The Ides of March

The Italian Constitution is not capable of responding to current political events.  President Napolitano cannot dissolve this newly elected Parliament because he is at the end of his term of office.   The constitutional provision that allowed President Napolitano to dissolve the last Parliament, because there was an overlap between  the end of the Parliamentary term and the end of the Presidency term, does not apply now; the terms of this Parliament and of the Presidency do not overlap and the 'white semester'  rule by  which an outgoing President cannot dissolve the Parliament in his last six months of office applies.

When the new Parliament meets on 15 March (a Friday  to make the auguries worse)  the stalemate will generate an impossible institutional and political conflict: the Senate will have almost zero chances of choosing a Speaker  but the timetable for the electoral process for the new President is inexorable.  The Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the Lower House are the second and third highest offices of the State after the Presidency and,  by 20 March,  these two are required to open consultations with the President on who to call on to form an administration.  As can be imagined, these negotiations are going to be difficult and drawn-out even if the Senate has managed to elect a Speaker.  But on 15 April the timetable for the procedures for the election of the new President opens, one month before Napolitano leaves office on 15 May.  It may well be that attempts are still being made to command confidence in both Houses by various coalitions and Leaders.  

The only clarity in the murk created by inadequacies  in the Constitution and, even more, created by the political results of the calling of an election  before the end of the term of the last Parliament, by an outgoing President acting on the strength of a constitutional quirk, is that it is this Parliament that must choose the new President.  And must do this after the current President has overtly politicized that office by his repeated manipulation of under-determined aspects of the Italian Constitution in the interests of his own political commitments and agenda.   From now on there will be no concurrence,  pretence, that the office of President is merely ceremonial and part of the dignity of the State.  Napolitano has changed that for ever. 

Comrade Bersani Does it Again: Proto Communists Let down the Centre and the Left

No-one could call David Cameron a Communist but he has in common with Pierluigi Bersani the utter incompetence of missing an open goal.  Unfortunately for comrade Bersani there is no party with whom he can usefully ally post-election - all the eligible nasties are already in his coalition.  And the leading Party in the Lower House is the 5 Star Movement, who are in alliance with no-one and least of all would touch an authoritarian statist with a barge pole.

Already the comrades are calling for another election.  So is Angels but only on the scrapping of the rotten old Leninists imposed upon us by democratic centralism last November.  We'll vote Centre and even Left but not Communist.  Had Matteo Renzi led the Democratic Party we would have a new government in Italy.

Voting Today

The Italian electorate continues to decline to vote in numbers greater than at any general election  since the Second World War.  At 10pm the polling stations closed for the night; figures were over 7% down on those for 2008 when, at the close of polling on the Monday, over 80% of those entitled to vote had voted.  Polling is usually stronger on the Sunday than on a working day and the polls close at 3pm not 10pm on the second day of voting, so that percentage may well rise.

The vote is down more in the South than in the North which could suggest that snow and poor conditions are not the major factor affecting the poll.  The South usually votes more heavily to the Right so abstentions may be theirs disproportionately; however the fact that the Veneto, which votes Right, has not lost voters, undermines that conclusion too.

There were still over 15% of the voters undecided as the polls opened yesterday morning.  Angels are going into Florence to vote this morning;  perhaps reading the papers on the train will help make up my mind.

A Filthy Election

Brazen-faced fraud seems to be the order of the day.  An electoral returning officer at Anzio, challenged by the scrutineer from the Five Star Movement was found to have in her bag blank ballots.  When required to explain she first stated they were 'deteriorated' and she had removed them so that they would not be used  then, on being pressed further by the scrutineers of other parties, had a fit of hysterics and tore the ballots to pieces in an attempt to hide her actions.  At this point she was arrested.  Another returning officer has been appointed.

The woman is a well known cadre of the Bersani faction of the 'Democratic' Party.

UPDATE

The Ministry of the Interior has announced that based on the returns from 8,092 comune out of 8,092 the turn out is 46.80% at 7 pm., compared with a turn out of 49.21% in 2008 (when the Democratic Party led by the former communist Walter Veltroni lost to Silvio Berlusconi's People of Liberty Party.  It is noteworthy that only when the Democratic Party has been led by the Christian Democrat Romano Prodi has it won an election; the only former communist to hold the office of prime minister  as leader of the Democratic Party was Massimo d'Alema when he took over from Romano Prodi after - on dit -  engineering his downfall by arranging the withdrawal of support by a communist splinter group; like Gordon Brown in the United Kingdom, d'Alema held power with someone else's majority.)

Watching the news this evening there is a very low tone expressed by the usual right-on Bersani suspects, which suggests that unpublished (and forbidden) exit polls are not looking like those in 1997 for Blair.

United States Power and Italy's Choices

President Obama sent for the president of Italy last week.  Dressed up as a farewell visit at the end of Napolitano's remit and an expression of esteem, the discussions will have been centred on two obvious matters: the conviction and condemnation to prison terms of 27 Americans who, as members of the CIA arranged and carried out the rendition of a man from the streets of Milan for torture, who are now subject to immediate arrest and imprisonment if they set foot anywhere in Europe; and the status of the Italian peninsula as one of the most important US bases in the world outside of the United States itself.

We know President Obama asked President Napolitano to pardon the CIA men and women.  This was a particularly disgusting group of CIA operatives because they treated the entire 'operation' as an opportunity for taking their various squeezes at public expense on a holiday to Italy with delivering-up their victim to torture as a convenient justification for their free frolics.  To our shame Napolitano said he had to think about it.  What does he need to think about?  "No." is the only clean reply.

On the second subject of discussion a more vivid demonstration of the centrality of the Italian Peninsula for war in the Middle East, Asia and North Africa  could not be imagined than the ousting of Gadaffi.  The RAF was flying (some of the time) from England and the French flew some sorties direct, but almost everything was really based in Italy at the strategic US bases here. 

President Obama  would be derelict in his duties if he wasn't putting in place arrangements, indeed confirming arrangements already in place and prioritising them, for any electoral outcome.  But Obama's duty is not necessarily our interest.  It can be made our interest, of course.    Italy has a fine tourist industry that can accommodate even the armed forces of the United States.  We expect to be paid.  And not in the devalued, over printed dollars of the Obama presidency.  The problem is that what President Napolitano wants and what the people of Italy want are no longer the same thing.

Italy Must Default Under Whatever Polite Term Chosen

Two Italian political leaders have called for Italy to default on its $2.3 trillion debt:  Silvio Berlusconi, for default and reversion to the Lira;  and Beppe Grillo , for default inside the Euro and renegotiation of Italy's relations with the European Union at large, not just the Eurozone.

Italy has the highest primary surplus in the Eurozone, indeed in Europe;  it has a positive trade surplus;  60% of its trade is extra-European Union.  Italy can pay government expenditures out of current government revenue, and have resources left over, if it does not have to pay interest on historical debt.  Italy can import what it needs and pay for it with its exports when it does not have to pay interest on historic debt held abroad.  It is not dependent for trade on the good will of the European Union. Italy, with an advanced and diversified  economy slightly larger than that of the United Kingdom, is no Greece.

It is time to require forgiveness of a large part of Italy's historic debt and acceptance of rescheduling of debt maturities  - that is if the Eurozone wants to keep going at all - unless the European Central Bank is  willing to intervene on a larger scale without penalty conditions of any kind in support of Italy's refunding its debt.  It is time  for Germany to pull its head in and recognise that there is a general election in November that will go badly for their elites if Italy stamps its foot on Sunday and rejects the Bersani-Monti axis.

Looking at the  extraordinary, overwhelming  rally in San Giovanni for Grillo this evening, and the huge numbers in Naples for Berlusconi, it looks as if Italian voters understand all this and are determined to end an 11% unemployment rate, a lack of growth, a wrecking of life chances for the young, and the impoverishment of the old in the name of an economic policy wholly concentrated on the furtherance of German and other European  elites' interests.  We don't need any of the current economic and social destruction. What we need is a different Europe. 

 

The Five Star Movement Rally Addressed By Grillo This Evening

 

We Cannot Forgive Them. Italian Political Elites Must Go

Tonight Beppe Grillo addresses the Five Star Movement in piazza San Giovanni in Rome.  This enormous piazza is the venue of the Left.  Here the Left has celebrated every victory, whipped up enthusiasm for every challenge, re-affirmed itself to strains of Bella Ciao and Bandiera Rossa, waved its trades union banners, marched in serried ranks of grim-faced 'workers' for the last 60 years.  Tonight it will be packed with those of us who want, at almost any cost, to bury the Left and all it stands for in its own estimation.

Their Left is bad news.  Authoritarian, statist, exploitative of the poor, globalist, exponents of managed democracy, it dresses in the grave clothes of the 19th and 20th centuries to give cover for its determination to plan our lives and our hopes while it feasts off our labour, our entrepreneurship, our creativity and, inevitably, our joie de vivre.

They had to hold their rally yesterday, in Naples.  Nobody came.  2000 people bussed in from all over Campania huddled in the centre of piazza del Plebiscito (some irony there) waving Party-issue  flags on the order of their commissars but even last year's Durham Miners' Gala could have done better on the banners front.  A   grim-faced  Bersani hectored them with his usual vulgar hand gestures.  And then they were bussed back to Campania sperduta.  Tonight the great Leader will address selected cadres in a tits and bums Rome music hall while the people flock to San Giovanni  and those dismissed as  comedians.  Dario Fo, Adriano Celentano, have joined with Grillo:

"Surrender!  You are surrounded by the Italian people!  Go home and we will let you pass." they, and we,  have told the corrupt political establishment of left and right.

And Mario Monti?  Blown away by his own hand.  He would not or could not reassure us that he wasn't, in the end, an ally of the proto-communists holding the Democratic party  (and, inter alia with every intention of paying off the debts of the Communist Party of Italy and its successor the Democratic Socialists with tax-payers' money - hundreds of millions Bersani will meet with our cash.  He even saved the Monti dei Paschi, a story that becomes more disgusting by the hour.)

$2.3 trillion of public debt (ah, remarked Mr HG, it's fallen a bit) and we turn to Dario Fo.  And we are right to do so.

Italy's Independence Day

The Italian general election is less the 72 hours away and still the polls are returning astonishingly high numbers for undecided.  We may be undecided but our numbers are the determinant in this election so crucial for the European Project. 

Mario Monti has failed in his effort to unite the centre and the Right.  He has at best 15% of voters.  The imposition of the proto-communist leadership on the centre and the Left has caused the steady decline of the mainstream left of centre vote from almost 50% three months ago to hovering on the 30% mark now.  The impossibility of introducing electoral reform during the Monti administration resulting from obdurate defence of the Porcellum by the hidebound extant political parties has reduced us to a proportional representation system with a strong element of first past the post (from the winner's premium).  This is provoking (as it would) strong polarisation that of itself causes voters to recoil in disgust at some of the bed-fellows of their preferred party.

Except for Grillo.  Grillo and his internet/local community  based movement has broken through the barrage of first disparagement and then terrified aggression unleashed by the propaganda machines of the established parties  and the European Project.  Now over 20% in the defective, poorly circulated and highly politicised polls available, the Five Star Movement may well be convincing, at the ultimate, the voters who are undeclared.

There are two explanations for this: first, a Five Star predominance (there can be no talk of victory in this election) will lead to new elections in short order: second, voting for the Five Star movement enables us, the voters, to enact the scrapping of the old leaderships, the old communists and old criminals, that Matteo Renzi was prevented from achieving by the disgraceful exercise in democratic centralism practiced last November by the Democratic Party (and, further back, the deposition of the Berlusconi government by another old communist using the under-determined provisions of the Italian constitution in order to protect the European Project from collateral damage via the Euro.)

We want two elections.  We want to get rid of Bersani as leader of the left of centre and we want to get rid of Berlusconi as the leader of the right of centre.  Were these two groupings led by Matteo Renzi and Mario Monti this would be a most straightforward of choices.  Instead personal ambition, ideological corruption and  contempt for the voters has led to unacceptable coalition blocs led by unacceptable elites seriously expecting us to take them seriously.  They and their media shriek at us that Grillo is a comedian:  he replies that they smell of mothballs.  19th and 20th century mothballed politics that we can put away for ever when we vote on Sunday.

There must be two elections however, for so radical are Grillo's European policies - rapidly summed-up they require the re-founding of the European Union as an association of independent nation states with all that implies for 'ever-deeper union' - that we need to choose first to scrap the zombie political system on offer, and then vote again on whether we want a United States of Europe or our country back.

Ratzinger's Retreat

A pope emeritus is a creature  unknown.  Others have stepped down before death but, pace the Church's rules, were forced, and then imprisoned.  Then they died.  Benedict is going into a kind of perpetual retreat, a life of prayer, thought and - somewhat ominously or promisingly (depending on stance) - writing.

Cracow's cardinal has recalled John Paul II's dictum: you don't get down from the cross.  Ratzinger was at Wojtyla's side until the end, forming, implementing, interpreting, assisting.  Is this the role in which he excels and to which he aspires again?  Many have sought a way to survive their own death, control their own succession and temper their successor.  The spiritual (or intellectual, in academic and ideological terms) force of a revered but now reclusive leader is evidenced through history.

Ratzinger has used the powers of the papacy before its assumption.  Might he exercise them after he has laid it down?  Throwing doves out of windows and waving to every badante in Italy on a visit to St Peter's isn't really his metier.    And anyone who has ever been in  retreat will know that even a few days of contemplation on themes of power and action in life make for a certainty of view and how to achieve it. 

 

Catty

Florence is celebrating the cat in art.  Many will recognize friends among the portraits. 

For the Record

Always best to have the original language.   Here is what Benedict said.

Italians are a profoundly Catholic people; believers and non believers in God, all are Catholic.  There is none of the cultural heterogeneity found elsewhere.  Citizenship conferred by descent (give or take a few acquisitors by affinity)  and civil and political expression reserved to citizens consolidates and preserves this.  The historic resignation of the central cultural leader will have huge political repercussions on this bitter and divisive general election less than two weeks away.  

What is the Pope saying?  That he washes his hands of us all?  That he refuses us the guidance traditionally offered by the Church in temporal choices?  That the Church intends to put its weight behind a political choice with which he cannot in conscience agree?  That leaving us to our own devices will bring home to us our own responsibilities  in the choices that we make?  That so deeply is he immersed (as are other, more overtly political leaders) in the choices of the last century and its aftermath that he cannot take part in the choices being made now for the future?

On balance, and there are many more readings into this rarest of actions (surely not by chance, or force majeure, taken now) Catholic Christian Italy is being made very aware of itself and given  an understandable desire to assert its continued cultural identity.  Intentionally or no a  politico-religious and conservative impetus has been delivered to the electorate.

On the Returns from Being Ungovernable

Voting to keep the Bersani-led faction of the Democratic Party out of power is being denounced as irresponsible and risky for Italy, the Eurozone and the European project itself.  Gosh.

There is another prize within our grasp as well.  If the hobbled, limping campaign led by Bersani that has caused the collapse of the centre-left vote causes, too, the hung Parliament widely expected the comrades can hardly  remain as Leader and leading cadres when we all go back for a second try to get it Right.

Even Gordon Brown resigned eventually (admittedly it took 5 days) after a disaster of a campaign, taking with him the unpleasant and under-powered faction with whom he had held power.  It's the way, these days.  Fail to gain enough votes to command the Parliament (and in Italy that's both Houses)?  Resign the party leadership and let someone more attractive have a try.

So who might we like to lead the  Partito Democratico?  Matteo Renzi for the right of the Democrats or Fabrizio Barca for the left -  though the 'leftness' of Barca is chiefly in the name   (an economist who studied at Cambridge and worked with Tremonti for years is hardly likely to burst out in  Bandiera Rossa.)  Either would be fine.

Why is the Democratic Party  saddled with an elderly incoherent loser?  Even those who are voting for it are doing so with gritted teeth and hangdog excuses about loyalty, always have voted to the left, etc.   Voter enthusiasm is marked by its absence.

There's a lot going for populism and ungovernability.

Censoring the Media During the Italian Elections

 The law on political polling states:

In the 15 days prior to the vote it is forbidden to publish [or to make public] or, by any means, spread the results of polling on the outcome of the elections and on the political leanings and voting intentions of the electors, even if such polls have been taken in a period previous to the prohibition.*

That's very clear.  Couldn't be clearer.  No polling to be published on voting intentions or political stance, not even old polls.  Not no further polling at all, note.  No polling to be published.  But publication is going to occur, despite the law.  Publication is to be restricted. So called 'private'  polling and its results will be made available to party leaders and apparatchiks in the greatest of detail.  Polls will be undertaken and published like there's no tomorrow -  until there is no tomorrow and we have arrived at 24 February.  Because what this law is aiming for is censorship.  Censorship of polling information to all the voters and its reservation to those who pay for it and only too often consider themselves above the law.

Be that as it may, political polling during this election has displayed so many technical defects that it's best, probably, to consider trends.  Universally the trends display a steady decline of the Democratic Party and, most clearly, a decline in any coalition grouping or party besmirched by the suggestion that it might ally with a minority Democratic Party after the elections.  Monti and the associated coalition for the Chamber of Deputies - down;  Ingroia and Civic Revolution - down;  Vendola's SEL (already in formal coalition with the Democratic Party since the great push to defeat Matteo Renzi's centrist leadership in the Democratic Party) - down.  Trending steadily up are the People of Freedom coalition (despite Berlusca, or perhaps because of his political presence - and presence of mind- during the campaign) and his political common sense; trending up extraordinarily fast  and now in third position, Beppe Grillo and the Five Star anti-political elites movement.

At the start of this (blessedly short) campaign Comrade Bersani made a spectacularly stupid claim (something he has continued to do over the weeks with remarkable staying power).  He pointed to an over 40% lead for his ill-gotten Party and said

"I am the hare, so far in front as to be  uncatchable."  He did, he really did.  Angels  were saucer-eyed. 

For there is one other group of voters trending upwards after beginning to decline last week - the undeclared who are once again more than a third of the electorate, having fallen to a quarter.  We will vote; historically Italians do, in the end, despite saying they won't.  The turnout is a known, with  a tortoise-shaped  unknown of outcome-changing size, and a fortnight to go.



* “Nei quindici giorni precedenti la data delle votazioni è vietato rendere pubblici o, comunque, diffondere i risultati di sondaggi demoscopici sull’esito delle elezioni e sugli orientamenti politici e di voto degli elettori, anche se tali sondaggi sono stati effettuati in un periodo precedente a quello del divieto”.

Carry On Up the Bank

The Monte dei Paschi had a board of directors meeting yesterday.  Their managing director Fabrizio Viola had these reassuring words for depositors:

"There is no run..." [on MPS] admitting however  that  in the first  days, as the scandal emerged  "obviously, especially for the more volatile components of funding, such as investment funds and institutional investors, there were outflows."* whose size he left untold.  So that's alright then.

The President of the Republic Napolitano, addressing journalists last week,  requested  restraint  in reporting the Monte dei Paschi  événements as such ongoing scandals could impact on the general election. 

The magistrates' auditors are now being sent into the Siena town hall (incestuously intertwined with the Bank and the national Partito Democratico) to examine their accounts. 

* "non c'è fuga di depositi....  come è logico, soprattutto nella componente piu volatile della raccolta, come fondi e istituzionali, ci sono stati dei movimenti in uscita".

Monti Won't Ally with Bersani's Allies

The Italian media are running with accounts of negotiations between, and takings-of-position  by, the Bersani Democratic Party and Prime Minister Monti.  All of it in terms of what is to be done by the Bersani faction with their extreme Left allies who helped defeat the Centre vote in the so-called democratic primaries for the leadership of the Party. 

Monti is reported to have given an aut aut (I could wish the Italians less ready to fall into Latin and save me having to check I've understood) to Bersani but Angels doubts it is really about the Solidarity  Ecology Liberty party, despite the media attempting to lead us in that direction.

The Bersani faction is in alliance with the communist  CGIL federation of unions and, more particularly, the hard left FIOM (the metal bashers union led by the Italian Red Robbo.)    This is the alliance up with which Monti will not put.

"Il mio polo è il mio polo e che nessuno lo tocchi." declared Bersani.  (For English language speakers this sentence might have them reaching for the mind bleach but it translates as 'My alliance is my alliance and no-one touches it.')  The spread is 295 and rising, after falling back substantially when Berlin ordered a grand coalition during Bersani's daytrip to Berlin yesterday. 

We're being ungovernable again.

Italy already has Provision for Tax Amnesties Denounced by the Left as Irresponsible Populism

The tax amnesties proffered by the People of Liberty party have produced further paroxysms of outrage from the Democratic party and from Monti. 'No amnesties, never under the Democratic party' thundered Bersani, thumping the table like a true comrade.  Irresponsible, populism gone wild,  'You're driving up the spread' chorused the progressive elites.

"There are intuitive and well-founded reasons" for tax amnesties said the Procurator of the Court of Auditors, pulling out the righteousness rug from under them, included among which are a reduction in law suits and the possibility of gaining returns  quickly that can only be reached with difficulty.  Of course there are negative effects but these are often out-weighed.  Furthermore there are already norms and provisions for the offering of tax amnesties.

Salvatore Nottola, speaking at a press conference after the opening of the judicial year said he didn't want to get drawn into political controversies and had nothing to say about amnesties on illegal building.   So the round of condemnation from the Left and the Monti right presumably implies that the provisions for tax amnesties extant will be removed under either or both  administrations if they succeed in forming a government.

No wonder their vote is falling in the polls.  Still, if they can hang on until Saturday without further downturns the publication of polls will be forbidden under electoral law and they will be able to say what they like without a handy measure of their increasing unpopularity being all over the media.

The Mayor of Florence Supports Berlusconi's Call for the Abolition of Property Taxes on Houses

Matteo Renzi, the man who should be leading a truly Democratic Party in Italy, welcomed the abolition of property taxes on people's homes.  

"The idea of removing tax from first homes is not stupid and it's perfectly do-able. Berlusconi's claim that taxes are too high is correct. The problem is his credibility, which is not high enough for the proposal's merits to be properly considered.  But the proposal itself is worthwhile.  There's no call for all the irony and its dismissal out of hand."
[“Non bisogna ironizzare” sulle proposte dell’avversario, sottolinea. “L’idea di togliere l’Imu sulla prima casa non è stupida, è anche fattibile. Berlusconi – continua il sindaco – dice che c’è una pressione fiscale troppo alta: è un tema vero. Il problema è la sua credibilità, che non è all’altezza della proposta, ma la proposta è seria”]

Here opens for all to see the abyss that separates the authoritarian big-statist faction that has seized Prodi's party and the mass of the electorate who readily would have voted a Renzi Democratic party into power.   To make it worse, that electorate is now seeing that a vote for Monti might be an enabling vote for the proto-communists of Bersani's 'Democratic' coalition.  Such a corrupt alliance is being openly canvassed among the chattering classes (well, it would be, wouldn't it?  The chatclass always likes the big state, the Third Sector, the tax-funded jobs for the ageing boys and girls).

'If this election goes off the rails definitively we will call you ungovernable', they warn in their bossy elite-y way.  Look,  they say (why do they always preface their admonitions with 'Look'?   It's very rude.) 'Look, the spread is already close to 290'.  So it is, and perhaps this is where we dig in our heels and face them down.

Italy's economy, our economy, is sophisticated, innovative, highly integrated into the European economy and the third largest in the eurozone. This is not Spain with its building boom gone bad.  Germany has been unhelpful and economically aggressive; the Euro is too high for our exports; we are being dumped with all the costs of maintaining geopolitical stances in the Mediterranean which drain so much treasure from the north of Italy and should be a charge on the whole EU.  Perhaps the European Union has over-reached its democratic mandate when it furthers the interests of proto-communists in the West. 

If the people of the East could fight tanks in Budapest, in Prague, face down all the threats in Gdansk and Warsaw,  die at the Wall in Berlin till they could tear it down with their bare hands, cope with the economic consequences of the  Transition from realised socialism to the modern world, then perhaps we can stand up to the exponents of that defeated system in the West who are sneaking back to power under the false banners of Fairness, and Governing the Market in the interests of Social Justice. 

By confiscating cash from every household in the country within weeks of handing 4 billion euros to the treasury of the hard Left a vivid political lesson has been taught about the EU through its local representative.  We wanted to vote Renzi, and capitalism with a human face (to borrow an old slogan).  We are still willing to do so if such a offer can be put together by Monti in the next two weeks.  Otherwise some of us will vote for the real Left, the Civic Revolution of Ingroia, the rest will vote for the populist Right, the  People of Liberty, Berlusconi or no.  And if that brings down the wrath of God, or the markets, then too bad for the euro and too bad for Merkel's election chances in November.

Progressive Berlusconi Does Krugman and Stiglitz Proud

Silvio Berlusconi's offer to give us back the 4 billion euros removed by the Save Italy decrees of the Monti administration is causing ructions.  Reactions range from vulgar abuse (Bersani)  Can you believe him?, (Monti) to detailed analyses of why it isn't possible to return us our money (Il Fatto Quotidiano and various other media).

Assorted keynesians -  neo-keynesians  have told us that austerity in the face of recession makes it worse, makes depression inevitable, is folly, is 'unfair', and that Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz have Nobel prizes so there we are.

Curbing demand causes depression.  Curbing consumer demand does it quicker.

So why is the Left not celebrating Berlusca giving every household in Italy its billions of euros back?  This is accurately targeted helicoptering  on every household in the country.  We will spend it, we promise.  We are going hungry, and bankrupt because it was taken from us in the first place - just like Stiglitz and Krugman  said we would.

Monti is in a slightly better position with "Can you believe him?'  Time will tell is the only answer to that.

The last argument 'there isn't any money to give it back'   we know is unfounded because the government is even as we write pushing 4 billion euros at the Monte dei Paschi bank.  That'll do, we'll use that. Let the Bank sink or swim.   (We've been here before with Northern Rock and Mervyn King made the wrong choice.  Under capitalism there is an order:wages, secured creditors, unsecured creditors, shareholders (if there's anything left by then).

Either we're all progressive keynesians now and Krugman is our guide, and money grows on trees , or the Left in all its motley is being disingenuous.

An Offer We Can't Refuse?

Silvio Berlusconi has been all over the media this morning with a game-changer in the Italian general elections.  The People of Liberty party undertakes as its first act to abolish taxes on our main residence and to repay the tax we have all had to cough up under the Monti administration.

The reinstatement of the rates, which had been abolished by the ousted Berlusconi administration, was one of the first actions of the Monti government in 2011.  The justification was the desperate need to staunch not the debt but the rate at which it was rising and the consequent collapse of international confidence that was making it cost more by the minute.  Not for nothing is Prime Minister Monti greatly disliked as a tax-raising scourge of the evaders and avoiders.  It's very hard to get out of the rates.

The tax has been a disaster.  It has caused blatant defiance - always something to avoid between the state and its citizens - in refusal to pay, refusal for all sorts of wholly forseeable reasons that cluster under the heading 'we haven't the money'.  Apart from bankrupting families and small businesses  it is  regressive; even the European Union declared it unfair.  You can't slap the rates onto a country without warning, onto every family in the country when their budgets are creaking under the cruelties of recession.

Worse, the justifications were false.  'See, the spread is falling' they cried.  The spread was falling in Spain too and they weren't being clobbered with this particular purgatory.  'You can't let the evaders get away with it and they can't evade this one' they preened.  The tax burden is as high as it is in Italy because the culture of discreet tax 'management' shall we say is widespread and wholly accepted.  People have been ruined unnecessarily by inappropriate cultural game-shifts from the playbook of the politics of envy playing to a nasty progressive audience.

Angels have had 5000 euros a year confiscated.  The People of Liberty Party are offering to stop that and give us our money back.  Every householder in the country is considering the offer. 

A Florentine Lesson in Giving the Cold Shoulder

La spalla fiorentina is an art form.  And a finer example than this evening's political rally in which Matteo Renzi, Mayor of Florence welcomes Pier Luigi Bersani, candidate premier of the Democratic party, to our city is hard to remember or imagine.

For a start Bersani isn't even going to enter the city.  If he comes by road he leaves the autostrada at Firenze Sud, turns left at the first set of traffic lights on the feeder road and into via Fabrizio Dè Andre.  Where? I asked.  Forgive me as a foreigner, but where?  Varlungo.  How do you get to Varlungo?  No 14.  It takes half an hour from the central station.  Might I drive?  There are a couple of hundred parking places along the feeder route out to the autostrada but they're bussing people in from all over Tuscany so there'll be a lot of tourist buses.  (Angels wondered if anyone at all will be coming from Siena).

What time is this rally?  Six o'clock.  Six o'clock! It might as well be held at six o'clock in the morning.  What about dinner, out there in the dark and cold?  (It's a very pretty place to walk or cycle to along the banks of the Arno of a summer evening and have a pizza in the tented trattorie looking at the river, but it's February, for goodness sake.)

What's the matter with the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio with big screens in piazza della Signoria for us hoi polloi?  Or the opera house - they could get well over a thousand in there?  Or the Fiorentina football stadium with all its transport links?  (If he comes by train he doesn't come into the city either but leaves for the outskirts from the suburban station of Campo di Marte, but that would be handy for the Stadio.)

"We are demonstrating the power and cohesion of the Democratic Party," declared the secretary of the Florence PD.

" We are a united Democratic party facing the elections, and present ourselves to citizens as standing for the reconstruction of this country.  Our Candidate Premier appearing on the same platform as Matteo Renzi is a very significant message," intoned the secretary of the Tuscan Democratic party. 

Perhaps Bersani plans to do a walkabout in the city later, or even get some dinner, and have his piccy taken (he could do with a bit of cultural backdrop, or even any cultural input at all, though it looks as if it won't be willingly lent to him by Florence).  Or perhaps he's frit.

La Nazione reports that this is the only joint political event by the two contenders for the Democratic party leadership scheduled for the elections.  After this Matteo Renzi campaigns for his party, our party, but not with comrade Bersani and his local apparatchiks, and not in our city.

New Investigations Opened Now by Rome Magistrates into Monte Dei Paschi

The number of investigations into the Monte dei Paschi continues to mount.  Two new probes into the Bank and its doings  over the years join those ongoing.  So far, then, we have:

Siena magistrates investigating various transactions and kick-backs but most importantly the acquisition of another regional bank, Antonveneta, for over 3 billion euros more than had been paid for it by other banks only 6 months before.

Puglia magistrates investigating banking supervision of the Bank by both the Bank of Italy and CONSOB (the Italian equivalent of the Securities and Exchange Commission)

Rome magistrates investigating market manipulation (and manipulation of the Euribor) and insider trading.

The attacks on the media's attempts to open up what has been going on and who is involved continue from the Democratic party.  Pierluigi Bersani, Leader of the hard left faction controlling the Democratic party, has announced that  the Party's lawyers have been instructed to start proceedings against those who link the Partito Democratico and the Monte dei Paschi Foundation (controlled for decades by the Left)  to the conduct of the Bank.  In a vicious response to Prime Minister Monti's statement that there must be clear  separation of political parties from bank activities he pretended that it is  bank interference in political party behaviour that should be under investigation.

The polling lead of the Leftist coalition is falling steadily and there is now a 5-point gap between the People of Liberty coalition and the Democratic Party coalition, down from 12-15 points only 10 days ago.  In part this may be due to the finalising of the formal coalitions and their party lists, in part to the numbers of voters declining to state their intentions falling from 40% of the electorate to the current 30%  still undeclared.  But the sheer incredulity with which the electorate, particularly the Tuscan electorate, once a stronghold of the Left, has watched the laying bare of the Left's illicit grasp upon the region's economy and post-War culture and evolution, is taking its toll.

The President of Italy has told us all to look away now and fix our attention on 'the future'. Jam tomorrow, then?  We'd rather have truth and justice today.

If This is a Bank

The Monte dei Paschi di Siena  ended its dead cat bounce today, falling over 9%.  The presentation to a recalled Parliament by the Treasury Minister Grilli stated that even for technical reasons the Bank could not be put into receivership, not least because it is solvent.  And so it should be after being handed (or being about to be handed) 4 billion  euros of our money.

Not enough.  A bank is not considered a bank just because it is technically solvent.  Today not only the past management of the Bank was under investigation but the Bank itself.

"The credit institution has been accused of bearing  administrative responsibility, as established by  legislative decree number 231 of 2001. Such an accusation, which refers to what happened under the previous management, is significant,  considering that usually it covers particularly serious crimes amongst  which are: corruption; undue receipt of public monies; fraud against the state; illegal distribution of profits; and obstruction of the exercise of  public vigilance."
[L’istituto è stato iscritto per responsabilità amministrativa, secondo quanto stabilito dal decreto legislativo 231 del 2001. L’iscrizione, che fa riferimento a quanto avvenuto durante la gestione del precedente management, è significativa in quanto solitamente prevista per reati particolarmente pesanti tra cui corruzione, indebita percezione di erogazioni pubbliche, truffa ai danni dello Stato, illegale ripartizione degli utili e ostacolo all’esercizio della funzione di pubblica vigilanza.]

reports Il Fatto Quotidiano.

The magistrates of Siena are not the only magistrates investigating this institution.  They have described the situation as "incandescent".  Milan and Trani have also opened investigations.

If this is a bank Angels would rather keep the money under the mattress.

Monte dei Paschi Billions Mount Up

The Monte dei Paschi grows more ugly (for any English person so very familiarly ugly) by the day.  And it is its recent days, not its 500 year history, that matters now;  the last half century, not the last half millennium.  Since the Second world war the Monte dei Paschi has been wholly in the control of the hard Left currently masquerading as the Democratic Party.

Undoubtedly other institutional players have benefitted from the iron grasp of the Left on central Italy, a grip enabled and reinforced by control of the Bank.  No entity exists in a vacuum but survives and grows by exchange:  exchange of favours, exchange of secrets, exchange of personnel, exchange, above all, of guilt.  So it is fairly easy now for the Left to do the pointy finger at others - Church, political parties or factions within them, individuals - united in guilt.

Still there remains the reality: the post-Second world war Monte dei Paschi has been the cash cow and creature of the Left (centrally important after the collapse of realised socialism and the end of the enormous subsidies paid from the USSR);  this is the Treasury of the state within the state.

The Bank has been under scrutiny by the Bank of Italy since at least 2008, when Mario Draghi as Governor of the Bank of Italy, was cleaning up the pale copies of the Siena model repeated in local governments and petty financial institutions all over Italy.  So important (and self-important) was Siena that it simply lied when asked for information.  And continued to buy complicity, not from those whose duty it was to secure financial affairs, but from those who could profit from remaining silent.

Effectively, with the requirement to accept government bail-out, the entire Siena structure is being silently nationalised.    But dealing with the funding of democratically unpopular factions within coalition parties, that succeed in imposing themselves upon entire political movements, may be in safe hands only temporarily.  If Bersani and his apparatchiks manage to impose themselves upon us at the end of February they will have control of the Italian Treasury - and Siena will become irrelevant.  

Christians and Lions: Bersani Threatens to Tear Us Limb from Limb

Sbranare, verb, transitive - to rend, to tear off limbs, to rip open.

The faction controlling the Italian Democratic party has descended from politics into threats against the electorate and, specifically, those who pin down their co-involvement in the Monte dei Paschi bank scandals.   The whole country fell about laughing when Bersani and D'Alema tried to pretend, and then argue, that the Party's relationships with banks, particularly localised banks, is not of central interest in an election turning on  the effects of the financial crisis on employment, growth and living standards.

Prime Minister Mario Monti's 'ascent into politics' is now mirrored by this descent into unheard of aggression and promised violence towards the voters, the media and the regulatory authorities.  And by the descent of the Democratic party polling lead by a couple of points in the last 48 hours.

If anything is being sbranato  it is the veil over Democratic Party/ bank relations.  The Monte dei Paschi  affair has already completely over-shadowed the set-piece presentation of the Party Five Year Plan (yes, Angels knows we are not in the USSR in 1928, but the CGIL - the Italian General Confederation of Labour  - doesn't; 600 pages of central planning  regurgitated thudded onto desks in Rome this week) and ruined CGIL Leader Camusso's (the Bessie Braddock of Italian politics) harangue on Friday.

We are going off the rails again, Bersani barks at us.  We're supposed to be discussing the Party and Union Plan for all our futures;  and if it isn't 1928 in the USSR it ought to be and just wait until they get their hands on power at the end of February.  Once again Silvio Berlusconi spoke the simple political truth:

"The Left can't even run a bank, let alone a country.  The pressing requirement is to secure the interests of the Bank and its shareholders and customers.  Blame can be sorted out later."

Worse, the Prime Minister has remarked that nationalising the Monte dei Paschi probably won't be necessary.   Between the government and regulatory authorities  enough has been done to save it and other banks and credit institutions and municipalities from the Left and their financial behaviour.  Mario Draghi, then Governor of the Bank of Italy, put his foot down very hard on the Monte dei Paschi behaviour elsewhere in the Peninsula in 2007/8.

The crude attempt to threaten further by dragging the conduct of the Bank of Italy and the Treasury into disrepute has been dealt with by President Napolitano.    They must fear greatly that the Monte dei Paschi will have independent commissioners sent in to run it for they are demanding commissioners' powers for the current  Bank administration, which the Democratic party admits it helped to instal.  "Don't you dare touch the current Managers," warned the Party economics spokesman, Fassina (who has a proto-communist political past as well).

"There are forces in this country that will do anything to prevent us gaining power," joined in Massimo D'Alema, former prime minister of the centre left after Prodi stepped down in 2008 (and former leader of the Democratic Socialists, successors to the PCI, the Italian Communist Party, faction of the Democratic party in its Prodi manifestation) hinting at extra-democratic elites and shadowy groupings.    Which may or may not be so, but the only Party, the only Leader of a large political grouping in any nation state in which I have been a voter, to tell me I'll be torn apart if   his Party is attacked and fails to gain power, is  the Partito Democratico Italiano.

A Tax on All Our Houses to Pay for Political Client Creation

After the appalling revelations of what the Democratic Party has been up to at the Monte dei Paschi their leader,  Bersani,  has explained that the Foundation that controls the bank (and is in turn controlled by Democratic party councillors elected in the city of Siena and its province) is not the Democratic party, and hasn't done anything anyway: a big boy did it and ran away.

The Italian prime minister has called for the unravelling of political party and banking ties, not just in Italy but throughout Europe (a supra-national banking authority should do it).  He added that of course the Democratic Party and its functionaries are responsible for the Monte dei Paschi scandal.

Shareholders, social partners and stake-holders all voted yesterday for a tax-payer funded bailout (whatever happened to shareholders taking the hit?  Northern Rock,  its surrounding circumstances and Labour party bail-out have a lot to answer for as exemplars of political chicanery) and we look at the enormous bills coming in on our property, even the perfectly ordinary property of perfectly ordinary people, charged even before the bail-out is in place, to raise the four billion euros for the Democratic Party's cat's-paw bank.

It is disingenuous of Mario Monti to deny the link between property taxes already visited on us all (denounced  by the European Union as unfair) and this bank's second bail-out just because the tax-rise occurred before the acceptance of these bail-out conditions.  But it is downright dishonest of Bersani and his faction to deny that communists, and now proto-communists, have been running Siena and using its wealth for their own nefarious purposes  for generations.

Apart from Antonveneta where has all the rest of what these kind of people persist in regarding as social capital, gone?

Total Corruption

We all know about the mafia, or at least we all know it's there and doesn't go away nor feel in the least ashamed of itself; it's just a pre-democratic form of political organisation, a primitive governance system.  There's a lot of it about here, defined as criminal by the modern nation state.

And then there's the Left who champion the state and believe themselves to occupy the high, ethical and moral ground of modern post democratic managed governance, with a wholly uncriminalised status. As Bersani assured us, "per l'amor di dio",  not them,  not corrupt, they are good people.

So what's going on at the Monte dei Paschi, and what has been going on for decades is nothing to do with Bersani and his Partito Democratico.  He has told us all so,  and we are all supposed to agree because it is the Right and the mafia that is corruptly and deeply intertwined and has no claim to be the managers of modern post-democratic governance.

Except that the Monte dei Paschi is run by a Foundation whose membership is appointed by the Council and the Provincial government of Siena.  Both the city council and the provincial government of Siena have been a fiefdom of the communist Left, and its current incarnation as the Bersani faction of the Democratic Party,  for half a century. Half a century (which isn't long by Monti dei Paschi standards but it is by ours)  under their total control.

There is between three quarters of a billion and over 3 billion euros sloshing about between the Bank and its beneficiaries which has had to be covered by guarantees from the Treasury; that's us, our taxes, our living standards so compromised by a tax burden of over 45%.  And they want us to vote for them?

On Being Savaged by a Dead Sheep: Munchau Goes for Monti

The Italian prime minister has suffered the fate so famously suffered by Dennis Healey when under attack  from Geoffrey Howe for his economic policies.  Wolfgang Munchau's problems with the euro and its unaccountable survival are well-known.  On 27 November 2011 in the Financial Times he wrote a sheepish piece red in tooth and claw: the government bond market had seized up across the eurozone; the banking sector was broken too; major parts of the eurozone economy were cut off from credit; the zone was being subjected to an investors' and retail run; the rescue mechanism was being destroyed by a massive erosion of trust...

" The eurozone has 10 days at most....".  Baaaaaa.

This afternoon Italy's spread was under 355 [255, honestly!, ed. ], less than half what it was in November 2011, the euro stands at over 1.33 to the dollar, Monti has worked with Draghi and Merkel to stabilise the third largest economy in the eurozone and to re-establish a respected and respectable voice in European and world affairs.  Baaaa.

Italy Irreconcilable

At last some kinds of certainties are available in the Italian elections.  We have now: all the parties; all the party lists of candidates; all the formal coalitions in which the various parties are running; the porcellum (the election rules in Italy).  And anyone with half an eye has sorted the various media into the various political support camps with all the contortions, half truths, misleading analyses, obfuscation of ideological loyalties, and downright lies that need to be taken into account in reaching some understanding of these elections.What we don't have is any up-to-date polling with all this in place.  Until now  polls have been taken under conditions of uncertainty so high that their indicative levels have been rather low.

Two coalitions are truth-tellers  -  Mario Monti's coalition and Silvio Berlusconi's coalition.  The other coalition is trying to bamboozle the electorate with high-flown ethical rhetoric and low-level ideological motivation and political analysis -  Pierluigi Bersani's coalition is a 20th century throwback.

Monti offers radical changes to the Italian nation state via enthusiastic pursuance of ever-closer European union together with the personal, local and community values associated with a civic conscience.  Berlusconi offers radical changes to the Italian nation state via economic individualism, the decriminalising of economic activity and association currently condemned by the tax and spend state, together with a resurrected foreign policy using the Peninsula's pivotal position in the European Union and European geopolitics to contain central-northern European (and specifically German) economic aggression.   For Bersani's world view, please refer to the dreary history of realised socialism and the failure to understand that the future of the Left lies dead, its bullet-ravaged body at the foot of a wall in Berlin last century.

Coalescing seems to have gone as far as it can in Italy. These elections are a revelation of the profound divisions among its people.   

Italian Prime Minister required to Undertake Self-Criticism by Democratic Party Coalition Leader

The ever-Green hard left Leader of the Democratic Party's main coalition partner, Nichi Vendola, erstwhile militant of Rifondazione Comunista and now of Sinistra Ecologia e Libertà (SEL) has  agreed to accept discussions on structural reform with Prime Minister Mario Monti provided Monti

 "undertakes acts of self-criticism." 

Turning to our guide and mentor on self-criticism we find that Mao explains

'.... we must have in mind two purposes: first, "learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones", and second, "cure the sickness to save the patient". The mistakes of the past must be exposed without sparing anyone's sensibilities; it is necessary to analyse and criticize what was bad in the past with a scientific attitude so that work in the future will be done more carefully and done better. This is what is meant by "learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones". But our aim in exposing errors and criticizing shortcomings, like that of a doctor curing a sickness, is solely to save the patient .... So long as a person who has made mistakes does not hide his sickness for fear of treatment or persist in his mistakes until he is beyond cure, so long as he honestly and sincerely wishes to be cured and to mend his ways, we should welcome him and cure his sickness so that he can become a good comrade.  .... '

Angels doesn't think Vendola was joking, though the Prime Minister did -  at least he asked if he was.

Charisma - the Cancer of Democracy

Two images stand out in a most peculiar speech opening the Democratic party campaign by their leader Bersani yesterday.

'The election campaign is careering off the rails' was the first oddity.  'Personalities and charismatic political leadership should play no part in the election and are a cancer rendering democracy impotent'  was the second.

Stooped over the lectern, his curious pumping motion with his right arm going strong as he spoke very slowly to an audience of 'young' people (in Italy young reaches 40 and even beyond) so that they would understand the content and importance of his remarks, he seemed unaware that communication is multi-levelled.  What he was communicating  to the general electorate, as we ate our dinner and watched the news, was fear and elderly sclerosis.

The most perfunctory exploration of the content of such images as runaway trains,  and going off the rails,  or cancer and impotence (and his earlier images of dirt swept under the carpet) finds fear of loss of control,  fear of choice and serendipity, rigidity of thought, lack of imagination,  coupled with images of loss of individual potency and capacity expressed directly by references to personal virtues and charisma as a cancer in the democratic body politic.

We are to think only of issues not personalities and their attractiveness.  And unless we stop watching Berlusconi and Monti with  interest and amusement (both of which are offered by both, in their very different ways) and get back onto the rails of our state-determined future as  laid-out by the  Democrats then, comrades, we're going to have to be told what our priorities are  (the priorities didn't seem to worry him - though as someone who allows reports to circulate that he wrote a dissertation in philosophy that creates a false impression of having a doctorate in philosophy -  they should).

Jobs (not work, note, but il posto with all its entitlements and unaffordable costs); same-sex marriage; positive discrimination for women in the workplace; citizenship for those born in Italy to non-citizens; changes to the tax structure; transparency (no, we don't know either); fullest support for European integration....No wonder we're going off the rails.

Pierluigi Bersani's priority is getting himself elected.  What happens then is entirely hidden from the voters.

Borrowing While the Going's Good

The head of Italy's debt management office, Maria Cannata (now there's a job - upwards of 2 trillion euros to finance)  has declared that  Treasury  strategy  is not specifically tied to the general elections at the end of February.  Eyebrows up.

"Market sentiment for Italian bonds is pretty favourable at the moment and the Treasury grabbed a window of opportunity",  with the new 15-year bond,   she told Reuters. Eyebrows rising further.

Italy paid 4.8% in comparison with the 2% Germany pays to borrow over 15 years, which is really not bad at all considering that last July  the yield was 7.1%  for Italy as the current Prime Minister tried to correct the effects of, as he noted yesterday, Italy not having had a prime minister for years.

As the gloves come off with the official opening of Monti's campaign this weekend in Bergamo (and the opening of his political campaign media centre and offices in the Corso in central Rome) we can expect multi-layered political fighting to break out everywhere.  Which is probably why Italy has already raised 34 billion euros towards the 420 billion euros it needs to borrow this year, before the unease over increasing political uncertainty (which the ECB says is causing capital outflows) starts driving up debt costs to unbearable levels again.    We don't want to have to ask the ECB to buy the debt now, do we?   Not unless we are the statist Leftists of the Democratic Party who would give up even Italian economic independence for the trappings of power.

Berlusconi Dumped by the European Centre Right

The European People's Party  (from which Cameron withdrew the UK Conservative party after the last UK election to join some extremely iffy people in another, much further Right grouping in the European parliament) has required the People of Liberty party (Berlusconi) to remove all references to the EPP from its manifestos and election literature.  Berlusca is seeking the popular vote (or perhaps that should be the populist vote, as the EPP would have it) by attacking the European project, the Euro, and German economic hegemony in Europe.

Mario Monti is our preferred candidate for the Italian elections they have declared (though Monti is reported to be less than pleased as his entire political campaign is based on policy, not personality or party) and a file has been opened on Berlusconi and his antics, as well as on his allies (the Northern Leagues are resolutely anti-Europa).  After a meeting between the secretary of the EPP and some of the People of Liberty Euro-MPs a clarification has been made: the issue is not the Party which is in good standing as a part of the European centre Right,  but Berlusconi himself and his off the cuff policy statements and beyond the Pale behaviour.

Italy is a founder-state of the EU and a core  member; the EPP is highly influential and becoming more so as reforms to the democratic representational institutions and shifts to correct the democratic deficit are considered within the Project.  This is more of a blow to Berlusconi's electoral prospects than might be thought by those of us who regard  Europa as something to leave, not something to build.  That the European Union is  integral to the outcome of the Italian elections is  underlined by the Italian Democratic party's under-powered economic spokesman offering up fiscal independence and the acceptance of extensive EU economic oversight in return for, effectively, eurobonds and institutionalised debt-sharing.  39 days to go.

Unbearable Bersani Bullies Ethical Voters

The Bersani bullyboys have been sent out again in force this week.  It has dawned on them that they have falling chances of taking the Senate and thus winning the elections. Voters are splitting their vote for the different Houses as the personnel and programmes of the various parties are fixed.  The protocommunist faction dominating the Democratic party is committed to all the weary policies of their ilk: high taxes for all; wealth taxes for the 'rich'; government-directed redistribution and 'investment'; no reforms of the labour market or the trade unions; advanced levels of fiscal and social surveillance..... the whole conceived and delivered by under-qualified and often confirmedly corrupt Party nominees.  A Brownian nightmare on the Mediterranean.

The heads of their party lists in the South of Italy are variously under investigation, charged or even at provisional stages of condemnation for Mafia-related corruption and general crime.  Not unnaturally there is a corruption- and Mafia-free list, led by a senior Southern magistrate, standing in all the Southern  regions - regions that must be won to take the Senate.  The lists for a Civic Revolution are attracting support so significant they will cause the Bersani candidates' defeat.  After all, if the people in the South want corrupt they can vote for Berluconi's candidates, which they probably will in large numbers, squeezing the Democratic party, from the  right, to  defeat.   There is a certain honesty-in-corruption that is more attractive than the Left's corruption-in-denial, let alone the wish to vote for no corruption at all.

Having refused to even speak to the leader of Civic Revolution the Democrats are now barking orders at voters to recognise their real civic duty to vote only for their Party and accusing the voters of political immorality in risking a Berlusconi win.  The Civic Revolution people had offered a clean list in the South and coalition within the centre-left but were dismissed by the Politburo as irrelevant if not positively uppity.  Now they're at 8-10% in the polls for the regions, and climbing, so it's not just Lombardia, the Veneto and the rest of the North at risk; it's Campania, Calabria and Sicily too.

On top of losing the Senate the Democrats' poll shares in the Lower House are falling as Mario Monti unpicks their economic pigheadedness.  40 days to go.

Concept of Candidate Premier Given Boost by Magistrates

Silvio Berlusconi's attempts to avoid Ruby giving evidence today have failed.  His lawyers had advanced the argument of legitimate impediment to the trial continuing until after the general elections and wheeled out a meeting in Rome today (to finalise the People of Liberty party list) as impeding the giving of evidence by the girl who was guest at bunga bunga parties in Berlusconi's Arcore villa, when in care and only seventeen.

The judges stated that as Alfano is Secretary of the  People of Liberty party, and the choice of candidate for premier is to be made after the election results are known, former prime minister Berlusconi cannot avail himself of the legitimate impediment excuse.

Whoops.  No wonder Berlusconi insists all magistrates are part of the Left.

Cowardy Custard

After Silvio Berlusconi's 2 hour tour de force of a performance on Thursday evening in which, at one point, over one quarter of Italian adults were watching the former prime minister knocking back his accusers  and interlocutors with a glorious panache (we're not discussing levels of truth here, truth is tricky anyway)  comrade Bersani has refused to meet Berlusca in television debate.

Bersani's slowness of speech, a measure of his slowness of thought, has been well-noted.  He prefaces every proposal and response with time-wasters: "in my opinion...here I would be prepared to argue...." etc., and spices up the boredom with basic level, home-spun rhetoric, busy busy "brushing dirt under the carpet..." (honestly it's that bad).  The over-all slowness is embodied (literally) in his elderly gait, his drooping back, his hands (both of them) being carried in his pockets at all times as if his arms are too heavy to bear; the interminable swing of his head before he speaks - down, than shaking in negation, then the empty phrases.  He's a nightmare of facial rigidity, lips pursed thin, unsmiling except with a brownian grimace that positively unnerves.  Matteo Renzi was grace -  intellectual, verbal and physical - personified in his last tv confrontation.

Bersani has only ever held minor political office.  He was a minister of industry in one of the Prodi governments and introduced less regulation among taxi-drivers and chemists.  That's it: all he has ever done.   He dare not face the man who has dominated Italian politics for the last 20 years.  His excuse?  Bersani's spokesperson announces that Bersani will only debate on television (and doubtless anywhere else for that matter until Parliament reconvenes) with Candidate Prime Ministers. 

There is no such role in Italian politics.  It was revived from the socialist graveyard by Bersani's politburo to be conferred on him and to end any challenge from within the Democratic party coalition to his wooden presence being transferred from Secretary of his faction-dominated party to prime ministership of the country.  Berlusconi's coalition has announced already that their nominee for prime minister will be  chosen after the general elections at the end of February.  Not unreasonably they wish to look at the composition of returned members in the lower and upper Houses.  The Democratic party dare not do this.  If the former Communist party is finally to gain the premiership they must exclude all other Democratic party contenders.  They must constrain the President of the Republic's choice of calling on the lower House majority member most likely to command a bi-cameral majority.

Most of all Bersani must find an excuse, any excuse, not to debate his political superior in the nation's sitting rooms and kitchens.  We all enjoyed Mr Berlusconi's performance enormously against skilled and knowledgeably intelligent interviewers.  We want to watch another combat in the television arena. 

Prime Minister Monti has accepted an invitation to a television debate  with all other major  party leaders.

The Italian Job

Napolitano puts Bersani in his Place

Yesterday the Prime Minister told Party Secretary Bersani that talk of coalitions and support was premature and, in view of the membership of the Democratic party coalition, not possible unless there was a great deal more centre and no left.  Mr Monti has no interest in left-wing politics, politicians, policies, except to defeat and prevent them.

The Party Secretary snarled back that the President of the Republic could be relied on to call the leader of the majority party in the Lower House to form an administration (indeed so, Napolitano stated this constitutionally proper position some weeks ago) and that Napolitano would be the 'policeman directing the traffic' after the election.  There is a clear implication here that the politburo of the Democratic party expects inappropriate support into office from the Presidency: an outrageous assumption, let alone expressed expectation.

Today the President of the Republic struck Bersani's politically vulgar sense of entitlement to office down again.  The nomination of new life-Senators  will be undertaken by his successor in the presidency.  It would be inappropriate for the current presidency to be involved in any way in replacing the two positions left vacant by the deaths of Pininfarina and Levi-Montalcini.

Considering the likely failure of the Democratic party to take the Senate and, thus,  the elections Comrade Bersani is being cut to size quite drastically at a very early stage of this rather rushed electoral battle.

Monti Puts Bersani in his Place

A sharp slap on the snout of the wannabe prime minister Bersani by the real thing Monti has sent the Italian spread below 270. 

"Whose side are you on?" whined the Democratic party Secretary after the Monti list put up a troika of candidates for the regional elections in Lombardy that will dish the candidate of the 'Left' and put control of the Italian Senate beyond their reach (it should be remembered that the Italian Senate is one half of a perfectly bi-cameral system with the Chamber of Deputies in the Italian Parliament; in such a system not to control both Houses is a fail) and thus the holding of office. 

"The side of the Italians who want access to power, not to be confined to assenting to one elite or another", is a montian answer literally incomprehensible to an authoritarian statist.

Bersani's demand has been met with an assertion of the supremacy of choosing what is to be done, not who is to do it.  An understanding of the purpose and aims of politics beyond the ken of our pierluigi.

Total Confusion in Italian Politics Causes Spread Rise

The Italian general elections will become clearer only after 25 January when the parties, the party lists and the manifestos (such as they are) will have been published.  Until then almost any guess at what is going to happen is wild.

There are at least five potential leaders one of whom (Berlusconi) is pretending to offer yet another politician as potential prime minister so that he could do a deal with the Northern Leagues - they get Lombardy in return for forgiving and forgetting the 13-month support  given to the Monti administration by Berlusconi's own party (in return for what is not clear even now).  There are a variety of Left, Lefter, and Beyond the Pale  (actually most of the Left in Italy falls into the last category) candidate prime ministers.  Then there is the current prime minister, Mario Monti, watching the spread rising again and the extremists of Left and Right wrecking the efforts of the last year and a bit.

The polls are reporting impossible returns: that 50% of the electorate will not vote; that the Democratic Party has 40% of the vote; that Berlusconi is at almost 30% with his re-alliance with the Northern Leagues; that Monti has anything from 12% to 22%.  It can't all be true.  Of course there won't be 50% of the electorate missing - they're just refusing to say till they know their best advantage (and many are probably shifty about saying 'Berlusconi'.)  Others have red lines.  Nothing will induce them to vote for Bersani and his repellent communist and trade union associates (a telling cartoon in radical left  Il Fatto showed an otherwise naked Bersani hiding his nasty nature under a bedraggled Democratic Party banner).  Equally nothing will induce some otherwise Monti voters to vote for former Fascist Party members or for Christian Democrat retreads.

The media is its partisan self with articles ranging from high-brow pretence to fact-based analysis,  to scurrilous attacks on the motivation and behaviour of candidates and parties.   Angels current wild stab in the dark is that Monti will take the Senate, and that the Lower House will degenerate into a violent and unforgiving brawl between Berlusconi populist self-seekers, and Bersani's Democratic party leftist extremists. 

President Napolitano has some very fine political finessing to do over who gets first dibs at forming an administration, and who gets second go when  votes of confidence are not achieved in one House or the other.

Berlusconi Wants Inquiry Into International Plot that Brought Down his Government

As the spread falls to 286 this afternoon Prime Minister Monti remarked that he is pleased to have reached the objective he declared when his administration took over the country 13 months ago after borrowing costs for Italy had reached unsustainable levels; international financial markets had wholly lost confidence in the country's economy.

However Silvio Berlusconi, whose government lost a major vote of confidence in the Lower House in November 2011,  to be replaced by Monti's, has announced that should he win  the February general elections there will be a commission of inquiry into his fall.  His suspicions of an international plot to be rid of him encompass: the Chancellor of Germany; the President of Italy; the presidents of the European Union Council and its Commission; the current Italian prime minister; and various technical advisors who bamboozled him with ostensibly non-political advice that the Italian economy was in a catastrophic position.

Mr Berlusconi is, and was then, engaged in  trial and appeal against conviction  on a number of personal matters.

Mr Monti finds himself confused by Mr Berlusconi "at a logical level" (Berlusconi having called for Monti to:  lead a coalition of the Right; not to stand at all; to recognise that he is unable to command votes;  for the electorate to vote for the Democratic Party - ie statist Left and extreme Left; and to stand as President Napolitano's replacement, among other suggestions).  Monti nevertheless thought the idea of a commission of inquiry on the fall of the Berlusconi administration "interesting".

 

Happy New Year

       A happy and prosperous New Year for 2013

Few Taking Part in Italian Democratic Party Propaganda Exercise

The aparatchiks of the Partito Comunista Italiano, embodying the remnants of the Italian Democratic Party, are holding primaries this weekend to choose that small section of the Party lists not reserved to the Party Secretary for the February general elections.  Of those conferred with a ballot (these are not democratic elections, merely a propaganda gesture and only those who got under the wire to vote in choosing the party leader are eligible at this day's fiasco)  over 70% have declined to be instrumentalised in this way.  Matteo Renzi's voters are saving their breath to cool their porridge for a genuinely democratic ballot on 24 February.

The communist faithful have duly turned out to select the ideologues and the dead wood that Renzi  sought to consign to the past and the political cemetery.  These numbers are devastating  for Bersani's hopes of coming to power in alliance with his even lefter allies.  Those of us who would have voted for a Renzi-led Democratic party freed of  just the influences on display now will be voting for Monti.

Italy Is of Interest to Us All, Not Just a Another Continental European Election

Prime Minister Monti* is reconstructing the centre-right.  Not a Christian Democrat Right that, post-War, covered a multitude of Fascist sins but a lay, civic, gangster-free Right: a right Right.  Early polls suggested derisory levels of support - after all populist-right parties alla Berlusconi exist by catering to personal interest and lack of propriety in civic action, and voting against instinctive self-interest requires ethical effort.  An effort Monti is calling for.

On the well known Italian principle, "First God makes them and then He pairs them," the Democratic Party is the centre-left pair of the Berlusconi right.  The old Communist party personnel, party management and control delivered a party Leader and even further left alliances that most of us wouldn't touch with a barge-pole.  And for the more politically innocent amongst us, a brutal lesson in real, live socialist practice.  Both of the pair are now hopping with rage that Monti is upsetting their applecart.

On 24 February we are to vote not for self-interest, or an ideology, but for an agenda - a clear set of polices that might reasonably be expected to lead to growth in the Italian economic sector and to stability in the eurozone.    Berlusconi attempts to dominate the media (well he would, wouldn't he, owning lots of it?) while the Democratic leader Bersani attempts to paint Monti as a man who should be above party politics and serving his country in some unspecified and rarefied sphere (with the pretence that the last thirteen months of Italian governance was merely technical rather than profoundly political and driven by a centre-right agenda whole-heartedly supported by the Democratic Party itself.)

Both so-called Right and so called Left are utterly discredited and utterly dishonest: also they are incompetent, economically and politically.  The opinion polls are dated and slow to respond to political movement and have yet to show greater preference for Monti than 20%, although 12-15% was quoted long after the political ground had shifted.  At the same time and undeniably much of the Italian electorate is set in its ways.  However this time truth and right and justice is on the side of the Angels.  Should it be otherwise then the importance of Italy to the European Union  will be reflected in  the downgrading of the importance of Member-State elections and a swift and notable shift of power to European Union institutions.

Monti will win at home or Europe will win over nation states.  The elections in Italy are of wider significance than our local concerns.

* Mario Monti  now is a caretaker prime minister in Italy until the general election in February 2013.  This status underlines just how false was the pretence that the previous thirteen months were apolitical, technical governance.   It is worth  thinking also about  just how much power he has for the next eight weeks with no requirement to answer to Parliament, the Parliament having been dissolved.  He and President Napolitano could be surprisingly constitutionally innovative.

For Shame, Italia, For Shame

Professor Monti has handed Italy back into the hands of President Napolitano.  It is in a far, far better state than it was a 13 months ago.  Whether or not Monti will decide to take a far, far better rest and return to the Bocconi is yet to be revealed, despite the media elaborations over the last few weeks.

Mario Monti was not alone in what was achieved.  The list of ministers and technical advisors is long and distinguished, though not part of the Italian political world.  Work, and earnings, were put aside in the huge effort to salvage the country from Berlusconi and the gangsters', and Bersani and the unions', wreckage.  Lawyers, accountants, scientists, academics at the levels Monti was able to call upon do not work for government wages.  But they did, for Italy.

There has been not one word of thanks, nor acknowledgement of the extraordinary effort that was put in by all these people as well as the officers of the administration, the carabinieri, the police, the doctors and teachers, the mass of workers in the private and state sectors.  Nothing.  As the ministers formally thanked Parliament  for any support that has been given they were met with empty benches or, in some cases, abuse. 

Already the politicians are hurrying to heap rebuke and accusations of intellectual incompetence if not falsity on those who have saved their bacon.  No wonder Monti himself is considering most carefully if he even wants to know such people as the brute-faced woman Camusso roaring from the trade union deadlands about workers spontaneously applauding our former prime minister when he visited the Fiat factories at Melfi; the  economic idiocies being emitted by the 'Democratic' Party hack Fassina  who would fail to be even admitted as a student of the Professore yet pretends to the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer; the ranting Northern Leagues placeman resenting the loss of regional client-jobs who caused the out-going Minister of Labour to physically block her ears at his insults in the Lower House.  Some of these people and their ministers risked a lot -  in the case of the Home Secretary you can imagine hauling off all those mafiosi to prison, the Minister of Justice charging and trying all those corrupt 'untouchables'.  It was very noticeable that, apart from Monti himself, some of the hottest seats were being sat in by women - learned, brave women not trade union time-servers -  who did what needed to be done.

Italy could have done a far, far better figura than to let them leave the stage to indifference and worse.

Monti Spells it Out at the Weekend

The Italian general election is now fixed for 24 February 2013 (there were problems with the overseas vote).  Also fixed, or at least much clearer, is who are the serious contenders:  Mario Monti and his Memorandum for Italy (which we know as a manifesto but the word carries unfortunate connotations in political Italy);  Silvio Berlusconi and whatever he can hold together of the People of Liberty party (think total populism, anti-euro, anti-German); Pierluigi Bersani and the hard-Left controlled Democratic Party backed by  extreme Left and eco-parties (no trade union reform, no economic recovery policies, depending on 'they have nowhere else to go' for support from anyone other than their control centre and leftist loonies).

Italy is now two trillion euros in debt.  The cost of that debt has been reduced by half since Monti took over.  Berlusconi and Bersani couldn't care less - they are in this for the gaining of power for whatever ends they have in mind (they aren't sharing their thoughts with the rest of us).  Power is draining from the presidency of Italy as the President's term of office ends and as the reassertion of political gain above all else's dreary steeples of corruption and statist authoritarianism emerge once again.

As goes Italy so goes the Euro - and the world economy with it.   When the Prime Minister addresses the nation at the weekend let's hope that those professorial tones, and complexities, will be enough to communicate, to a perfectly ordinary and very disgruntled electorate, that we need him for another couple of years and by then our impoverishment will have been rewarded with growth and stability.  

President Napolitano Not Stepping Down Early

President Napolitano has confirmed that he will proffer the invitation to form Italy's next administration.  He had expected to leave the task to his successor but it falls to him, much to his regret.  So he's not stepping down early with the early demise of the current Monti administration, but squaring up to the complex political choices and soundings he must undertake in the next couple of months.

He stressed that the influences upon his choices will be political, not the institutional pressures that he responded to in November 2011 when Berlusconi's administration fell and the President appointed senator Monti to  a 'save Italy'  role.

Profumo di Sinistra

When the leader of the Solidarity Ecology Liberty Party lost in the first round of the Italian Democratic party primaries (thank God) he endorsed Pierluigi Bersani (former communist) for the leadership vote in the second round against Matteo Renzi (who is for scrapping the old guard in the Democratic party.)

"There is a scent of the true Left about Bersani, a profumo di sinistra",  eulogised the greenery-yallery primitive socialist from away across the rainbow.

Here is the list of those  yesterday guaranteed seats in the next Italian Parliament by the scented Left:

Mauro Agostini, Rosy Bindi, Gianclaudio Bressa, Anna Finocchiaro, Giuseppe Fioroni, Maria Pia Garavaglia, Giuseppe Lumia, Franco Marini, Cesare Marini, Giorgio Merlo.

The scent of an open sewer drifts across the Italian Peninsula.

Voting in Italy

Italian electoral rules in general elections (il Porcellum) are such that  55% of the seats in the Lower House will be assigned to the coalition party that comes in first, regardless of the number of votes obtained.

At the moment polls are giving the Democratic Party/Solidarity, Ecology&Liberty coalition some 34%, 10 points and more ahead of nearest rivals Beppe Grillo's anti-party 5 Stars movement, followed by Berlusconi's People of Liberty at 15%.  A notional Monti party is at 15%.  There is a long tail of also-runnings but Angels don't do nerdy.

It should be all done and dusted.  But it's not despite frantic appeals for calm, steady as she goes, we are serene in our expectations, from the Left and extreme Left  (to the point of insanity) PD-SEL.  Il Corriere notes this morning that almost half the  electorate of the Democratic Party, 44%, intend to vote for a Monti coalition if  available.  There are unmeasured numbers of voters stumbling about in the electoral fog without the least idea of what to do and the Church is standing ready to direct them to Monti. Both the People of Liberty party and the Future and Liberty party are tainted by their leader (Berlusconi) in the first, and by their origins (the former Fascist party Alleanza Nazionale) in the second.

Italians vote:they don't chicken-out and abstain.  60-70% of them loathe what progressive Comrade Bersani and his apparatchiks are, still, against all the evidence of the 20th century; and when it comes to the wilder shores of  Solidarity, Ecology and Liberty they might well be inclined to take up arms.  The North has had more than enough of the Mezzogiorno,  nor will they accept alliance with Berlusconi's morals, political or otherwise.  

Somehow Monti must find a container for the thing contained, in this Thurberesque tale, for which a hugely diverse coalition of the electorate  can vote without any sense of abandonment of principle or political or ethical shame.

The European People's Party Develops its Italian Constituency

The European People's Party welcome to Mario Monti yesterday was remarkable, if something of a shock to Silvio Berlusconi who had gone to Brussels thinking himself the recognised leader of the Italian Centre and Right.  Prime Minister Monti expounded Italy's current economic position and the means his government had used to recover it from the near disaster a year ago.  The confirmation that  his decision to resign once his budget is passed next week was due to the withdrawal of support for his administration by a part of the centre right under Berlusconi only reinforced the alienation of the EPP leaders from any acceptance of a Berlusconi candidature as leader of the centre right in Italy at the general elections there in February next year.

It is novel and most interesting to see a cross-European political party playing such a role in a member-state general election.   Berlusconi's leadership of the centre and right in Italy is at an end, as he well recognises; his calls for Monti to formally take on this leadership are an attempt to retain some influence and a bit of face where once he led the majority in the coalition.  In Rome on Sunday there will be a convention of politicians of the centre right to form a differently composed coalition which, they hope, will attract Monti's leadership.

Meanwhile the progressive and hard left minority party coalition that has gained control of what was once Romano Prodi's Democratic party are on the anti-Monti offensive, particularly after the socialist President of France joined in the chorus of support for Monti from the European People's Party.  Massimo d'Alema, once Leader of the Italian Communist Party but now sent for political scrap by Matteo Renzi's onslaught on the dinosoaurs dominating the partito Democratico   told the Corriere della Sera in an interview that Monti's position would be 'morally questionable' if he allowed his name to go forward at the general election.  He continued to offer barely veiled threats that candidature for the Presidency of the Council (the office of prime minister) would destroy Monti's usefulness to the country and, in particular any eventual candidature for the Presidency of Italy.

It seems that if Monti dares to peel off the centrists (identified by Renzi's valiant stand) from the 'progressives' in control of the PD then there will be no support from the Left and its placemen in the new Parliament in the election of the new President of Italy.  So he'd better watch himself.

Tomorrow is the global meeting of various 'progressive forces' from Europe and the world in the Acquarium in Rome.  Sunday it's the refuseniks of the Right who've dumped Berlusca cheering along in a Roman theatre.

Bersani Shows Global Progressive Politics at Work

The politburo of the Italian Democratic Party has issued the regulations for choosing Democratic Party candidates for the Italian general election (which is to be held on 17 February 2013).

 - Some 25% of candidacies will be at the disposal of the Party Secretary.   (Leading cadres subjected even to Party voting would be detrimental to discipline and balance within the Party structures).
 - For the rest, voting will take place on 29 and 30 December.  (What do you mean that's the middle of the Christmas holidays? Of course the Party expects an outstanding effort and response in the name of democracy from Party activists).
 - Those eligible to vote in these 'open' primaries are those who voted on 25 November for the election of the Secretary of the Party. (No there was nothing improper or exclusionary about the eligibility of that electorate.  Evidence to the contrary is merely rightist propaganda).
 - Regional Party executives may restrict this electorate further. (The regions of Tuscany, Marche, Umbria, and Lombardy displayed  levels of false consciousness on 25 November that will require local adjustment to national Party standards as expressed in the South and some correct urban areas of the North).

This system is proclaimed as an extraordinary and innovative democratic renewal of Italian politics, and an example to us all of global progressive politics in action.  (Mind you, the UK Labour party is just as progressive).

UPDATE
Above are the requirements for qualifying as a voter; all will be revealed on meeting the Party rules for becoming a candidate  after the Politburo's further deliberations.  Their edict will be issued next Monday.