The Sabratha platform and Greenstream are attracting more commitment to "un ruolo di sicurezza, deterrenza " e di "dissuasione" in General Claudio Graziano's words, than the migrants being trafficked in rubber boats.
Sunday, 1 March 2015
Giving another Meaning to Mare Nostrum
The Sabratha platform and Greenstream are attracting more commitment to "un ruolo di sicurezza, deterrenza " e di "dissuasione" in General Claudio Graziano's words, than the migrants being trafficked in rubber boats.
Monday, 23 February 2015
εὐφημία
'Constructive ambiguity' is a prerequisite of political utterance. Changing your tune is rarely politically advantageous. For the German ruling parties it was essential to maintain their stance towards 'Greek' debt or suffer a major shift in strength between the right of the grand coalition and the social democrats (with behind them their potential coalition allies in any administration of the centre-left). But the world of 2010 and its political needs is long gone; the language that 2010 world needed for German interests and coping with German fears is rigidly inappropriate; to get that language toned-down has taken too much and far too long - from the exit of inadequate political actors (the members of the IMF 'team' were hopelessly under-qualified for what they were doing, indeed even for what they thought they were doing) to the exit of governments.
Any competent economist can state how to deal with 'Greek' debt, within a eurozone framework and without disturbing treaties; indeed a whole range of means can be offered (and are readily available within the gloriously constructive ambiguities of those treaties.) It's not the economics of it all that's defective: it's over-defined political statement masquerading as (under-defined) political stance and objectives. Still, austerity and its associated utterances has been gagged if not yet bound at last Friday's meeting, of itself a considerable achievement.
Any competent economist can state how to deal with 'Greek' debt, within a eurozone framework and without disturbing treaties; indeed a whole range of means can be offered (and are readily available within the gloriously constructive ambiguities of those treaties.) It's not the economics of it all that's defective: it's over-defined political statement masquerading as (under-defined) political stance and objectives. Still, austerity and its associated utterances has been gagged if not yet bound at last Friday's meeting, of itself a considerable achievement.
Friday, 20 February 2015
Greek Fire
The Greeks are doing well: they have split the Troika with the ECB handing out emergency loans, the IMF being reined-in by the US president, and the EU generally wanting to abandon the hard-line German position; and within Germany itself there is now a Greek wedge between the parties to the Grand Coalition. The SDP is calling for further negotiation and support for Greece while in the meantime the Right (itself a coalition) is split between the German Finance minister's demands for fiscal discipline conditioned by his 'historically (mis)informed view' and the German Chancellor's 21st century understanding of geo-political as well as economic requirements that need to be met.
This realisation of a threat to Merkel's ruling party and its hegemony over both German and European policies is a very high price to pay for mistaking Greece's need to renegotiate the terms of its economic submission for 'can't pay won't pay' irresponsibility.
This realisation of a threat to Merkel's ruling party and its hegemony over both German and European policies is a very high price to pay for mistaking Greece's need to renegotiate the terms of its economic submission for 'can't pay won't pay' irresponsibility.
Wednesday, 18 February 2015
Police Action is not War
Exemplary murder by criminal organisations is very familiar to the Italian state. Mafia acts of the utmost ferocity have been suffered. The North African fundamentalist scenario is not that of gunned-down magistrates, of mass executions in stables and cellars, of disrespect shown to the remains of the slaughtered that no-one needs to read of again here; instead we see the borrowings from popular media representations of the religious wars of centuries ago.
The immediate response to the murder of tens of Christian hostages on the North African coast has settled into a weary recognition here that Italy is dealing with another Mafia scenario, different in its imagery but identical in its criminality and the level of threat it presents to the state; to be met with police action, not the war response so eagerly sought by the criminals.
The Italian state must deal with two flows from North Africa: oil and gas - to be secured and maintained, and migrants - to be saved, controlled and channelled out of the Peninsula and across the entire European area where there are more resources to deal with more reasonable, spread out numbers.
The oil and gas needs a sensible interlocutor to be installed in Libya who can maintain order round the fields and pipelines and guarantee the security of the technicians. The migratory flow requires an international response, first to save the migrants from drowning in the winter waters onto which they are being driven at gunpoint, thousands of them (and the Italian coast guard and navy deserves every recognition for the determination and courage with which they have saved so many); second to sift some very deprived people from the criminals among them and then to find them settlement. They cannot be left to continue through Italy and on, into the European countries with the highest social wage, and there be no concerns or response from the recipients other than to keep them out if possible. Keeping them out is neither possible nor Christian.
None of this is war. Apart from the glaringly obvious that war in North Africa needs tanks and soldiers on the ground (when the World was made North Africa must have been designed for tank warfare) war implies a post-war colonial status for Libya that is acceptable neither to northern Africans nor to Europeans. Europeans can no more want the reinstatement of a colonial 18th, 19th and 20th century world than they will accept a medieval culture and mindset expressing itself over the lives of others.
The Italian government fully recognises the need for international intervention, in Libya, on the high seas, and to cope with the migrants, and is ready to take its part. Europe, perhaps, is fortunate in having a front line state so experienced in dealing with primitive honour and shame social groupings devoted to criminality.
UPDATE
Yesterday's Italian newspapers report a warning from Calabrian magistrates that the jihadist people-traffickers are attempting to link-up with 'Ndrangheta to provide secure bases for both in north Africa and on the Peninsula.
The immediate response to the murder of tens of Christian hostages on the North African coast has settled into a weary recognition here that Italy is dealing with another Mafia scenario, different in its imagery but identical in its criminality and the level of threat it presents to the state; to be met with police action, not the war response so eagerly sought by the criminals.
The Italian state must deal with two flows from North Africa: oil and gas - to be secured and maintained, and migrants - to be saved, controlled and channelled out of the Peninsula and across the entire European area where there are more resources to deal with more reasonable, spread out numbers.
The oil and gas needs a sensible interlocutor to be installed in Libya who can maintain order round the fields and pipelines and guarantee the security of the technicians. The migratory flow requires an international response, first to save the migrants from drowning in the winter waters onto which they are being driven at gunpoint, thousands of them (and the Italian coast guard and navy deserves every recognition for the determination and courage with which they have saved so many); second to sift some very deprived people from the criminals among them and then to find them settlement. They cannot be left to continue through Italy and on, into the European countries with the highest social wage, and there be no concerns or response from the recipients other than to keep them out if possible. Keeping them out is neither possible nor Christian.
None of this is war. Apart from the glaringly obvious that war in North Africa needs tanks and soldiers on the ground (when the World was made North Africa must have been designed for tank warfare) war implies a post-war colonial status for Libya that is acceptable neither to northern Africans nor to Europeans. Europeans can no more want the reinstatement of a colonial 18th, 19th and 20th century world than they will accept a medieval culture and mindset expressing itself over the lives of others.
The Italian government fully recognises the need for international intervention, in Libya, on the high seas, and to cope with the migrants, and is ready to take its part. Europe, perhaps, is fortunate in having a front line state so experienced in dealing with primitive honour and shame social groupings devoted to criminality.
UPDATE
Yesterday's Italian newspapers report a warning from Calabrian magistrates that the jihadist people-traffickers are attempting to link-up with 'Ndrangheta to provide secure bases for both in north Africa and on the Peninsula.
Sunday, 15 February 2015
Never Mind Ukraine, This is Serious
Italian civilians are on board vessels escorted by marines and over-flown by drones as the Italian embassy in Tripoli is closed. The Foreign Office has been advising all Italians to leave Libya since 1 February. These last should arrive in Sicily early tomorrow. At the same time at least 10 large vessels loaded with migrants are off the island of Lampedusa calling for rescue from the Italian coast guard and other marine resources. The leader of the Lega Nord is demanding that they should be monitored, supplied with food and water but not permitted to land. It is known that migrants have jihadisti among them.
The Christian churches in various Libyan cities are under attack and many of their clerics have refused to abandon their faithful.
Jihadisti forces have over-run areas in major Libyan cities, including Sirte, demanding submission to their rule. In Italy Matteo Renzi, supported by Opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi and by other political leaders is calling for an immediate armed response to the threat to Italy and its interests only 200 miles from the European coast. Jihadi are naming the Italians Crusaders.
The Christian churches in various Libyan cities are under attack and many of their clerics have refused to abandon their faithful.
Jihadisti forces have over-run areas in major Libyan cities, including Sirte, demanding submission to their rule. In Italy Matteo Renzi, supported by Opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi and by other political leaders is calling for an immediate armed response to the threat to Italy and its interests only 200 miles from the European coast. Jihadi are naming the Italians Crusaders.
Monday, 2 February 2015
Sub-texts in Familiar Scenes
Looking at the photographs (Corriere della Sera) of the new president, on Saturday with his family watching the results coming in live from the Parliament, there is a feeling of returning to normality. The sitting room with the pretty china in the display case, the ornaments, the decent lithographs and family paintings, the furniture with older (and smaller) pieces brought from the family house elsewhere, and most of all the certainty that lunch is ready to serve immediately this count is over.
Gone is the bombast of Napolitano and his accompanying anti-constitutional power grabs, seated amongst the glories of the Quirinale palace. Gone his 'dossiers' on 'reform' of democracy dressed in the language of propriety but filled with contempt for every expression of choice by the people. Napolitano, still talking, even now, has announced his dossiers will be handed on to be acted upon.
Yesterday, after Mass, President Mattarella called upon Napolitano (he had spoken at length with former President Ciampi, a distinguished economist and sometime Governor of the Bank of Italy the day before. "you will understand my concerns....." the President is reported to have said). But yesterday's call was 'to thank the former president for his efforts..' On the doorstep of Napolitano's Rome house Matarella formally kissed Napolitano goodbye. He left carrying only his gloves.
Gone is the bombast of Napolitano and his accompanying anti-constitutional power grabs, seated amongst the glories of the Quirinale palace. Gone his 'dossiers' on 'reform' of democracy dressed in the language of propriety but filled with contempt for every expression of choice by the people. Napolitano, still talking, even now, has announced his dossiers will be handed on to be acted upon.
Yesterday, after Mass, President Mattarella called upon Napolitano (he had spoken at length with former President Ciampi, a distinguished economist and sometime Governor of the Bank of Italy the day before. "you will understand my concerns....." the President is reported to have said). But yesterday's call was 'to thank the former president for his efforts..' On the doorstep of Napolitano's Rome house Matarella formally kissed Napolitano goodbye. He left carrying only his gloves.
Saturday, 31 January 2015
Italy Chooses Its President Today
They're off. Led by the Life Senators (4 of the 6 as Ciampi is permanently incapacitated by ill health) Elena Cattaneo, Monti, Napolitano, Rubbia, (Renzo Piano isn't there). The Partito Democratico, united behind their leader Matteo Renzi, are voting for Mattarella; as is the whole centre right in their various manifestations; the Lega Nord; and the 'Rabbit and his Friends and Relations' group of autonomous regions with a particular determination from all the Sicilians (no-one will forget Mattarella's elder brother, gunned down on the streets of Palermo by the Mafia on his way to Mass, dying in his brother's arms in the 1980s).
Berlusconi has recovered his temper and his manners enough to realise that deserting the hall during the voting for the President of Italy might finish off his party completely and has asked Forza Italia to vote blank. But his Party has fractured under the strain of many southern members' desire to support Mattarella and some 40-50 will vote for the candidate.
The Five Stars have declared an intention to vote for another candidate, but already a dozen of them have deserted Party discipline (and perhaps even the grouping) and will vote for Mattarella. The 5-Stelle, too, has made a huge political blunder, then, in attempting to gain quite petty advantage from this presidential election.
This has been a masterly demonstration by the Italian Prime Minister of how to do politics: the best candidate; an overwhelming support base; a unification of his own fractured Party; the destruction of an embarrassment of an alliance to his right while detaching many of the Right to his support; the rendering irrelevant of Italy's Podemos - Europe will be challenged but from Renzi's programme, not that of the wilder shores of the Left/anarchists -; the maintenance of his own drive to more prime-ministerial style powers into his hands (he cannot, directly, even dismiss one of his ministers though he did remark, sharply and publicly to Minister of the Interior Alfano 'You cannot be such a Minister and fail to vote for such a candidate' when Alfano tried to withold his minority coalition party's support for Mattarella in his own, narrow political interest.); the seeing off of the arch-Europeanistas -Amato, Prodi leading the pack.
Europe may be worried by Greece: they should be much more concerned at Italy.
Berlusconi has recovered his temper and his manners enough to realise that deserting the hall during the voting for the President of Italy might finish off his party completely and has asked Forza Italia to vote blank. But his Party has fractured under the strain of many southern members' desire to support Mattarella and some 40-50 will vote for the candidate.
The Five Stars have declared an intention to vote for another candidate, but already a dozen of them have deserted Party discipline (and perhaps even the grouping) and will vote for Mattarella. The 5-Stelle, too, has made a huge political blunder, then, in attempting to gain quite petty advantage from this presidential election.
This has been a masterly demonstration by the Italian Prime Minister of how to do politics: the best candidate; an overwhelming support base; a unification of his own fractured Party; the destruction of an embarrassment of an alliance to his right while detaching many of the Right to his support; the rendering irrelevant of Italy's Podemos - Europe will be challenged but from Renzi's programme, not that of the wilder shores of the Left/anarchists -; the maintenance of his own drive to more prime-ministerial style powers into his hands (he cannot, directly, even dismiss one of his ministers though he did remark, sharply and publicly to Minister of the Interior Alfano 'You cannot be such a Minister and fail to vote for such a candidate' when Alfano tried to withold his minority coalition party's support for Mattarella in his own, narrow political interest.); the seeing off of the arch-Europeanistas -Amato, Prodi leading the pack.
Europe may be worried by Greece: they should be much more concerned at Italy.
Thursday, 29 January 2015
Italian Presidential Elections and Some Wider Implications
Italy begins the process of electing its president today. At 3pm the grandi elettori gather in the equivalent of the Commons: senators, deputies of the Lower House, life senators (including former president Napolitano) and representatives of the Italian regions who are themselves Party members of most of the major parties in the Parliament. There are 1009 of them, 58 from the regions. On the first three ballots a two thirds majority is required for election - 673 votes. From the fourth ballot 505 votes suffice.
The inconvenience of the two thirds majority is usually overcome by major parties voting blank on the first three ballots; then they get down to it. Matteo Renzi has stated that the Partito Democratico's candidate is Sergio Mattarella, a distinguished judge of the constitutional court. Well, after the Napolitano disgraceful and unconstitutional years that sounds just the job. He won't be pushing into what is none of his business and may even undo the damage of a rampaging egoist and European Union fanatic warping the basis of Italian democracy.
Unfortunately the rampaging egoist etc., is working away, despite retirement, to replace himself with Giuliano Amato - the author of every major European Treaty: from Lisbon to Rome Amato and his committee have dotted every i, crossed every t. He has as well a certain reputation as Craxi's man and even now that isn't lived down easily. Craxi who fled the country and spent the rest of his life in Tunisia. Which brings us to Berlusconi. Not, of course, a socialist, and not fled, but convicted and determined to have that conviction lifted (and who can blame him, hounded from office by threats of prosecution and public shaming when he threatened Italy's commitment to Europe-ever-closer...)
Berlusconi has been in alliance with Renzi throughout Renzi's administration - to the fury of the old CP sections of the Partito Demcratico not least because the alliance across the political divide of centre left and centre right deprive them of all power. (What a pity Blair never allied with Conservative forces against the Brown/Balls/ Miliband tendency). Berlusconi's price for agreeing to Mattarella is his re-admittance, formally, into political life; he's been banned for some years so necessarily his style is hampered, acting from the back with proxies who tend to get above themselves. Mattarella, being the man he is, doesn't look the sort of president to hand out pardons to tax-evaders. So the lifting of Berlusconi's judicial shadows is going to have to come from Renzi and his administration. And that is going down very badly in the PD, who made 'hating Berlusconi' their mode of being, their only political purpose, for years. (Yes, silly, wasteful, irrelevant but the Left usually is).
Provision has been made, by tagging a special little clause to a much bigger piece of legislation, that gets Berlusca in the clear; but Renzi has put back the vote until after the presidential election. Anyone can imagine the fury on the Left as the Prime Minister drains power further into his hands. Napolitano gone and replaced by a severe constitutionalist who will retreat into the proper conduct of the office of president; Berlusconi absolved yet remaining in alliance even though he has been forced to accept a president of the Right who is not his first choice; the office of prime minister strengthened by the ending of perfect bi-cameralism and the stripping of power from the Senate; and, most of all, a prime minister no longer answerable to a disloyal Party (at least in large part) and undisturbed by inappropriate Presidential intervention.
It's not just Greece that is challenging northern European austerity and the imposition of damaging economic and fiscal policies on other parts of the Union. Renzi has had to sort out his own backyard first but he's nearly there - then there's hope he can bring some of the sillier, even dangerous, European ascendency to heel.
The inconvenience of the two thirds majority is usually overcome by major parties voting blank on the first three ballots; then they get down to it. Matteo Renzi has stated that the Partito Democratico's candidate is Sergio Mattarella, a distinguished judge of the constitutional court. Well, after the Napolitano disgraceful and unconstitutional years that sounds just the job. He won't be pushing into what is none of his business and may even undo the damage of a rampaging egoist and European Union fanatic warping the basis of Italian democracy.
Unfortunately the rampaging egoist etc., is working away, despite retirement, to replace himself with Giuliano Amato - the author of every major European Treaty: from Lisbon to Rome Amato and his committee have dotted every i, crossed every t. He has as well a certain reputation as Craxi's man and even now that isn't lived down easily. Craxi who fled the country and spent the rest of his life in Tunisia. Which brings us to Berlusconi. Not, of course, a socialist, and not fled, but convicted and determined to have that conviction lifted (and who can blame him, hounded from office by threats of prosecution and public shaming when he threatened Italy's commitment to Europe-ever-closer...)
Berlusconi has been in alliance with Renzi throughout Renzi's administration - to the fury of the old CP sections of the Partito Demcratico not least because the alliance across the political divide of centre left and centre right deprive them of all power. (What a pity Blair never allied with Conservative forces against the Brown/Balls/ Miliband tendency). Berlusconi's price for agreeing to Mattarella is his re-admittance, formally, into political life; he's been banned for some years so necessarily his style is hampered, acting from the back with proxies who tend to get above themselves. Mattarella, being the man he is, doesn't look the sort of president to hand out pardons to tax-evaders. So the lifting of Berlusconi's judicial shadows is going to have to come from Renzi and his administration. And that is going down very badly in the PD, who made 'hating Berlusconi' their mode of being, their only political purpose, for years. (Yes, silly, wasteful, irrelevant but the Left usually is).
Provision has been made, by tagging a special little clause to a much bigger piece of legislation, that gets Berlusca in the clear; but Renzi has put back the vote until after the presidential election. Anyone can imagine the fury on the Left as the Prime Minister drains power further into his hands. Napolitano gone and replaced by a severe constitutionalist who will retreat into the proper conduct of the office of president; Berlusconi absolved yet remaining in alliance even though he has been forced to accept a president of the Right who is not his first choice; the office of prime minister strengthened by the ending of perfect bi-cameralism and the stripping of power from the Senate; and, most of all, a prime minister no longer answerable to a disloyal Party (at least in large part) and undisturbed by inappropriate Presidential intervention.
It's not just Greece that is challenging northern European austerity and the imposition of damaging economic and fiscal policies on other parts of the Union. Renzi has had to sort out his own backyard first but he's nearly there - then there's hope he can bring some of the sillier, even dangerous, European ascendency to heel.
Friday, 16 January 2015
You did ask what is going on in Italy
The multi-layered attempt to deny power to any party questioning the European Union or considering leaving the Euro as the obvious response to Italy's disastrous economic condition was initiated against Berlusconi's elected centre-right government.
Berlusconi was harried by various legal assaults for matters ranging from fraud and tax-avoidance to child prostitution. He was finally convicted of tax-evasion. But had been assured he would be in some manner let off the hook if he resigned. Sensibly he left office. Napolitano imposed Mario Monti - a former EU commissioner - without dissolving Parliament, to whom Berlusconi's centre-right majority lent its votes (to get their leader through his current legal troubles).
When it became clear that no intervention was coming from on high Monti lost vote after confidence vote and Parliament coming to the end of its natural term, had to be dissolved anyway.
Unfortunately for Napolitano his own term of office was expiring too by then (we are now in 2013).
Meanwhile the Partito Democratico had rigged its internal ballot for a new leader by excluding large numbers of those supporters who had not been party members for an inordinately long time from the ballot. Even so, the former communist candidate Bersani failed to get through on the first ballot and only managed on the second due to a further imposition of restrictions on who could vote:ie only those who had voted in the first round. This defeated Matteo Renzi but disgusted so many of us that we voted 5 Star at the general election of 2013.
Renzi's voters returned a large faction to Parliament in 2013; and 5 Stars took 25% of the vote. Clearly there was an enormous number disaffected with the Euro. But the leader of the PD was Bersani, with the largest party and clearly the politician to be invited to try his hand at government. He was some 7 or 8 seats short of an overall majority -a mere trifle in the context of Italian political trading of votes and coalition-forming.
The attempt to elect a new Italian president was a disaster. And the disaster was blamed upon 'faults' in the Constitution that needed 'correction'(generally in the direction of making it easier for a determined party-political elite and establishment to control the people).
Every candidate in the presidential election was brought down by some section of the electorate for the presidency. Good, decent candidates: it was remarkable to watch. When Romano Prodi was not elected it became clear there was another agenda in operation.
Prodi would have asked Bersani, as leader of the majority party, to form a government (Monti was caretaking the government while this was going on). Napolitano wanted more time to impose his world view not least through choosing another prime minister not elected by us but loyal to the eurozone and the EU at any cost to Italian democracy.
By withholding (secret) votes from Prodi two goals were achieved: no Bersani government,and the impression of total democratic crisis. Napolitano steps forward and, in defiance of all constitutional practice gets a few more years to push the powers of the presidency way beyond their accepted capacities.
His first act is to appoint Enrico Letta as prime minister: a eurocreep and nephew of a behind the scenes wheeler dealer for Berlusconi's party. Enrico Letta who sat as an MP on the extreme right of the Partito Democratico (you may have noticed him wandering around London seeking the NATO nomination after his destruction by Matteo Renzi within the PD. Didn't get a European office either. Hah.)
Renzi destroyed Letta (E.) by winning a resounding victory in the PD as leader when Bersani had to resign having failed to even be invited to form a government. He then simply informed Letta when he was to go as he, Renzi, held his majority (having formed a pact with an increasingly disillusioned Berlusconi, by now convicted, and evicted from the Senate) as well as leading the PD near majority in parliament too.
When he told Letta to go, Napolitano had no choice (as Napolitano bitterly remarked) but to invite Matteo Renzi to form a government - the present government. Renzi has long been suspect, in Napolitano's eyes and view, of denying EU precedence and the desirability of Eurozone membership.
Napolitano's antics during the Renzi government have been well out of order but he has (finally) had to go. Now he's trying to replace himself in moves over the presidential elections on 29 January.
It's Europe, you see. What Italy does is central. And we keep voting for major European change, so democracy goes out of the window.
Berlusconi was harried by various legal assaults for matters ranging from fraud and tax-avoidance to child prostitution. He was finally convicted of tax-evasion. But had been assured he would be in some manner let off the hook if he resigned. Sensibly he left office. Napolitano imposed Mario Monti - a former EU commissioner - without dissolving Parliament, to whom Berlusconi's centre-right majority lent its votes (to get their leader through his current legal troubles).
When it became clear that no intervention was coming from on high Monti lost vote after confidence vote and Parliament coming to the end of its natural term, had to be dissolved anyway.
Unfortunately for Napolitano his own term of office was expiring too by then (we are now in 2013).
Meanwhile the Partito Democratico had rigged its internal ballot for a new leader by excluding large numbers of those supporters who had not been party members for an inordinately long time from the ballot. Even so, the former communist candidate Bersani failed to get through on the first ballot and only managed on the second due to a further imposition of restrictions on who could vote:ie only those who had voted in the first round. This defeated Matteo Renzi but disgusted so many of us that we voted 5 Star at the general election of 2013.
Renzi's voters returned a large faction to Parliament in 2013; and 5 Stars took 25% of the vote. Clearly there was an enormous number disaffected with the Euro. But the leader of the PD was Bersani, with the largest party and clearly the politician to be invited to try his hand at government. He was some 7 or 8 seats short of an overall majority -a mere trifle in the context of Italian political trading of votes and coalition-forming.
The attempt to elect a new Italian president was a disaster. And the disaster was blamed upon 'faults' in the Constitution that needed 'correction'(generally in the direction of making it easier for a determined party-political elite and establishment to control the people).
Every candidate in the presidential election was brought down by some section of the electorate for the presidency. Good, decent candidates: it was remarkable to watch. When Romano Prodi was not elected it became clear there was another agenda in operation.
Prodi would have asked Bersani, as leader of the majority party, to form a government (Monti was caretaking the government while this was going on). Napolitano wanted more time to impose his world view not least through choosing another prime minister not elected by us but loyal to the eurozone and the EU at any cost to Italian democracy.
By withholding (secret) votes from Prodi two goals were achieved: no Bersani government,and the impression of total democratic crisis. Napolitano steps forward and, in defiance of all constitutional practice gets a few more years to push the powers of the presidency way beyond their accepted capacities.
His first act is to appoint Enrico Letta as prime minister: a eurocreep and nephew of a behind the scenes wheeler dealer for Berlusconi's party. Enrico Letta who sat as an MP on the extreme right of the Partito Democratico (you may have noticed him wandering around London seeking the NATO nomination after his destruction by Matteo Renzi within the PD. Didn't get a European office either. Hah.)
Renzi destroyed Letta (E.) by winning a resounding victory in the PD as leader when Bersani had to resign having failed to even be invited to form a government. He then simply informed Letta when he was to go as he, Renzi, held his majority (having formed a pact with an increasingly disillusioned Berlusconi, by now convicted, and evicted from the Senate) as well as leading the PD near majority in parliament too.
When he told Letta to go, Napolitano had no choice (as Napolitano bitterly remarked) but to invite Matteo Renzi to form a government - the present government. Renzi has long been suspect, in Napolitano's eyes and view, of denying EU precedence and the desirability of Eurozone membership.
Napolitano's antics during the Renzi government have been well out of order but he has (finally) had to go. Now he's trying to replace himself in moves over the presidential elections on 29 January.
It's Europe, you see. What Italy does is central. And we keep voting for major European change, so democracy goes out of the window.
Wednesday, 14 January 2015
Napolitano Gone At Last
Parliamentary democracy is restored in Italy. Giorgio Napolitano's letter of resignation is delivered to Matteo Renzi, the Prime Minister (not the prime minister Napolitano wanted - and installed - but the one we wanted and who forced the removal of Enrico Letta).
There were lots of horses, lots of caped carabinieri with plumed hats, lots of bowing and scraping, but the years of occupation of the office of President, accompanied by gross attempts to extend the powers and practices of that office, are over.
Friday, 26 September 2014
President Giorgio Napolitano 'helping with enquiries'
As Italy's economic and political disaster takes form - a new dawn has broken, yes it has (to borrow an image) - the Head of State, Giorgio Napolitano is summoned by the magistrates of Palermo to give evidence in the processo per la trattativa tra Stato e mafia [the trial of negotiations between the State and the Mafia]. It is unprecedented in Italy for a sitting head of state to be questioned even, as here, as a witness, in any judicial proceedings, never mind judicial proceedings of this order.
There being no provision for such an event in the Constitution, the magistrates will go to the Quirinale rather than requiring the nearly 90 year-old President of the Republic to go to them. After all, Blair helped the police with their enquiries in Downing Street when the unthinkable happened in the United Kingdom, although the Italian version is more like Elizabeth II being questioned as a witness than the questioning of a mere prime minister.
Meanwhile the Fourth Estate in the form of the Corriere della Sera - Italy's paper of record - publishes an editorial of such notable aggression and spite against the Renzi government (and this in the middle of Italy's 6-month presidency of the European Union) that Christ driving out the Pharisees from the Temple comes to mind as a measure of what has happened to Roman power circles. It seems that a bunch of incompetent, inexperienced, unforgivably young Florentines, unaware of the realities of power, have taken over the rightful offices and positions of the salons of Rome and (to a lesser extent) Milan. Masonic corruption is hinted (after all, the P2 kept its records only 50 kms from Florence, ooooh), Tiziano Renzi (the prime minister's father) is suddenly under investigation, while his son observes mildly from the UN that it would be difficult to get further from free masonry than he and his family are (boy scouts, yes, Liccio Gelli, no).
Matteo Renzi himself stands accused of being young, with that Tuscan facility of speech that is of itself suspect, and being leader of both Executive and Party; and so extremely popular (evidently a drawback). Worse, he won't put up with the Troika-isation of Italy by the EU. Which brings the Presidency of the Republic, particularly in view of the questioning, into consideration.
Even Napolitano can't manage a third go. He should have gone at the end of his term not stayed for a second in such an iffy manner, so as to foist the awful Enrico Letta on the country. The choice of the next President of the Republic is upon us with Renzi in power - what horror. For the European Union and particularly the Eurozone, Italy cannot be seen to be treated like Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Ireland - it's much to big and founder-memberish. To put Italy under EU discipline the best thing would be to move Mario Draghi from the ECB into the Quirinale. As President of the Republic he can save the Euro better from there than from any other position; after all, now that the line the ECB will take, is already taking, is settled, Germany can provide a suitable executor.
Renzi isn't having that either. He (and we, the people, that is) see no reason why Italy should be reduced to penury for the sake of neo-liberal economic orthodoxy pretending to be a 'peace-loving' European Union. Italian national debt stands at 136% of this year's GDP. The growth rate has been negative for the last three quarters. Unemployment stands at 42% of people 18-24. A start has been made on paying government debt to enterprises. Yet the most pernicious aspect of the economic situation is the resistance to any reduction in the returns to the entrenched political classes at any and all levels, Still, at least we can now hear their pain
There being no provision for such an event in the Constitution, the magistrates will go to the Quirinale rather than requiring the nearly 90 year-old President of the Republic to go to them. After all, Blair helped the police with their enquiries in Downing Street when the unthinkable happened in the United Kingdom, although the Italian version is more like Elizabeth II being questioned as a witness than the questioning of a mere prime minister.
Meanwhile the Fourth Estate in the form of the Corriere della Sera - Italy's paper of record - publishes an editorial of such notable aggression and spite against the Renzi government (and this in the middle of Italy's 6-month presidency of the European Union) that Christ driving out the Pharisees from the Temple comes to mind as a measure of what has happened to Roman power circles. It seems that a bunch of incompetent, inexperienced, unforgivably young Florentines, unaware of the realities of power, have taken over the rightful offices and positions of the salons of Rome and (to a lesser extent) Milan. Masonic corruption is hinted (after all, the P2 kept its records only 50 kms from Florence, ooooh), Tiziano Renzi (the prime minister's father) is suddenly under investigation, while his son observes mildly from the UN that it would be difficult to get further from free masonry than he and his family are (boy scouts, yes, Liccio Gelli, no).
Matteo Renzi himself stands accused of being young, with that Tuscan facility of speech that is of itself suspect, and being leader of both Executive and Party; and so extremely popular (evidently a drawback). Worse, he won't put up with the Troika-isation of Italy by the EU. Which brings the Presidency of the Republic, particularly in view of the questioning, into consideration.
Even Napolitano can't manage a third go. He should have gone at the end of his term not stayed for a second in such an iffy manner, so as to foist the awful Enrico Letta on the country. The choice of the next President of the Republic is upon us with Renzi in power - what horror. For the European Union and particularly the Eurozone, Italy cannot be seen to be treated like Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Ireland - it's much to big and founder-memberish. To put Italy under EU discipline the best thing would be to move Mario Draghi from the ECB into the Quirinale. As President of the Republic he can save the Euro better from there than from any other position; after all, now that the line the ECB will take, is already taking, is settled, Germany can provide a suitable executor.
Renzi isn't having that either. He (and we, the people, that is) see no reason why Italy should be reduced to penury for the sake of neo-liberal economic orthodoxy pretending to be a 'peace-loving' European Union. Italian national debt stands at 136% of this year's GDP. The growth rate has been negative for the last three quarters. Unemployment stands at 42% of people 18-24. A start has been made on paying government debt to enterprises. Yet the most pernicious aspect of the economic situation is the resistance to any reduction in the returns to the entrenched political classes at any and all levels, Still, at least we can now hear their pain
Tuesday, 2 September 2014
Ukraine: the risks of transition
Ukraine misrepresentations and lies, coupled with ignorance are fuelling widespread displays of media propaganda. There exists a factual skeleton that cannot be propagandized away though.
It is not in Ukraine or Russia's interest to partition the country.
The Kiev government has lost control of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Calling parliamentary elections in Kiev when so much of the country, with millions of voters, is no longer governed from Kiev, is a democratic farce.
The current Kiev caretaker government is widely regarded as Fascist by many and, in some parts of Ukraine, the majority of voters. Any attempt to validate the agreement with the European Union by the current Kiev government will be regarded as illegitimate by much of the population. And by Russia.
The response to this has so far been disastrous. At least 2000 people have been killed. The EBRD has produced a worst-case scenario in which the sanctions implemented and threatened against Russia will precipitate a Russian recession and bring growth to a halt in the area; there will be serious contagion throughout the global economy and, first, for Europe.
All European former socialist economies have distinctive features arising from their soviet-type starting model. Escorting them and assisting them through transition is now a well-understood process, if hotly contested by those who want to punish the former socialist errors (and socialists), and those who seek to provide the best route to an economically and politically successful society.
Such a society would not conform to the hyper-liberal, crony capitalism so beloved of the corrupt of all capitalist economies (sadly only too well-represented in some of the already 'transited' states that fought back to create a more balanced and indeed moral, as well as efficient, economic and political system and thus largely completed the transition).
Abolishing or reducing to a minimum the role of the state in transiting economies is not clever. Market institutions must be created, there must be investment in modern infrastructures (just consider the backwardness of the highly inefficient energy consumption levels of Ukraine industries), market regulation must be a state function, and for any reasonable person there must be great importance given to the provision of employment, the alleviation of poverty, and the assurance of social peace.
Russia will not accept Ukraine (or any other near-abroad state) practising the politico-economic aggression of hyper-liberal, crony capitalism. In the interests of its defence requirements it has formally annexed the Crimea. Informally, bluntly, it has annexed also Ukraine as a whole, rejecting the kind of development that will lead to an unstable and inegalitarian capitalist free-for-all.
Central Europe - Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, The Czech Republic - really doesn't need this pseudo Europe of the UK, US, and Baltic peripherals, trying to put tanks on Russia's lawn.
It is not in Ukraine or Russia's interest to partition the country.
The Kiev government has lost control of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Calling parliamentary elections in Kiev when so much of the country, with millions of voters, is no longer governed from Kiev, is a democratic farce.
The current Kiev caretaker government is widely regarded as Fascist by many and, in some parts of Ukraine, the majority of voters. Any attempt to validate the agreement with the European Union by the current Kiev government will be regarded as illegitimate by much of the population. And by Russia.
The response to this has so far been disastrous. At least 2000 people have been killed. The EBRD has produced a worst-case scenario in which the sanctions implemented and threatened against Russia will precipitate a Russian recession and bring growth to a halt in the area; there will be serious contagion throughout the global economy and, first, for Europe.
All European former socialist economies have distinctive features arising from their soviet-type starting model. Escorting them and assisting them through transition is now a well-understood process, if hotly contested by those who want to punish the former socialist errors (and socialists), and those who seek to provide the best route to an economically and politically successful society.
Such a society would not conform to the hyper-liberal, crony capitalism so beloved of the corrupt of all capitalist economies (sadly only too well-represented in some of the already 'transited' states that fought back to create a more balanced and indeed moral, as well as efficient, economic and political system and thus largely completed the transition).
Abolishing or reducing to a minimum the role of the state in transiting economies is not clever. Market institutions must be created, there must be investment in modern infrastructures (just consider the backwardness of the highly inefficient energy consumption levels of Ukraine industries), market regulation must be a state function, and for any reasonable person there must be great importance given to the provision of employment, the alleviation of poverty, and the assurance of social peace.
Russia will not accept Ukraine (or any other near-abroad state) practising the politico-economic aggression of hyper-liberal, crony capitalism. In the interests of its defence requirements it has formally annexed the Crimea. Informally, bluntly, it has annexed also Ukraine as a whole, rejecting the kind of development that will lead to an unstable and inegalitarian capitalist free-for-all.
Central Europe - Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, The Czech Republic - really doesn't need this pseudo Europe of the UK, US, and Baltic peripherals, trying to put tanks on Russia's lawn.
Wednesday, 23 July 2014
Plus ça change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjndTXyk3mw
Monsieur le Président je vous fais une lettre
Que vous lirez peut-être
Si vous avez le temps
Je viens de recevoir
Mes papiers militaires
Pour partir à la guerre
Avant mercredi soir
Monsieur le Président
je ne veux pas la faire
je ne suis pas sur terre
Pour tuer des pauvres gens
C’est pas pour vous fâcher
Il faut que je vous dise
Ma décision est prise
je m’en vais déserter
Depuis que je suis né
J’ai vu mourir mon père
J’ai vu partir mes frères
Et pleurer mes enfants
Ma mère a tant souffert
Qu’elle est dedans sa tombe
Et se moque des bombes
Et se moque des vers
Quand j’étais prisonnier
On m’a volé ma femme
On m’a volé mon âme
Et tout mon cher passé
Demain de bon matin
Je fermerai ma porte
Au nez des années mortes
J’irai sur les chemins
Je mendierai ma vie
Sur les routes de France
De Bretagne en Provence
Et je dirai aux gens
Refusez d’obéir
Refusez de la faire
N’allez pas à la guerre
Refusez de partir
S’il faut donner son sang
Allez donner le vôtre
Vous êtes bon apôtre
Monsieur le Président
Si vous me poursuivez
Prévenez vos gendarmes
Que je n’aurai pas d’armes
Et qu’ils pourront tirer.
Monsieur le Président je vous fais une lettre
Que vous lirez peut-être
Si vous avez le temps
Je viens de recevoir
Mes papiers militaires
Pour partir à la guerre
Avant mercredi soir
Monsieur le Président
je ne veux pas la faire
je ne suis pas sur terre
Pour tuer des pauvres gens
C’est pas pour vous fâcher
Il faut que je vous dise
Ma décision est prise
je m’en vais déserter
Depuis que je suis né
J’ai vu mourir mon père
J’ai vu partir mes frères
Et pleurer mes enfants
Ma mère a tant souffert
Qu’elle est dedans sa tombe
Et se moque des bombes
Et se moque des vers
Quand j’étais prisonnier
On m’a volé ma femme
On m’a volé mon âme
Et tout mon cher passé
Demain de bon matin
Je fermerai ma porte
Au nez des années mortes
J’irai sur les chemins
Je mendierai ma vie
Sur les routes de France
De Bretagne en Provence
Et je dirai aux gens
Refusez d’obéir
Refusez de la faire
N’allez pas à la guerre
Refusez de partir
S’il faut donner son sang
Allez donner le vôtre
Vous êtes bon apôtre
Monsieur le Président
Si vous me poursuivez
Prévenez vos gendarmes
Que je n’aurai pas d’armes
Et qu’ils pourront tirer.
Friday, 13 September 2013
Italian Meltdown
Looking out over the smouldering ruins of the country's institutions, with the only edifice left standing being that of the president of Italy, now almost 90, attention is caught by the new front opening in the real economy. Entrepreneurs have been shutting down plant for years and shifting to production in Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Poland and even the United States - shifting production to China is a decades-old practice - but the abandonment of factory and plant without hope of any further subsidy-farming is now being replaced by the abandonment of work-forces without provision for their welfare support. Not to mention the physical trucking of machinery and key-skills workers to new, extra-Italian sites. The Italian workforces have no redress; if they want to take up their jobs in Poland, for example, they can. Only they can't really, can they? For obvious reasons. Czy Pan mowi po Polsku?
Fiat has been the first example of a major industry exporting itself out of Italy, leaving only a fig-leaf structure behind but now the Italian steel industry seems to be taking its chance to shut down here. Following the sequestration of its assets throughout Italy over a dispute in a southern Italian steel plant (whoever thought making basic steel is a clean and non-polluting undertaking?) about environmental conditions around the plant, the company has closed its sophisticated northern Italian production and research and logistics companies and sacked the workforce. 1500 highly-skilled workers in northern Italy are now out of work and (after a frantic meeting of Enrico Letta's government) on welfare benefits wholly funded by the tax-payer (no contribution from their erstwhile employer; after all, their industry has had its assets sequestered).
No government truly running an advanced capitalist European country would find itself scrambling to contain the actions of a magistrate in a mean little town in a depressed area acting off their own bat to affect industrial policy and sophisticated output for export in the productive sectors of the national economy.
It wouldn't really matter for most of us what Italy does, except, these repellent incompetents are sliming round European capitals being ever so 'umble, pushing their agenda for their 'presidency' of the European Union after the New Year.
Their agenda consists of mutualising their debt, allocating European tax-payers' resources to their elitist local expenditures, demanding we take their banks and themselves at their own estimate, maintaining themselves in national power at any cost, and insinuating themselves into European power whenever and wherever they can. If Italy is taken seriously in its claims to being a worthy counterparty to anyone or anything we will have only ourselves to blame for losses.
Monday, 15 July 2013
Rather Here Than There
The government so ardently desired and forcibly installed by Napolitano is now beyond description revolting. The Deputy Speaker of the Senate has called the Minister for equality of opportunity an orangutan. Leading members of his party have called for apologies not to the minister but to orangutans. Napolitano, in an attempt to discard responsibility for the imposition of this coalition protested at the unheard of and degrading insults and was told to be quiet and mind his own business as this is the administration he engineered and sustains.
Napolitano has tried to assert that F35s and their worth and purchase is a decision for him and his puppet Executive, and to push aside Parliament's central decisional importance on expenditure; he has been sharply put in place by constitutional analysts and even his own 'Commission' of constitutional experts but continues to insist that he and his army can do as they choose with their yet-another-special 'Commission', meeting in the presidential palace.
This corruption of politicians posing as an elected government has rendered the wife and daughter of a refugee to Kazahkstan after informal meetings in Sardinia between the Kazahkstan dictator and Berlusconi. Insult was then added to injury by the Italian state declaring the rendition shouldn't have taken place and the wife and daughter are welcome to return to Italy. They have neither passports nor means or permission to go, and who would willingly return, considering the manner of their leaving?
At what level of political and moral degradation any member of the Letta government will resign is a source of speculation. Economic failure, mass unemployment, social repression, law-breaking, state officials' and ministers' racial abuse (it's not just the Minister for Equalities, the illegally rendered wife was attacked by Ministry of the Interior paramilitaries screaming 'Russian whore' as they dragged her out of her house); and the suspension of Parliament for two days in protest at Berlusconi's final appeal being brought forward to deny the statute of limitations cancelling his conviction and condemnation - a suspension supported and voted for by the Democratic party and minor members of Napolitano's coalition administration - has not been enough.
In an appalling way it's technically interesting to watch how a fascist regime is put in place. From London, that is. Even the weather is better here than there.
Napolitano has tried to assert that F35s and their worth and purchase is a decision for him and his puppet Executive, and to push aside Parliament's central decisional importance on expenditure; he has been sharply put in place by constitutional analysts and even his own 'Commission' of constitutional experts but continues to insist that he and his army can do as they choose with their yet-another-special 'Commission', meeting in the presidential palace.
This corruption of politicians posing as an elected government has rendered the wife and daughter of a refugee to Kazahkstan after informal meetings in Sardinia between the Kazahkstan dictator and Berlusconi. Insult was then added to injury by the Italian state declaring the rendition shouldn't have taken place and the wife and daughter are welcome to return to Italy. They have neither passports nor means or permission to go, and who would willingly return, considering the manner of their leaving?
At what level of political and moral degradation any member of the Letta government will resign is a source of speculation. Economic failure, mass unemployment, social repression, law-breaking, state officials' and ministers' racial abuse (it's not just the Minister for Equalities, the illegally rendered wife was attacked by Ministry of the Interior paramilitaries screaming 'Russian whore' as they dragged her out of her house); and the suspension of Parliament for two days in protest at Berlusconi's final appeal being brought forward to deny the statute of limitations cancelling his conviction and condemnation - a suspension supported and voted for by the Democratic party and minor members of Napolitano's coalition administration - has not been enough.
In an appalling way it's technically interesting to watch how a fascist regime is put in place. From London, that is. Even the weather is better here than there.
Friday, 5 July 2013
La Miseria
The grocer in the village has stopped selling bread unless you have an order. He explained the bakers have stopped taking back unsold bread and reduced the kinds of bread and other bakery products on offer. It's a classic. You can now order un pane once more, like all those years ago, and get what you're given. It'll be un chilo di ciccia next and a lump of unidentified meat will be wrapped and handed.
The Italian statistical office has just issued its latest household consumption data [in English, should you care to look at the miserable collapse into ever-lower living standards and widespread poverty in all its detail, ed.] Italian household consumption has fallen by the most since records began.
The Italian statistical office has just issued its latest household consumption data [in English, should you care to look at the miserable collapse into ever-lower living standards and widespread poverty in all its detail, ed.] Italian household consumption has fallen by the most since records began.
Wednesday, 3 July 2013
Bailing In
Italy's economic distress is matched by its political and institutional debacle. Starting from the top Italy has a head of state arguably
unconstitutional in that second terms of office while not specifically
forbidden are excluded by every provision noted within the constitution:
by the fixed length of term of office, 7 years, which implies no repeat -14 years is far too long for a non-hereditary system; by the characteristics sought of candidates, extensive senior civic and political experience which of itself implies relatively advanced age in any
candidate; by there existing no precedent for any re-election.
Next Italy has a prime minister wholly unsupported by the electorate's votes. The election was held with entirely other candidates for office - none of whom was asked to form a government by a then out-going president, who positively precipitated governmental crisis by refusing to invite any Party leader to face Parliament, and then acted extra-constitutionally in appointing a committee to delineate the characteristics of both premier and policies regardless of expressed electoral choices.
The Parliament itself has been elected under rules that have been rejected as unlawful by the supreme court but its decision, though available on line, has not been officially transmitted to the constitutional court - some half a kilometre away - because various official practices required for its transmission have not yet been carried out in the last 8 weeks.
The iffy Parliament is now altering the articles of the Italian constitution that set out the regulation of changes to the Constitution. The finalisation of the removal of safeguards to the integrity of the Constitution will be during August, while no-one is around and looking.
The reform of the Constitution will include altering the role and powers of the head of state (retrospective cover there, then) but excludes specifically any alteration to the sections of the Constitution dealing with the judiciary and its independence - while the newly and increasingly empowered head of state will remain as head of the judiciary.
The imposed prime minister is ruling ad hoc and by decree, such decrees to be voted eventually by the Parliament, without normal legislative initiation procedures from parliament, and without any publicly discussed programme, let alone voted-upon manifesto.
The Democratic party, of whom the Prime Minster is a member, delays electing a leader (having installed a temporary leader who is not the prime minister, in the interim, by appointment not election) and flouts every aspect of its own rule book (for, like the Labour party, when in office the party Leader is prime minister) to prevent any disturbance of the imposed prime minister's tenure. A Party congress to choose a leader by election is repeatedly deferred and next year (sometime) is now being mooted.
The minority Coalition partner in government has just seen its leader convicted repeatedly, at various levels for various crimes, and the People of Liberty party is to re-form with most of it in a newly founded Forza Italia party whose self-selected Leader will once more be Berlusconi (what happens to the remnants is not clear).
The third largest grouping within the ruling Coalition, Monti's Civic Choice party, is at last (and at least) demanding a setting out and agreement of Coalition policies, on the German grand coalition model - which demand has been refused, dismissed, by the Head of State (not even bothering to have the fig-leaf prime minister make the statement) as not serious, 'not a threat'. Threat that is to the novel administration being inflicted on the country.
Meanwhile unemployment is at its highest since 1977 and to say just that there's no money left would be positively reassuring given the state the country's economy is in. Italy is far too big to bail out using the procedures applied to Greece, Cyprus and Ireland - even Spain, by Troika or the EU currency union alone. The Cyprus template for financial response to currency union weakness may not be the only template being trialled by determined europhiliacs.
Italy is a template, a trying out of a total bail-in: not just in failing banks and financial areas but of the entire country's democratic institutions and procedures, including financial. Every means of response short of unacceptable gestures in a civil society is being blocked-off and the country delivered hog-tied for whatever-it-takes financial and economic, institutional and political measures that will preserve the Project.
Next Italy has a prime minister wholly unsupported by the electorate's votes. The election was held with entirely other candidates for office - none of whom was asked to form a government by a then out-going president, who positively precipitated governmental crisis by refusing to invite any Party leader to face Parliament, and then acted extra-constitutionally in appointing a committee to delineate the characteristics of both premier and policies regardless of expressed electoral choices.
The Parliament itself has been elected under rules that have been rejected as unlawful by the supreme court but its decision, though available on line, has not been officially transmitted to the constitutional court - some half a kilometre away - because various official practices required for its transmission have not yet been carried out in the last 8 weeks.
The iffy Parliament is now altering the articles of the Italian constitution that set out the regulation of changes to the Constitution. The finalisation of the removal of safeguards to the integrity of the Constitution will be during August, while no-one is around and looking.
The reform of the Constitution will include altering the role and powers of the head of state (retrospective cover there, then) but excludes specifically any alteration to the sections of the Constitution dealing with the judiciary and its independence - while the newly and increasingly empowered head of state will remain as head of the judiciary.
The imposed prime minister is ruling ad hoc and by decree, such decrees to be voted eventually by the Parliament, without normal legislative initiation procedures from parliament, and without any publicly discussed programme, let alone voted-upon manifesto.
The Democratic party, of whom the Prime Minster is a member, delays electing a leader (having installed a temporary leader who is not the prime minister, in the interim, by appointment not election) and flouts every aspect of its own rule book (for, like the Labour party, when in office the party Leader is prime minister) to prevent any disturbance of the imposed prime minister's tenure. A Party congress to choose a leader by election is repeatedly deferred and next year (sometime) is now being mooted.
The minority Coalition partner in government has just seen its leader convicted repeatedly, at various levels for various crimes, and the People of Liberty party is to re-form with most of it in a newly founded Forza Italia party whose self-selected Leader will once more be Berlusconi (what happens to the remnants is not clear).
The third largest grouping within the ruling Coalition, Monti's Civic Choice party, is at last (and at least) demanding a setting out and agreement of Coalition policies, on the German grand coalition model - which demand has been refused, dismissed, by the Head of State (not even bothering to have the fig-leaf prime minister make the statement) as not serious, 'not a threat'. Threat that is to the novel administration being inflicted on the country.
Meanwhile unemployment is at its highest since 1977 and to say just that there's no money left would be positively reassuring given the state the country's economy is in. Italy is far too big to bail out using the procedures applied to Greece, Cyprus and Ireland - even Spain, by Troika or the EU currency union alone. The Cyprus template for financial response to currency union weakness may not be the only template being trialled by determined europhiliacs.
Italy is a template, a trying out of a total bail-in: not just in failing banks and financial areas but of the entire country's democratic institutions and procedures, including financial. Every means of response short of unacceptable gestures in a civil society is being blocked-off and the country delivered hog-tied for whatever-it-takes financial and economic, institutional and political measures that will preserve the Project.
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
It's Not Just Berlusca Who Can Embarrass For Italy
Silvio may have said out loud his assessment of the German Chancellor's bottom but there are public figures in Italy who display worse forms of vulgarity. Consider these profound economic assessments delivered oh so sententiously in that washing-the-words-round-the-palate, plummy tones of the President of the Republic; he is addressing Confindustria (whose members enjoy a certain entrepreneurial capacity).
Napolitano feels the need for removal of "normative and administrative inadequacies which prevent Italy from acquiring such significant potential resources [inward foreign investment].... "Today", we are told by the Head of State, no less, "the flow of foreign investment is crucial to give an innovative stimulus to production and employment recovery: not just to provide fresh capital, but contributions from people, and ideas, of production and organisational models, of new technologies and systems."*
Who would ever have thought this? Such innovative freshness of economic thought from our 88 year old. Take us away, Giorgio!
At least Berlusca knows what he's talking about.
* [only fair to put in the rotund phrases, the jejeune advice, as offered in the original, ed.]
".....rimuovere le inadeguatezze normative ed amministrative che impediscono di acquisire all'Italia così significative potenziali risorse». ..."Oggi l'afflusso di investimenti dall'estero in Italia é cruciale per dare uno stimolo innovativo alla ripresa produttiva e all'occupazione: non solo per l'apporto di capitali freschi, ma il contributo di persone e di idee, di modelli produttivi e organizzativi, di nuove tecnologie e sistemi".
Napolitano feels the need for removal of "normative and administrative inadequacies which prevent Italy from acquiring such significant potential resources [inward foreign investment].... "Today", we are told by the Head of State, no less, "the flow of foreign investment is crucial to give an innovative stimulus to production and employment recovery: not just to provide fresh capital, but contributions from people, and ideas, of production and organisational models, of new technologies and systems."*
Who would ever have thought this? Such innovative freshness of economic thought from our 88 year old. Take us away, Giorgio!
At least Berlusca knows what he's talking about.
* [only fair to put in the rotund phrases, the jejeune advice, as offered in the original, ed.]
".....rimuovere le inadeguatezze normative ed amministrative che impediscono di acquisire all'Italia così significative potenziali risorse». ..."Oggi l'afflusso di investimenti dall'estero in Italia é cruciale per dare uno stimolo innovativo alla ripresa produttiva e all'occupazione: non solo per l'apporto di capitali freschi, ma il contributo di persone e di idee, di modelli produttivi e organizzativi, di nuove tecnologie e sistemi".
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