Articles by: Judith Harris

  • Op-Eds

    Italy on Trial: The Cat Eating Its Tail



    ROME – Questions about Italy pour in from all sides, but let’s face it: no one has the answers. So let’s pretend this is a press conference and, with the humility owed to such a difficult moment, attempt at least tentative replies to some of the pressing questions.
     
    Q. Italians may have public debt, but they have relatively little private debt because, unlike in the US, the Italian banks are notoriously cautious about making loans. Is it really so dangerous that Italy’s public debt is 120% of GDP? (GDP—PIL in Italian—is the European version of Gross National Product.)
     
    A. It’s true that the banks have been cautious, but the Italian government owes outsiders 20% more than the total which the whole country earns in a year from its production of goods and services. The worse things are, the more servicing that debt costs citizens because interest rates rise according to the damage. To pay such a high rate of interest simply makes Italians poorer, and the debt bigger. The cat is eating its tail.
     
    Q. Who cares?
     
    A. Everybody. The global economy is a series of communicating vessels, and, as the current crisis shows, what harms one country harms another. If the Euro has a cold—and it does—the US stock market sneezes. If Germany agrees to help Italy with a bail-out, the German politicians, who answer to their tax payers, know they will pay at the polls. In ordinary households in Italy, resentment of the government for the current mess translates into alienation from the political class and from the government—and this in a country whose tradition is that people are subjects rather than citizens, an attitude which legitimizes the national sport of tax dodging. According to the 2011 edition of the independent social research institute EURISPES, the political parties command the esteem of barely 8% of Italians, the combined polling result for “maximum confidence” and “enough confidence.” This means no confidence on the part of 92%.
     
    Q. But Greece was helped.
     
    A. With a population of under 11 million, Greece is a small country by comparison with Italy, population around 60 million. If Greece was too small not to save, Italy may just appear too big to save.
     
    Q. Who's to blame?
     
    A. Sloppiness on the part of the political class which has been governing for the past two decades. From 1975 until 1983 Italian public debt hovered below 65% of GDP. At that point the debt began to creep up slowly but inexorably under a series of governments headed in turn by Christian Democrats, Socialists and temporary caretaker cabinets run by non-political experts. By 1992 it had bounced up to 105% of GDP. Under the Silvio Berlusconi government, in power from May 1994 through January 1995, public debt continued to advance, reaching almost 122%. Since then, despite efforts of both rightist and leftist governments, it has never gone below 104% of GDP.
     
    Q. Anybody who’s ever gone into a public office or post office knows that the Italian bureaucracy is bloated. Why not just fire them?
     
    A. In all fairness, at the end of World War II, Italy inherited a tough situation. Fascism left the state involved in half of all Italian corporations, and half the industrial capacity had been destroyed. Unemployment was therefore tragic, and the state hired tens of thousands more employees than it needed in order to keep people off the dole. This was aggravated when farm laborers abandoning the countryside for the city needed work. A tradition of working for the state sank in, generation after generation.
     
    Q. But today the bureaucy is bloated, and civil servants are in unions that have been slow to catch up. Why doesn’t somebody do something about it?
     
    A. Many have tried, but vested interests prevailed. Today one of the discussions turns on cutting out the provincial governments, there being local, state and national as well. But no one dares, and in the latest version of the emergency budget this rather obviously desirable reduction of a needless bureaucratic layer is not mentioned. Twenty years ago a cabinet minister charged with reducing the bureaucracy tried to install a merit system for promotions, starting with teachers. He was simply blocked by the unions. I also recall a demonstration down Rome’s Via del Corso where signs read, BANK EMPLOYEE POWER.
     
    Q. That was a long time ago. So today what is the way out?
     
    A. Three possible ways out are under debate. The first is to keep the present government in charge on grounds that it is unwise to rock the boat in the midst of such a serious economic crisis. The second is to kick the government out and hold new elections as soon as possible under the current election law, which hands a huge premium of members of parliament to the front-runner and beefs up the powers of the political party bosses because they, and only they, choose all the candidates. The third is to install a caretaker government of non-politicians to tend the store (and revise the particularly nasty election law). Candidates mentioned as desirable to head such a caretaker cabinet of experts are the reputable Mario Monti or even Mario Draghi, both distinguished economists.
     
    Q. What about the vote for overseas Italians?
     
    A. Until and unless the right to vote is challenged under an hypothetical new Italian election law, the right to vote remains extended to overseas Italians. This Spring’s referendum votes were warning bells, however. The votes of overseas Italians were at risk of not being counted because, between the time the referenda were voted overseas, and the time when the vote took place in Italy, the wording was changed. This time it did not matter because the referenda were passed by a huge turnout, and there was no chicanery. But such a situation should be on watch for the future, as should the possible (if not yet probable) revision of the current law.
     
    Q. Does the Vatican have a say in any of this?
     
    A. Yes, and talks are underway about reviving an openly pro-Church party. Reliable sources report that Pierferdinando Casini, who heads the Unione di Centro (UDC) has just had talks with high Italian Church officials, who are now opposed to early elections. Casini had been calling for Premier Berlusconi’s resignation, but has now reversed his position, saying in effect, “They’re the government—let them go ahead and govern.” The Church, it would seem, is now in the don’t-rock-the-boat camp.
     
    Q. Well, Ms. Smarty-pants, where do you stand?
     
    A. I would like to see a technical government put in charge to handle the crisis, and rewrite the election law – while protecting the right of overseas Italians to vote—followed by elections next Spring. And may the best man or woman win.
     
     
  • Life & People

    For Italian Wines, a Rosy Picture



    MONTALCINO – You know you’re in Brunello country when you see, guarding the meticulously groomed vineyards as they unfold across the famous slanting hills of clay (le crete), rose bushes in bloom at the start of every row of grape vine. Rose bushes? “It’s our tradition,” a proud Tuscan vintner explained. “We’ve always planted them by the grapes.”
     
    This part of Tuscany is particularly elegant. Along with the vines are glowing fields of sunflowers, always with a few rebels refusing to turn their heads to the sun. Above, standing against the skyline like sentinels, are stately s of cypress trees. Their poetry is in the view, but the reason for it is prosaic: the hills are of clay, and the roads tended to be built atop the crest to avoid their simply slipping down from erosion. In the valleys below there are creeks and stands of trees. Some years back I was invited into this bottom land to accompany a truffle hunter and his dog out on a misty autumnal morning. It was an unforgettable experience: the dog found several white truffles, and we were treated to one, served in slivers atop a risotto.
     
    Naturally the accompanying wine was a Brunello. And in case the traveler missed the point, the closer one arrives to Montalcino, the more signs appear inviting the traveler to local producers for a wine tasting. And why not? Among the most prized of red wines anywhere, Brunello, along with the Piedmontese Barolo, is the Italian wine said to age best. It is made exclusively from the Sangiovese grape and harbors its secrets for years in great oak barrels and then in bottles, developing an alcohol content of at least 12%. At least two years have passed before it is drunk. At that time proper decanting is advised, or at least before consumption it must be let “breathe” (that is, let the opened bottle sit quietly a few hours). Finally it is poured into a glass, which the wine connoisseur will hold to the light a moment to see and admire, in the thin layer of glycerine atop the ruby red wine, a miniature rainbow striped in layers of orange and black.
     
    As the rose bushes suggest, whether or not they are really traditional, these are good times for Brunello, but also for all Italian vintners. Lorenzo Delle Vedove, whose vineyards are on the Trentino border north of Verona, told us that the Italian wine cellars are empty. “It’s the first time ever,” he crowed. “No one has any wine left to sell.” Even if he is exaggerating, with 49.6 million hectoliters from the 2010-2011 vintage, the Italians out-produced the French, at 46.2 hectoliters. Indeed, last month the daily Corriere della Sera trumpeted in a headline, “Italy makes history as the world’s foremost wine producer.”
     
    Another first is that exports now earn more than sales at home. Last year total export sales amounted to a stunning Euros 3.93 billion ($5.65 billion) and for the first time exceeded domestic consumption. The trend continues, and by early 2011 export volume showed a record hike of 31% for wine sales from the 2010-2011 vintage to the U.S., Italy’s principal foreign customer. Italian wine exports to other EU countries also rose by 6% while—in a real novelty—sales to China bounced up by 146%. Although sales of bottled wine lagged slightly behind those for bulk, both were up respectively by 26% and 33%. This is all the more impressive because over the same period sales of wine from other EU nations contracted by 3.7%.
    Small-scale producers fared particularly well, with an increase this vintage over last year of 16% in earnings. (All statistics are from the Italian association of farm owners Coldiretti and from the European Commission.)
     
    So how do they do it? Quality comes first, but marketing can help. Vintner Patrizia Aglieta of Montalcino, for instance, came up with a first for the Aglieta label’s production of classic Brunello. It happens that her wine label is in the shape of a rugby football, and hearing an Italian chef friend speak of his old sports passion for rugby gave her an idea: a Brunello aimed at rugby enthusiasts. The new production of Brunello is called “Il Terzo Tempo” (The Third Half, meaning for the post-game party). Rugby clubs from Ireland and Wales are snapping up the cases, and the matching T-shirts with the bottle and its rugby ball label.
     
    Obviously marketing won’t work when the product is inferior, but her wine is among the wines of Italy allowed to show on the label the designation DOCG, for Denominazione di Origine Controllato e garantita (Denomination of Origin Controlled and Guaranteed). “To get our DOCG took twenty years altogether,” she says. “First the planting of the vines, and after two years inspectors came to see our vineyards. They approved, but then it took another five years before we were actually producing the wine, and five more after that before we could open the first bottle—ten in all. I was literally terrified that it would taste terrible!” It did not, fortunately—particularly since at the moment no more DOCG authentications are available.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
  • Op-Eds

    For Italian Wines, a Rosy Picture



    MONTALCINO – You know you’re in Brunello country when you see, guarding the meticulously groomed vineyards as they unfold across the famous slanting hills of clay (le crete), rose bushes in bloom at the start of every row of grape vine. Rose bushes? “It’s our tradition,” a proud Tuscan vintner explained. “We’ve always planted them by the grapes.”
     
    This part of Tuscany is particularly elegant. Along with the vines are glowing fields of sunflowers, always with a few rebels refusing to turn their heads to the sun. Above, standing against the skyline like sentinels, are stately s of cypress trees. Their poetry is in the view, but the reason for it is prosaic: the hills are of clay, and the roads tended to be built atop the crest to avoid their simply slipping down from erosion. In the valleys below there are creeks and stands of trees. Some years back I was invited into this bottom land to accompany a truffle hunter and his dog out on a misty autumnal morning. It was an unforgettable experience: the dog found several white truffles, and we were treated to one, served in slivers atop a risotto.
     
    Naturally the accompanying wine was a Brunello. And in case the traveler missed the point, the closer one arrives to Montalcino, the more signs appear inviting the traveler to local producers for a wine tasting. And why not? Among the most prized of red wines anywhere, Brunello, along with the Piedmontese Barolo, is the Italian wine said to age best. It is made exclusively from the Sangiovese grape and harbors its secrets for years in great oak barrels and then in bottles, developing an alcohol content of at least 12%. At least two years have passed before it is drunk. At that time proper decanting is advised, or at least before consumption it must be let “breathe” (that is, let the opened bottle sit quietly a few hours). Finally it is poured into a glass, which the wine connoisseur will hold to the light a moment to see and admire, in the thin layer of glycerine atop the ruby red wine, a miniature rainbow striped in layers of orange and black.
     
    As the rose bushes suggest, whether or not they are really traditional, these are good times for Brunello, but also for all Italian vintners. Lorenzo Delle Vedove, whose vineyards are on the Trentino border north of Verona, told us that the Italian wine cellars are empty. “It’s the first time ever,” he crowed. “No one has any wine left to sell.” Even if he is exaggerating, with 49.6 million hectoliters from the 2010-2011 vintage, the Italians out-produced the French, at 46.2 hectoliters. Indeed, last month the daily Corriere della Sera trumpeted in a headline, “Italy makes history as the world’s foremost wine producer.”
     
    Another first is that exports now earn more than sales at home. Last year total export sales amounted to a stunning Euros 3.93 billion ($5.65 billion) and for the first time exceeded domestic consumption. The trend continues, and by early 2011 export volume showed a record hike of 31% for wine sales from the 2010-2011 vintage to the U.S., Italy’s principal foreign customer. Italian wine exports to other EU countries also rose by 6% while—in a real novelty—sales to China bounced up by 146%. Although sales of bottled wine lagged slightly behind those for bulk, both were up respectively by 26% and 33%. This is all the more impressive because over the same period sales of wine from other EU nations contracted by 3.7%.
    Small-scale producers fared particularly well, with an increase this vintage over last year of 16% in earnings. (All statistics are from the Italian association of farm owners Coldiretti and from the European Commission.)
     
    So how do they do it? Quality comes first, but marketing can help. Vintner Patrizia Aglieta of Montalcino, for instance, came up with a first for the Aglieta label’s production of classic Brunello. It happens that her wine label is in the shape of a rugby football, and hearing an Italian chef friend speak of his old sports passion for rugby gave her an idea: a Brunello aimed at rugby enthusiasts. The new production of Brunello is called “Il Terzo Tempo” (The Third Half, meaning for the post-game party). Rugby clubs from Ireland and Wales are snapping up the cases, and the matching T-shirts with the bottle and its rugby ball label.
     
    Obviously marketing won’t work when the product is inferior, but her wine is among the wines of Italy allowed to show on the label the designation DOCG, for Denominazione di Origine Controllato e garantita (Denomination of Origin Controlled and Guaranteed). “To get our DOCG took twenty years altogether,” she says. “First the planting of the vines, and after two years inspectors came to see our vineyards. They approved, but then it took another five years before we were actually producing the wine, and five more after that before we could open the first bottle—ten in all. I was literally terrified that it would taste terrible!” It did not, fortunately—particularly since at the moment no more DOCG authentications are available.
     
  • Op-Eds

    Who Says it’s Only the Economy?


    ROME, Needless to say, no one here is speaking of anything but the economy and its accessories of sovereign debt, rating agencies, government bond interest rates and what went wrong with the Euro, starting with lack of adoption of regulatory measures. On Thursday the Italian Senate passed the hastily redrafted emergency austerity budget. Given the sense of emergency, the opposition refrained from tabling any amendments to enable the rapid passage of the austerity budget cobbled together by Minister Giulio Tremonti. The lower chamber, the Camera dei Deputati, is expected to follow suit on Friday, in hopes that this will calm the markets, tugging Italy back out of its bankrupt Euro tar pit of Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain..
     
    The situation, in a nutshell, is dire. Although Italy has the third largest economy in the Euro zone, its national debt has soared to $2.6 trillion, or 120% of its GDP. But pessimism is in the air, and the latest International Monetary Fund projection is that by the end of this year public debt will shoot up even further. Panic set in when credit rating agencies downgraded Italy in June, triggering a drop in the stock market—at the moment recovering—as government bonds and bank shares were sold, presumably by speculators betting that in a few months they can pick up the same shares at a lower price.
     
    At mid-week, following the Senate vote, the treasury announced it will sell up to $7 billion of government bonds that will mature between five and 15 years. But this raises a new problem, for the cost of debt servicing (that is, borrowing costs) touched a 14-year high, by Bloomberg calculations. Merely financing the debt will cost the nation—meaning the tax payers—some 75 billion this year but significantly more in the future, with 85 billion predicted for 2014.
     
    The market chaos brought a truce between an obviously troubled Silvio Berlusconi, head of the government, and his League-leaning budget minister Giulio Tremonti, until only weeks ago considered a probable successor to Berlusconi himself as premier. No one bothered to conceal the hostility between the two, and Tremonti was predicted to be on the point of resigning, particularly because Neapolitan magistrates have asked for the arrest of one of Tremonti’s right-hand men, Marco Milanese, accused of corruption. Gossip in industrial circles here had Tremonti himself a suspect, particularly after it emerged that he lives in Rome in a posh apartment whose $12,000 monthly rent is paid by a businessman. However, Tremonti explained that he is merely a houseguest who stays only in the bedroom he occupies in the flat, which he will give up anyway. Meantime Neapolitan magistrates leaked the news that Tremonti is not currently under investigation for corruption.
     
    After all this brouhaha, speaking Wednesday to a banking association, former university prof Tremonti threw out a phrase, typical of erudite Italian intellectuals, in Latin: “Hic manebimus optime.” Scurrying for their dictionaries, reporters learned that it means simply, “I’m not going anywhere.” In other words, he has no intention of resigning. Instead the resignation that hurts is that of Mario Draghi, who, along with President Giorgio Napolitano, stands tall among Italian leaders. Draghi headed the Bank of Italy until only weeks ago, when he left to take over the same position for the Euro zone. The loss of his guidance in Italy adds to the problems.
     
    Pro-government politicians are casting blame for the extent of public debt upon the administrations of the early 1990s; the opposition takes a different view, and a published schedule of government administrations side by side with public debt amounts shows a continuous rise over decades. Similarly being brushed aside are questions about just which austerity measures are being adopted, there being a single, simple alternative: cut expenses or raise Italy’s already outrageously high taxes. To this question a senator from Berlusconi’s Freedom Party (PdL) replied blithely that the package would not hurt ordinary working taxpayers much because it imposes taxes on luxury products like fancy Ferraris.
     
    Those who say it’s only the economy, stupid, got it wrong. Although free-market advocates claim that the capitalist market follows its own rules, other experts here point out that the rating agencies (accused by some of speculation) take into account the general political climate as well.

     
    Economist Michele Boldrin, born in Padua in 1956 and educated in Venice, is one of the most authoritative of overseas Italians. He has spent the past 27 years in the US (University of Chicago, Northwestern, UCLA), and is a fellow at the Economic Policy Research Center in London. Boldrin is less than tender with the Berlusconi administration, but he also spreads the blame to the unions and the industrial aristocracy: “For the past decade our country has been in decline. Our public sector spends income that it has not produced, and spends it poorly, in an unfair way. It finances this spending in a way that is even more unjust and whacky. All this paralyzes our economic growth and makes us incapable, today, tomorrow and forever, of repaying our accumulated debt, and of offering future generations the prospect for a decent life. The entire caste of government and opposition, trade union and manufacturers union [Confindustria], refuses to recognize this banal fact. And the socio-economic elite of the country are terrorized by the risk of losing their privileges.” Italy, he concludes, has no need of an economic “maneuver” or austerity package. What it needs is “a radical change of direction.”



     
  • Op-Eds

    Swan Songs



    I was walking the dog near the ferryboat landing when I saw a man looking unhappily at one swan. The creature tried to stand up but failed, and stumbled forward onto its feathered, pure white chest. Trying to rise once more, again the swan collapsed. “I can’t bear this,” the man said. Tears now rolled down his cheeks. “Why doesn’t someone do something? I’ve phoned the mayor, but nothing happens.” By then a little flock of hobbyist fishermen had gathered. “We all try to phone. But nothing happens,” said the retired baker. I asked what had happened to the bird. The answers poured in: “Savaged by a big mean dog.” “Injured its leg.” “Attacked by someone. It’s dying—it’s been this way for weeks.” “Why doesn’t someone do something?” “I’ll take it to a vet!” “We all will!”
     
    “I’ll call Gaetano,” I volunteered. “He’ll know what to do.” Gaetano, as everyone knows, is the ever helpful veterinarian.
     
    “You have to take the bird to the LIPU,” said Gaetano with an unusual hint of impatience. Obviously a half dozen others had already phoned him. “Just put it in a box with holes so it can breathe.” From the Internet I learned that LIPU—the letters stand for Lega Italiana Protezione Uccelli (Italian League for the Protection of Birds)—has a center for helping wild birds “in difficulty.” This is the Italy we all love: as one of their volunteers, Francesca, later told me, lovers of wildlife have delivered to them “eagles, hawks, robins—just about every species imaginable.” In 1999, with support from the Rome City environmental authorities, the LIPU created a 4,450-acre bird sanctuary at Castel di Guido popular with visiting schoolchildren called the Oasis (http://www.oasicasteldiguido.it/).
     
    Their closest bird hospital was, it appeared, at the Villa Borghese in Rome. Even finding the right sort of box and wanting to drive the bird an hour into town, this raised the question: just how does one transport a sick swan? They weigh over 30 pounds and, with their wingspan, can stretch out as much as 10 feet. Besides, they peck, and this one was fighting for its life. “Maybe put a blanket over it?” a fisherman suggested. When I phoned the LIPU to ask just how to do this, there was no answer so I sent an email to the address listed.
     
    Nor was there, immediately, an answer to my email. But the next morning the swan had disappeared. “You see—it’s dead,” said one aging time-waster with a kind of pleasure. It was not. That morning police had come and taken the swan to the LIPU refuge. An email arrived, confirming this, and giving me the names of two women volunteers who were looking after the swan, plus a phone number. “So what happened to the swan?” I asked Francesca. “Food poisoning,” she replied. “It is terribly undernourished as a result. But it will get better.” There was no hint of an attack by a dog, no injury. To general jubilation, I gave the good news to the concerned fishermen and to the man who had wept in frustration at the swan’s plight.
     
    And what about that other long-expected swan song? It inched forward this week as a result of presentation of the long-awaited E50 billion supplementary emergency budget package drawn up by Minister Giulio Tremonti to deal with the huge Italian deficit. Not surprisingly, it raised plenty of hackles, particularly because four-fifths of the cuts—E40 billion are postponed so that they will be applied, not this or next year, but in 2013 and 2014. For the immediate future, as the London Economist points out, the changes are “strikingly modest:an increase in vehicle tax for large cars; staff cuts in an overseas trade promotion body; and restrictions on the use of official aircraft.” Italy’s overpaid politicians will take a salary cut, but not during the present legislature, which ends only in 2013.
     
    One clause drew immediate fury. Somehow or other—no one to date has admitted having written the clause—a sneaky loophole was inserted, saying anyone facing a civil fine of over E20 million would not have to pay a cent until after the supreme court had pronounced on its validity. Because the supreme court works extremely slowly, no one had to be reminded that this would have gotten Premier Silvio Berlusconi off the hook by allowing de facto suspension of the E750 million payment owed to his despised rival businessman Carlo De Benedetti. “To pay all that I’d have to sell off all my companies,” Berlusconi reportedly has complained. Earlier this year a Milanese low court found for De Benedetti over Berlusconi’s fraudulent acquisition of Mondadori, and the case is now slated for a decision by a court of appeals, but the bizarre clause would—as some here interpret it—postpone the appellate court decision.
     
    The result: the clause was removed. An obviously irate Berlusconi backed down. Even the usual commentators were taken by surprise. “What was the point—sabotage? Did someone sneak in that clause just to humiliate Berlusconi?”
     
    Whatever the music, the emergency budget has struck enough of a sour note that the real swan song is that much closer. 
     
  • Facts & Stories

    Treading the Muddy Political Waters


    ROME –Voting in three separate elections this May and June, Italians gave a black eye to the center-right government headed by the London Economist’s favorite Italian politician, Silvio Berlusconi. First, in scattered cities and townships throughout Italy in May and then in run-offs in June, government coalition parties lost city councils in a vast sampler that ranged from mountainous Piedmont to the sunburnt Southern islands.  Confirming this, two weeks later, in an unexpectedly huge turnout, voters overwhelmingly rejected four bills dear to the government’s heart. The most important to the nation was the adoption of a nuclear agenda; the most important to Berlusconi personally was a law that had provided him immunity from prosecution so long as he holds high office.


    As a result of the trouncing, Berlusconi’s ally in government, the truculent Northern League, went on the verbal warpath, holding its annual meeting in an historic backyard (okay, a field) at Pontida near Brescia. Predictions beforehand were that, in his speech there, Bossi, said to be ailing and too tired to continue, would issue thunderbolts against Berlusconi, whom many in the Leghisti leadership blame for the obvious mass defections from their party during the referendum vote. Indeed, a recent poll showed that 55% of League voters dislike Berlusconi. Their favorite to replace him as Premier is the League’s leading figure in government, Roberto Maroni, hailed at Pontida in a 15-feet-long banner as their candidate for Premier (see the photo of the banner in the June 20 www.Repubblica.it). Despite crowd calls demanding secession for the Padania area, the backyard rally was pacific—until now, anyway, with Bossi and Maroni reportedly at each other’s throats. If little else, the Pontida rally showed how wrong predictions can be. Some of the best minds in Italy had drafted literally brilliant analyses of what Bossi would say, but in the event all were wrong, and Bossi did little but shrug his shoulders and tell a delighted Berlusconi to go on treading water.


    And so he does, even though some of Berlusconi’s best friends, caught on the phone by zealous magistrates in gossip mysteriously leaked to the press, have been loudly praising their leader in public while slinging mud at him in private. The women seem particularly guilty, reminding one that he who lives by the sword may die by the sword. The lissome Minister for the Environment Stefania Prestigiacomo was caught complaining that Berlusconi is “not intelligent.” Worse from Berlusconi’s point of view, at least, must be the ungrateful Daniela Santanché, caught saying that Berlusconi’s wife has it right, and that he is “sick.” In public Ms. Santanché has been his most ardent and loudest supporter, second only to his personal lawyer and MP Nicola Ghedini.  


    The newest Berlusconi faithful to be capturing the headlines is Luigi Bisignani, the alleged eminence grise accused of operating in the shadows to control Italian politics, finances and state radio-TV, with a finger in the military pie as well. Arrested June 15, Bisignani is the subject of 15,000 pages of court documents involving what is being called here the “P4” inquiry into underground lobbies. It might seem just another Italian scandal save that magistrates Henry John Woodcock and Francesco Curcio of Naples are investigating a possible link between wheeler-dealer businessman Bisignani and Gianni Letta, Berlusconi’s right-hand man and de facto minister to the Roman Catholic church authorities. The term P4 is shorthand for secret power over the economy and over nominations to powerful state positions, including in state-owned media; the name evokes the secret renegade Masonic lodge known as the P2 (“P” for Propaganda) headed by Licio Gelli from circa 1969 through the l980s. In phone taps Bisignani takes the credit for obtaining the government post for Santanché as undersecretary in charge of the amorphous office for the Enactment of the Government Program as well as the leader of the Movement for Italy, thanks—according to Bisignani in testimony to Woodcock and Curcio, only thanks to Bisignani himself.  


    Justice Minister Angelo Alfano gave a weak protest that the phone taps were costing taxpayers too much money, and Berlusconi himself has relaunched demands for a gag law to stop the leaks. Nevertheless the obvious pressure on the Premier gave photographers a Berlusconian field day. When Berlusconi had to spend a long morning defending himself in court in Milan last Monday, for the first time no little crowd of enthusiasts was there to wave kisses and banners of support. And in a cruel close-up a photographer caught a haggard and over-heated Berlusconi wiping his face so that his clean white linen hankie was all a-smear with orange makeup, à la Crusty the Clown.


    All this suggested last week a government deep in trouble, and a few hoped that Tuesday’s vote of confidence in Parliament (verifica) might reflect some of the dissatisfaction expressed clearly in the trio of votes in the past two months. But when push came to shove, the Berlusconi government actually increased its numerical consensus in the Chamber and Senate with 317 votes in favor—one more than before Gianfranco Fini’s exit from the ruling coalition. A few still say that new elections lie just around the corner, but reason that November would be a fine time to bring down the government so that elections could be held next Spring, when the June setbacks are forgotten. On the other hand, Berlusconi—and not only he— continues to predict the government will go forward until the end of the legislature. The clash between the Premier and his economics czar Giulio Tremonti continues, aggravated by Tremonti’s obvious ambitions to replace Berlusconi. By the same token the League is also trying to elbow Berlusconi aside, to be replaced by Interior Minister Maroni. Hence the sense of treading water as each tries to drown, and to drown out, the other, in a triangular game of water polo.


    In the meantime Renato Brunetta, a former economics professor who is Minister for the Public Administration and Innovation, alienated countless young Italians by stalking out of a meeting of the so-called precari, young people given short-term or no work contracts, meaning no social security or other benefits while earning under $1,000 monthly for full-time work. “You’re the worst of Italy,” he sneered at a young woman trying to ask him a question. By way of reply to his arrogant indifference to the plight of the young, bright and underemployed (and I repeat, 30% of Italian university graduates are jobless), the mass Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana wrote in an editorial June 17, “This is an Italy that built illusions for fathers and sons, promising greater possibilities on the road to competition and infinite growth…. But the daily reality has shown this to be untrue. Today 30% of young families earn too little to be able to buy a house. Between the ages of 25 and 34 almost one worker out of four has an atypical contract, 60% of young people remain precariously employed after a year and one out of five is unemployed; the median salary for new graduates is of E 827.” (Statistics from ABI, CGIA, ISTAT and Bachelor respectively.)


    The editorialist concluded with a sharp rap on the knuckles: “Perhaps you, Signor Minister, and the Government are not interested in this reality. Perhaps other things are on your mind [!]  It doesn’t matter—go right on considering us the worst of Italy. We, who are tired of all this and indignant, will build a better future Italy.”
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    Referendum in Italy: The Government Defeated. And Now What?

    ROME – No one expected it, no one predicted it. Most feared that the government’s media barrage would prevail, many feared that the judicial muddle over the flawed writing of the abrogative texts given to the 3 million voters outside Italy would queer the whole story. Never mind—despite all this, well over half the country is rejoicing this week because a nationwide referendum drew a stunning turnout of over 57% of those eligible to vote. Four pieces of center-right legislation dear to Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s heart and his cronies’ pocketbooks were overturned as a result of this healthy quorum: construction of nuclear power plants, the privatization of water (two bills) and a dodgem law giving Berlusconi personal immunity from prosecution while in office.

    The vote shows a healthy change in political mood—a delayed reaction especially from young voters alienated less by the Premier’s personal life style than by the government’s lack of reaction to, and concern over, their problems of education and their meager job prospects. In a country where 30% of college graduates are jobless, this new generation twittered each other all the way to the polls. This was a protest vote, and it was a youth vote, but not only. In some regions of North and Central Italy the turnout was staggering, with over 60% voting in the Val d’Aosta, Tuscany, the Marches, Reggio Emilia and the Trentino-Alto Adige. Calabria had the lowest turnout, but even so a majority of 50.3%. participated. Most importantly, each of the four votes in favor of abrogation was a massive success (“a Bulgarian vote,” some are joking), from the 94.75% who voted down nuclear power plants to the 95.15% voting against “legitimate impediment” (the political dodgem law).

    Berlusconi went out defiantly shopping for costume jewelry just when the results were being announced Monday. Later he casually allowed that he may be a bit of sync with some Italians, and to the visiting Israeli delegation he remarked that all over Europe there are indications of a mood swing, making Italy in line with the rest of the crowd. He himself is already on record saying beforehand that the vote holds no consequence for the government.

    Whatever he says, he has good reason to be concerned over his Northern League partners, who blame him for the shellacking. The League’s ranking government figure, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, called the referendum “the second body blow” to the government, the first being the left-leaning election sweep of two weeks ago, which lost the governing coalition important cities like Naples and Milan. Berlusconi is hounded furthermore by his League-leaning budget minister, the economist Giulio Tremonti, and behind the scenes their respective aparatcikni are hurling nasty insults at each other on the lines of “He thinks he can be premier or even president” and “He has people spying on me.” True or false, Berlusconi is thus under attack from  within the government and without, and is also known to fear that the double-whammy results from the voters in these two extraordinary weeks have moreover given aid and comfort to the magistrates already hounding him.

    For the League, this is a festering situation. Its leaders know that countless of their supporters defied the party’s orders to stay at home and instead voted in the referendum, contributing to the successful achievement of a quorum. Some analysts here believe that the leadership of Umberto Bossi himself is being challenged. His response to this newly volatile situation is expected to come Sunday, when he will address his followers at the party’s annual rally at Pontida. The League considers tiny Pontida (pop. 3,200), near Bergamo, its symbolic fiefdom and capital because in 1167 a group of Lombard communes formed a League and in a field at Pontida solemnly swore an oath to fight against the despised German emperor Barbarossa. The Padania email inbox is cluttered with protests from the League’s rank and file that Berlusconi is dragging down the party they once loved. Bossi therefore is expected to issue a threat at Pontida June 21: either enact federalism as law or hold new elections, perhaps as soon as October.

    In Sicily, meanwhile, where run-off elections were held in a handful of small towns on Sunday and Monday, there too voters mustered out the old to bring in the new. Curiously, however, few on the left are calling for the government to be dispatched on the spot, and political commentator Beppe Servergnini, for one, said he does not expect the government to collapse or for Berlusconi to be sent home in the immediate future.

    So now what? At this point, governing bodies should step in, just when the 2008 economic recession is being belatedly felt throughout Italy. Those factories doing well are exporting to Germany, and until now the recession has been papered over as if by magic. Suddenly reports are coming in that banks are seizing homes whose owners fail to make mortgage payments. Savings, which used to be a mainstay for the Italian family, are down to zero, as last week’s central bank report showed, and consumer purchases are still low. It is obvious that under these circumstances the Italian government will have to move quickly to resolve the problems which, they had hoped, could be handled by privatization, beginning with the search for new energy sources.

    The strongest vote, 96.2%, vetoed privatization of water power for profit. This veto leaves the government to take action, all the more urgent since 80% of Italian water usage is for the money-earners: industry and agriculture; only one-fifth is for private use. The problem is lack of maintenance. In the U.S. a loss of 10% from leaking pipelines is considered more or less the norm, but hydrologists say that 30% is lost in Italy. If the loss comes inland, the water seeps down into the water table and then returns, but if the pipeline leaks near the sea, the water goes into salt water and is not returned to the water circuit until evaporated into clouds and then rain. The biggest loss comes with the 1,360-mile-long Puglie aqueduct, with 10,000 miles of conduits, whose construction began in 1906 and was completed just before WWII, in time for war damage. This agricultural region is particularly dry, but the aqueduct “loses 50.3% of the  water it carries,” according to a report from Reuters news agency in 2008. “Overall Italy wastes 14% more water than France, 36% more than Spain, 56% more than Britain and 311% more than Germany.”

    The referendum result makes therefore three essential points: first, that democracy is alive and well in Italy; secondly, that the media do not tell the whole story; and, thirdly, that it is time for the nation’s leaders to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

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    On Referendum Weekend, Santoro Steals the Show


    ROME – Who’d have thought it? On the eve of an abrogative referendum vote Sunday and Monday, June 12 and 13, a TV shouting match has stolen the show. This upstaging is all the more surprising because the issues at stake are of crucial importance to all citizens because four controversial laws on three issues would be overturned: a return to construction of nuclear power plants, the privatization of waterworks so they can turn a profit for businessmen, and the dodgem Law No. 51 of April 7, 2010, providing immunity while in office to politicians of rank, if not of limpid lives.

     
    Put another way, the referenda concern the personal safety of Italians and their neighboring countries for generations to come, as well as the choice of where to place investment money—whether in nuclear power plants or in research into alternate energy resources. They concern household and government finances, and whether business should make profits from what the rich and the poor pay equally (two separate queries regard water privatization, so there are four queries on three issues). And they concern placing limits upon the behavior of politicians, including as concerns corruption, beginning with Premier Silvio Berlusconi himself.
     
    Abrogation means voting yes in each case, but not everyone gets the point, and I personally spent an evening explaining to a bright young Italian construction worker that to vote “yes” means to say “no” to construction of nuclear power plants, to paying private companies for the water flowing into your home, and to letting crooked politicians off the hook. The referendum vote for abrogation is being staunchly supported by Roman Catholic laymen and clergy in Italy. At the same time the vote also has the backing of the center-left, at a time when the center-right Premier Berlusconi’s personal popularity has declined notably—just how far no one knows, but few here doubt that the yes vote will prevail.
     
    However,—and here’s the rub—50% of the nation’s eligible voters must turn out for the referendum vote to be valid. Despite ardent campaigning, by such an unlikely coalition as nuns carrying placards and students jumping into fountains, such a large turnout is almost too much to expect on days when schools have just been let out for the summer holidays, and only two weeks after the hotly contested vote for local administrations. That lack of a quorum is the only way to protect his pro-nuclear, pro-privatization, pro-dodgem laws was tacitly admitted by Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who publicly declared, “I personally won’t go to vote, it’s a waste of time,” and by his partner in government, Umberto Bossi, head of the Northern League, who also announced he would not vote. Their preference is a 10-year moratorium on the nuclear debate so that, as pro-nuclear government spokesmen have explained, the “emotional” reaction to Fukushima can dissipate.
     
    But is it only an “emotional” reaction? At the annual conference held last weekend in Venice of the influential Council for the United States and Italy, whose president is Fiat-Chrysler chief Sergio Marchionne, members heard experts debate for and against construction of nuclear power plants. The debate turned lopsided when the expert promoting construction acknowledged that, “We tell our clients, ‘you are building for a century, and not only for your own country.’” The expert advising against pointed out that the Japanese scientists entirely overlooked the fact that the area where the tsunami destroyed the power plant was well known to suffer three tsunami per century. He also specified that the U.S. has not yet found a way to dispose of nuclear waste, still “temporarily” deposited in sites near the plants.
     
    Italy built its first nuclear reactor at Ispra near Milan (Varese) in 1959, and then, more ambitiously, a power plant in Latina due South of Rome in 1963. Two others followed, and by 1970 over 3% of the country’s electricity came from nuclear power. In 1975 the government projected construction of another 20. But the problem remained that much of the country lies on a seismic fault, one reason why a referendum vote, held in 1987 in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, blocked construction of new nuclear power facilities.
     
    Despite the importance of the questions under debate, the shouting match on RAI TV’s Channel 2 on June 9, seen by 8.5 million televiewers, has overshadowed even the referendum vote. For literally years Premier Berlusconi has been savagely and noisily battling the anchorman of the political talk show Annozero, the popular Michele Santoro, and has been trying to unseat him and others who do not fit the government mold. This was to be the season’s last show, and, as usual, a pro-government spokesman was invited to participate, in this case the former Justice Minister (2001-2006) Roberto Castelli, 65, a Bossi faithful who is today Berlusconi’s Undersecretary for Infrastructure.
     
    To synthesize, Roberto Castelli said, “Don’t make me pay the annual RAI subscription, I pay the RAI subscription and am not interested in, I am for privatization of the RAI, I don’t want to pay the subscription any more… we are sick of paying for it, they’re all leftists at the RAI, take a look at the marketplace…. I am sick of paying for [leftist journalist Marco] Travaglio, I don’t want to pay his wages. If you’re so clever, go onto the open market….”
     
    Shouting over him, Santoro replied that he was sick and tired of such talk: that his program brought in the advertising that paid for the politicians. In the end Santoro said that he would be willing to work for the following season for exactly one euro ($1.45) per weekly broadcast, the RAI administration willing. (Italian speakers can see and hear their quarrel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuoQRHOX3wM.) Over a thousand comments poured into the site immediately, mostly on the lines of: “Is Castelli brain damaged? He repeats again and again, ‘I pay the subscription,’ like a dope (okay, the writer actually said “coglione”). And the hundreds of thousands of euros Castelli earns comes from people like me.” Wrote another, giving his name: “Send them all home, let’s us govern this country, with different ideas, we can discuss them and come to some agreement.”
     
    As for Santoro’s future, at the moment it is as mysterious as the turnout for the referendum. Stay tuned.
     
     
              
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    For Berlusconi, the Tipping Point?

    “This is the tipping point,” our friend, a dynamic management consultant of 35, exulted. “It’s an avalanche,” the delighted head of the Partito Democratico (PD), Pierluigi Bersani proclaimed. The reason for their glee: in mid-term election run-off’s held May 29 and 30 in 55 scattered Italian cities and townships, Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PdL) took an unexpectedly robust shellacking. In the two big cities where stakes were highest, Milan in the North and Naples in the South, leftist outsiders Giuliano Pisapia, a lawyer, and former magistrate Luigi de Magistris won hands down.

    The financial capital of Italy has been a conservative stronghold for the past 18 years, and Berlusconi warned voters that if the left won, the city would become “Zingaropolis” (Gypsyville), a warren for other undesirables like transvestites and immigrants. Despite this vulgar and racist rhetoric, , Pisapia won 55% of the vote and handily surpassed the current mayor of Milan supported by the PdL, Letizia Moratti, who claimed less than 45%. Serene and smiling, she offered her help to her successor and said she was available to work with “all moderates.”

    And in Naples, De Magistris copped almost two-thirds of the votes cast (over 65%), versus Gianni Lettieri’s frankly feeble showing (under 35%). In a low turnout, Lettieri actually dropped some 39,000 votes from the first round. Naples this evening was festive, flags waving and people in the piazzas excitedly shouting.

    Elections for posts in provincial governments and in smaller cities like Cagliari in Sardinia and Trieste on the Northern border similarly showed a shift leftward. Novara in Piedmont, one of the strongholds of the Northern League, overturned its center-right administration in favor of center-left candidate Andrea Ballaré. Even in tiny Arcore, the outlying Milanese township that is Berlusconi’s home town, and where he has built his pharaonic tomb in the garden of his villa, the center-right was ousted in favor of a leftist candidate who happens to be a woman, Rosangela Colombo. The town council will be 50% female, and one city councilman is black, moreover.

    Berlusconi himself is out of Italy on a state visit to Romania, where at a press conference he pointedly spoke only of foreign affairs. Already, Berlusconi had taken preventive action, blaming Moratti for being a “weak candidate” and saying—in contradiction with his words of just a month ago—that he saw no reason to reason to resign in case she lost Milan. Back home in Rome, however, Sandro Bondi, Berlusconi’s former Culture Minister and currently one of the three lieutenants who run the PdL, resigned on hearing the election results. His resignation is being seen here as the opening move in a crisis of confidence within the party which Berlusconi himself founded less than three years ago.

    As for the Northern League, its spokesmen are openly blaming the Berlusconi party for tarnishing the League image by using inappropriate language, including the attacks on magistrates, just as Berlusconi blamed Moratti for the predicted loss of Milan. (No one is yet mentioning Naples.)

    But besides being an avalanche, is this also the tipping point? Is the obviously over-stressed and agitated Berlusconi washed up, and will the government implode? For the moment that is less clear than are the voters’ preferences. “Don’t expect the government to collapse in any great rush,” was the admonishment made by an editorial writer for the authoritative Turin daily La Stampa. His reasoning: the victors were not from the big established parties like the PD, but from parties representing the protest vote, including the small but influential Beppe Grillo’s organization. This protest element will make it difficult to forge an alternative government to Berlusconi’s, with summer vacation looming as an excuse for biding time. Even Bersani, while crowing with delight in a Monday afternoon press conference, was cautious about where and when.    

    But never mind: what matters, in the minds of many in the center-left and even in the center-right, is that the voters did not appear brainwashed by the Premier’s innumerable TV appearances and the plainly slanted news as presented on some of the state TV programs and, of course, on the trio of channels owned outright by Berlusconi. “This is not a dictatorship of the media,” one observer said proudly. “On the contrary, I’m so proud that people voted with their own brains.”

    The next step in election terms: the referendum to take place in just two weeks in which voters are asked to pronounce for or against three issues: nuclear power, privatization of water and the kinky question called “legitimate impediment,” which translates into giving top political leaders [read: Berlusconi] an elongated legal leash allowing them to dodge prosecution.
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    Elections: Earth Tremors in Milan

    ROME – Last week the doom sayers predicted that an earthquake would flatten Rome. They got it wrong. The earth did shake, but the seismic shocks took place Sunday and Monday in Milan, where voters took a slam at Premier Silvio Berlusconi and the center-right candidate he was touting for mayor, Letizia Moratti. The race was not even close; with a scant 41.6% of the final count vote—a 10% decline from her victory in Milan city elections just five years ago—Moratti lost by over six points to her adversary, the left-leaning Giuliano Pisapia. Although neither candidate received the minimum of 50.1%, Pisapia, with 48%, seems in place to win in the run-off slated for May 29. A novelty: Pisapia was not identified with the Partito Democratico (PD), but in the primaries, thanks to support from Nichi Vendola’s Sinistra Ecologia Libertà (SEL), won over a PD candidate.

    The balloting took place on Sunday and Monday in big cities and small towns scattered throughout all of Italy, including Sardinia, but the Milanese vote was declared beforehand to be a bellwether of national feeling by, first of all, Berlusconi himself. In the once-upon-a-time Communist party organ L’Unità, editorial cartoonist Sergio Staino synthesized the situation by showing a pained Berlusconi struck in the head by a metallic souvenir model of the Duomo cathedral of Milan, and saying, “This time it really hurts.” (In mid-December 2009 a deranged man literally struck Berlusconi in the face with a souvenir model of the Duomo.) And it must indeed hurt: Milan was the birthplace of Berlusconi’s personal financial clout—the heart of his real estate, banking and media holdings.

    In Milan itself not only are politics at stake, but, because Milan is the capital of wealthy, productive Northern Italy, it means a lesser degree of control over publicly-owned banks and business enterprises. Not least, in 2015 Milan is hosting the Universal Exposition, which will occupy a 272-acre site and pavilions from some 120 countries.

    Throughout the past two years of corruption allegations and sex scandals Berlusconi has defended himself by saying that however the media defamed him, he remained popular with ordinary people, a claim regularly bolstered by his pollsters of preference. The Milan results—and he had only half the personal preferences of 2006—make this claim more difficult. As one pundit asked, marveling, “Is the Berlusconi myth still true; is he still invincible? Or is this the tipping point, and he’ll be put out to pasture in three months time?”

    That prediction may be premature, but no one in the Berlusconi camp is pretending that the Milan elections do not matter, and recriminations are pouring in from the disgruntled in Berlusconi’s own Partito della Libertà (PdL). Berlusconi himself is said to blame his coalition partner Umberto Bossi of the Northern League for showing governmental inconsistency by opposing Berlusconi’s support of the NATO bombing of Libya. He is also said to be blaming Moratti for having maliciously (and erroneously) accusing Pisapio of being a car thief and terrorist hanger-on, charges made during the last seconds of a TV debate, when she knew Pisapia was left without time to respond.

    Meanwhile, Berlusconi’s chief ally, the Northern League, blames Moratti for speaking in such extremist slogans unfamiliar to this normally level-headed moderate, but cooked up (presumably) by Berlusconi’s PR gurus. Curiously, some in Milan appeared worn by the former moderate Berlusconi’s talk and tactics, which came off as extremist in comparison with the League, which unexpectedly began to sound more moderate than the PdL. And within the PdL there is also a burgeoning quarrel about whether or not it was wise to break with Gianfranco Fini, president of the Chamber of Deputies and former coalition ally.

    Bossi’s people have reason to seek a scapegoat, for his party unexpectedly slumped from its 14% in regional elections held just one year ago to 9.5%.

    The result is that some here are already predicting the collapse of the Berlusconi government, possibly on June 19, when the League is scheduled to hold a convention in the heart of the Padania. Bossi, however, has no need to wait, and may choose before that time to withdraw his party’s support from the two-party ruling coalition (Northern League and Berlusconi’s PdL) unless his party’s candidate for premier, Minister of Economy and Finance Giulio Tremonti, takes Berlusconi’s place. Tremonti is a professor of law at Pavia University and is credited with so far keeping the Italian economy out of the Southern European tier of financially feeble countries (Spain, Greece, Portugal).

    The Milan elections overshadowed the others, but they too were important, beginning with Naples, where leftist alliances have governed for l8 years. The result there is a shift to the right, with Gianni Lettieri of the PdL winning 38.5%--enough to sink the Partito Democratico candidate, but not enough to avoid a run-off with the surprisingly successful candidate of Italia dei Valori, former magistrate Luigi De Magistris, with 27.5% of the vote. In a slap in the face, the PD candidate won barely 19%. On the other hand center-left candidate Piero Fassino won hands down in Turin with 56.7% of the vote. There the center-right candidate Michele Coppola made a remarkably feeble showing of only 27.3% Another surprise came in Bologna, the traditionally leftist city where Beppe Grillo won 10% (and 5% in Turin, by the way).

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