Criminal and Political Governance

The offensive propaganda  so unwisely adopted by last century's feminists - that politics is personal - has a reality that is far beyond their silliness.  Personal relations and networks among the powerful, (regardless of their mode of achieving power) as governance, is deeply opposed to democracy.

The stand-off between President and Parliament and the  Berlusconi/Bossi populist coalition is a casebook example of why we do not want power used without democratic control.  The people can choose to act in any way  they want, requiring that their representatives follow their choices and, sometimes, those choices, those policies, ape the policies and goals that are implemented also under mafia-style regimes.   But they are not the same thing. The policies resulting from democratic choice can be ended by the people while the policies pursued by criminal, inter-personal governance  cannot.

The Berlusconi-led  coalition is already falling apart under democratic pressures, as the personal/mafia connection diverges ever further from what the people choose and is frustrated by constitutional and democratic controls.   Berlusconi may be addolorato by what is happening to Gadaffi , his bunga-bunga best friend and  co-exploiter of the resources of their respective countries, but he will behave according to the rules and the wishes of the people, no matter how much he cries out against a politicized judiciary and personal persecution by the institutions of the democratic state.

The poor Libyans are being criminally ruled: criminally intimidated (in Tripoli)  and massacred (in Misurata).   They face much of what the people of the German Democratic Republic faced - the same 'socialist' elite, the same extensive culture of spies and apparatchik control, the same menace of interests and powers well beyond their own concerns to achieving some freedom in their lives. There may be pros and cons for the extent of intervention in Libya by Allied forces.  There are no pros for fudging clear political and institutional democratically controlled lines of authority and responsibility in the actions we are taking,  and everything against pretending there is confusion.