good number from outside the PD or SEL and a series of measures which M5S might not support but will not prevent. Bersani feels strong enough to ask for a full mandate to form a government (rather a non-committal exploratory mandate).

If he gets that far, the next collision course will be the vote of confidence in the Senate and he knows that he changed course a little and M5S is far from monolithic.

Italy’s domestic MAD has been put off for the moment.

Mystification and Populism – the genius of Silvio Berlusconi and Beppe Grillo.

Yesterday a group of about 150 parliamentarians demonstrated outside the Palace of Justice in Milan. They then moved into the building to the office of prosecutor Ilda Boccassini. They were members of Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party and were protesting against what they call the persecution of their leader by the judiciary.

When dozens of angry people, privileged members of the legislature, appear in front of an office, this is no longer a protest, it is a threat towards the individual and her institution even if there were no explicit physical threats.
Before the elections, Beppe Grillo quoted Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump Parliament approvingly “Take away this bauble” screamed Grillo in January. Since taking a quarter of the Italian vote, he has been no less tender about Parliament and above all its political parties.

Italian institutions – the courts and the parliament are under siege and the easy description is “populism” but it’s not always an easy concept to define.

At the theatre, we grant the performance a willing suspension of disbelief. In politics, the successful demagogue forces us into that unwilling suspension of disbelief. This election campaign gave the stage to two masters of the black art of mystification which is at the basis of any populist movement.

The secret of mystification in politics is to present an argument and a narrative that our rational selves can see are true and then to embellish them in order to make non-logical deductions and reach false conclusions with a performance which obfuscates the faulty reasoning. Berlusconi and Grillo have the conjuror’s sleight of hand and hide the workings of their magic.

Berlusconi started from the premise that Italians who pay taxes get a lousy deal. So he promised to reimburse the IMU property tax either from the state or even personally implicitly suggesting that he is the state (or better and more generous than the state).

He promises “freedom” meaning freedom from taxes; freedom of religion meaning public support for Catholic schools; freedom of expression means his media may write or broadcast anything. But we all like “freedom” don’t we?

For his part, Grillo lies… about the past and he fudges the future. He attacked La Repubblica for claiming that he had invited al Qaeda to target the Italian Parliament and given them the coordinates. All La Repubblica had done (along with most other Italian media) was to put the clip of him doing just that on their site. (as I did too, for what it’s worth). For the future, like Berlusconi, he promised material support, a €1,000 dole for the unwaged, more than many Italians get by working.

Grillo also uses the hardy perennials of populism, targetting Jews, women and immigrants.

He has been rude about Jews in a spat with journalist Gad Lerner and Israel in an interview with Menachem Gantz and happily leaves extremely offensive antisemitic remarks on his blog. Recently he refused to even talk about the question to AP’s Frances D’Emilio.

In a different way he is as sexist as Berlusconi when he expelled Bologna city councillor, Federica Salsi after she had taken part in a television talk show. He accused her using the television as the G-spot for an orgasm.

He is against giving citizenship to children born in Italy to immigrant parents, he was at the very least unwise when he suggested that when carabinieri want to beat up a Moroccan, they should do in private and not in front of a camera. And he has made friendly remarks to members of the neo-Fascist Casa Pound.

Both Grillo and Berlusconi refuse dialogue. Grillo has never been on a talkshow and though he has been interviewed (rarely and only the foreign press), he has never accepted difficult questioning. Berlusconi had rarely been off screen but like Grillo refuses to face hard questions and often attacks the interviewer.

Berlusconi started his career proposing a “partito leggero” (the best translation I could come up with was “nimble party”). Grillo wants no party at all and wants to get rid of all political parties.

Their populism is defined by their unmediated contact with their followers. They refuse any form of reins, neither party nor parliament nor courts. Their power and authority comes from the their supporters. Berlusconi put it very clearly when he won the 1994 elections – he was “unto dal popolo”, anointed by the people, not elected or given a limited mandate within the rule of law, and like the king anointed by god, Berlusconi’s oil too, could not be washed off.

Grillo goes in the other direction – he talks about popular democracy, web democracy but he is still claiming Rousseau’s “General Will”. He is a Robespierre without the smart knee britches and thankfully without the guillotine.

Despite their methods which earned them the epithet clown from The Economist and the German SPD leader, Peer Steinbrück, they are as Gianfranco Pasquino said “political entrepreneurs” and very successful ones too. In their different ways, they have interpreted popular discontent and mobilised it

They are sirens or pied pipers. Both metaphors are valid. They seduce passersby with their songs and Berlusconi at least, has wrecked the country or brought Italy very close to sinking. Grillo might complete the wreck. And he more than Berlusconi promises to rid Hamelin of the political rats “tutti a casa… arrendetevi, siete circondati!” “everybody go home – you’re surrounded” he shouted at parliament.

Now his supporters are in Parliament and are trying to work out what to do while Berlusconi’s are threatening to boycott the place.

The Italian constitution is robustly constructed but its institutions have never been more at risk.

Our Man in the Vatican

Virgilio Scattolini was a man with imagination and an eye for the main chance… or at least an easier life. Before, during and after the war, he gave out (or rather, sold) information on what was going on in the Vatican. Given the crucial role that Pius XII and the whole of the Vatican played over that period, his intelligence found a ready market among journalist and spies of all sorts. When the OSS (the CIA’s predecessor) archives were opened in the Seventies, historians too lapped up Scattolini’s wisdom stored in Washington and now made more reliable by the “Top Secret” stamp.

The problem was that Scattolini was making it all up.

Graham Greene was in Rome at the time of Scattolini’s trial for fraud which was well covered in the Italian and British press (which punned on his name and called him “little boxes”) and I would like to think that he took Scattolini as his model for Jim Wormald, Our Man in Havana, the vacuum cleaner salesman who invents a Cuban weapons programme to keep MI5 happy.

Today, the world is a lot less tense and some cardinals tweet and blog and give interviews but the Vatican remains a very secretive place; the conclave is no ordinary election process. Even the recent transfer of power in China was done in the presence of party representatives. But nominally at least, Chinese leaders are responsible to the Chinese people, not the Holy Spirit.

This means that there are still a lot of latterday Scattolinis in Rome at the moment.

I doubt that any of them… us, I suppose since I’m also asked to explain the goings on across the river, actively fabricate stories like Wormald but the reliability of our information is always a bit shaky and the temptation to embellish is very strong. The stakes are high as always but this time, more explicit than during other conclaves: sex, money and power. And the spiritual aspect of the papal succession just adds spice to the story. No one expects the presidents of the US or China to be men of God. Only in Iran and Tibet is the leader supposed to have religious qualifications alongside the political. And then, at a much more frivolous level, no one can match the Vatican for pomp and ceremony: 115 scarlet-robed gentlemen locked into a chapel painted by Michelangelo in a square colonnaded by Bernini. It is difficult to beat as the show and the substance coincide. A British coronation or a presidential inauguration is just the showy part, the substance took place elsewhere. Here they are together which explains why there are almost more journalists staking out St. Peter’s than pilgrims and tourists.

On the issues, there seems to be agreement among the cardinals that speak that the new pope should be young and energetic enough to reform the curia though there is no agreement on whether an insider with experience of the workings of the Vatican government would be better than an untainted but inexperienced outsider. He must decide on what role the Vatican banking system should play, whether to fully integrate it into the regulated European system or maintain its status as a limited off-shore tax haven. And then he must deal with sexual issues both inside and outside the Church. These go from the “inappropriate behaviour” of Cardinal Keith O’Brien (which if it was gay sex between consenting adults is legally hardly a problem in Britain today) to covering up serious criminal acts of raping children. Finally the new man will have to address the declining congregation of Catholics across the world – to secularism in Europe and North America and mostly to the competition woth Christian evangelicals in the Africa and South America.

The spiritual qualities of Their Eminences are taken for granted by members of the college. In any case, if any of them think that one of their fellow cardinals is too worldly, they are not going to say so in public.

The job description is clear enough; the candidates much less so. Since all the cardinals were appointed by two very conservative popes, the new man is unlikely to be a liberal but the Thomas à Becket syndrome does sometimes take over. This is when an appointee decides his responsibility is more towards the job itself than to the person who appointed him. It happens now and then in the US Supreme Court.

So from external deductions, the profile of the new pope is youngish, active with some curial experience but not too much, from the developing world and conservative. But anything can happen in the secrecy of the Sistine Chapel and no Scattolini is going to reveal the cardinals’ game plans.

Ratings and Spread

As the results of the Italian elections came in last week, it was blindingly obvious that the country was in for a rough ride economically. There is a contrast between the internationalists and “Europeans” on the one side and the “Italianists” on the other; there is another division which almost matches the first between supporters of a continuing austerity programme and those who would like to spend now in order to get us out of the recession (the terms are not quite right they will do as shorthand).

The reality of the Italian economy did not change with the results; businesses are closing (more than 100,000 last year) and unemployment continues to rise, especially among the young. The good news is that there is a primary budget surplus (income covers expenses before interest on the national debt is paid) and a balanced budget is not far away though precisely when this will happen is a matter of discussion between the Italian government and the European Commission.

The other good news for the time being is that miraculously, the traditional Italian “welfare system” has prevented the serious unrest that we have seen in Greece… the problem is that the “welfare system” is wholly informal, based on private savings, the family and the grey economy all of which may and indeed are changing for the worst.
So Friday’s news (after the markets had closed) that Fitch had downgraded Italian bonds to BBB+, just three rungs above junk was less than earth-shattering. Once again, the ratings agencies reflected a change that had already taken place rather than predicting future developments.

There is much concern in Italy and talk, again, that the agencies are in some conflict of interest because they work for banks and therefore cannot give independent advice. This is curious as the agencies actually work in a communion of interests. They do not pretend to be independent observers; their first clients are the banks to whom they try and give sound advicein their own interet in order not to lose the job. They do not work for us the taxpayers or governments. And sometimes they are catastrophically wrong as in the case of the Lehman brothers in 2008.

And at least partially because of those mistakes, their pronouncements are taken a lot more circumspectly today than they were five years ago.

Agencies are subject to what can conveniently be called the “lexicographer’s paradox”. Does the dictionary just reflect the way we use a word or is it normative and instruct us on how a word should be used? Both of course; and ratings agencies do much the same.

The Minister for the Economy Vittorio Grilli said yesterday that he was “confident” that the next round of Italian bonds would sell without any problems on Tuesday and Wednesday which seems likely but he was also said that there would be a new government “in the next few days” which is highly unlikely.

The Monti reforms encouraged by the EU and implictly by the markets are still in place and will continue to be applied until a new government takes office and decides to modify them so in the short term, the prospect is not rosy but not grim either. There is a serious lack of credit available to wobbling Italian businesses and, a problem which needs to be faced and the massive unpaid public sector bills to private businesses would be enough get the economy started again. So in the medium to long term, there is a need for structural reform in Italy and that will need a government, and a strong one too.

Italy is not Greece with a weak economy and spending and debt out of control but it is not Belgium either where the economy could support the country and public spending quite happily for 541 days without a government.