It runs through Italy from the smallest comune to the house of commons. The politicians spend their days huddled in cliques discussing politics. Its largely the fault of the system, wherein you need various alliances to be able to do anything, but in Italy it has been taken to the ‘n’th level. In my comune of 55000 souls, we had nearly 600 candidates for the last local elections and a fist full of alliances. Some patently false, just there to divide the vote, and some to bolster the campaigns of others. What it means is that the comunes spend 90% of their time forging and breaking alliances, and only 10% actually doing anything useful. Meetings dont have a quorum, constant reshuffles and resignations only to be reinstated with a different label the day after. And thats just at communal level.
Yesterday we witnessed the nadir of the Republic. Berlusconi is having his appeal confirmed or negated at the end of July. he was hopng for the Autumn when the major part of the charges would have run out of time and been annulled. Instead the Courts,as required by law, brought forward the hearing to the squeals of horror from the Silvio acolytes. In a supposed democracy the trials of one man shouldn’t weigh too heavily on the problems of the 60 million others, but here in Italy the PDL announced a 3 day stop to all parliamentary activity so they could whinge ,whine and behave appallingly. In the end they obtained a vote to stop for a day. Dishearteningly the PD voted with the PDL (although not unanimously) and have descended to their level, lost a load of support and put the survival of the government into question. The PDL want elections and fast, so Berlo can claim legitimate impediment and have his sentence delayed until he can change the law, again.
All of this in a country which has just been downgraded again by S&P, has appalling problems that are not being solved, but merely papered over and has an outlook which would make any economist shudder. Once again we are treated to a media show about one man.
La Santanche bleats about hhow they are defending the choiceof 10 million voters who voted PDL. What Miss Piggy needs to get to grips with is that she/they dont have a majority. 10 million is not a majority in a country of 60 million. They lost. They cant choose what to do. Democracy is obviously for little people. If we had a democracy to play with.
