superg52
Nuovo forumer
leggete un po' cosa scrive il wall street journal
del nostro presidente del consiglio Silvio B.
per chi non legge l'inglese, preciso che alla fine
dell'articolo ci si chiede "Ci sono in Italia abbastanza
coglio...ni da prendere ancora sul serio lui sulla parola?"
(i puntini li ho aggiunti io, in fondo c'è il link all'articolo tuttora online)
DON COGLIO...NI
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI
April 7, 2006; Page A12
MILAN -- For sheer kitsch and bawdy fun, this Italian campaign rivals the worst of them. The main themes in the two-day parliamentary election starting Sunday appear to be botany and soccer. The dozen parties in the center-left Olive Tree Coalition include the Daisy party and the Rose in the Fist. The Communist Refoundation, not to be confused with the Italian Communists -- a separate Olive party -- employs a large green marijuana leaf against a red background, as inspired by its drug legalization agenda. Its posters here in the financial capital, in a sweet bit of irony, can be found hanging next to the gleaming face of Alessandra Mussolini, il Duce's granddaughter and a neo-Fascist pol. On the center-right, the "three forwards" bloc is led by Forza Italia (Go Italy!), named after a chant of the soccer pitch, and closely associated with the AC Milan team.
The substance, such as it is, of campaign debate is shaped by the country's one notable achievement of recent years: its replacement of Germany as the "sick man of Europe." Italy's minuscule growth and, more troubling for this hot-blooded society, fertility figures, are dissected daily, mostly by the resurgent Olive opposition. The favorite in this race, according to opinion polls conducted before a March 24 blackout, is il Professore, the charmless Romano Prodi, a professor of industrial policy who is a former prime minister and European Commission president, back home from Brussels to lead the Italian center-left.
And yet for all this noise and color, the election is not about any issue or party but rather a man known as il Cavaliere, the knight. For the fourth time in 12 years, Italians will vote up or down on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is loved and despised with equal intensity. Author Beppe Severgnini calls this weekend's main event a referendum. Mr. Berlusconi, Italy's richest man (net worth: $12 billion) and its longest-serving postwar leader, has divided, inspired, appalled and entertained not only Italy but Europe. No one dares count out the country's greatest ever salesman, but his troubles in this race are the result of his failure to deliver on the chief promise of his landslide victory in 2001: a changed Italy.
Five years on, the country's politics still beg not to be taken seriously. The scandal of the moment, a lead story even on the Berlusconi-owned news networks, involves pensieri positivi, a jarring slur, implying stupidity, derived from the Italian word for testicles. As in this Berlusconi comment from last Tuesday: "I have too much respect for the Italians to think there are that many coglio...ni around who'd vote against their own interests." The opposition was shocked, shocked. Silvio-bashers gleefully predicted this latest vulgarity would push the undecideds into the Prodi camp. Of course, what the prime minister claimed was meant ironically may turn out, if the vote swings his way, to be more proof of his instinctive feel for what Italians want to hear, or buy.
The coglio...ni affair is a high/low point of a long race. In Monday's second debate, which was in theory held under Teutonic rules on speaking times and decorum, Mr. Prodi characterized the prime minister as a "drunkard clinging to a lamppost." Mr. Berlusconi, in turn, called his opponent "an idiot," and throughout the campaign has managed to hog attention by simply being himself.
On the day that Mr. Prodi put out Olive's campaign program, Mr. Berlusconi stole the headlines by styling himself "the Jesus Christ of politics"; Napoleon, previously invoked as a historical mentor, was apparently no longer grand enough. The soon-to-be 70-year-old prime minister has vowed to refrain from sexual activity until after the elections; few believe him. He did find time to poll telephone sex operators. Seven out of nine, he claims, plan to vote for him. And so on.
Mr. Berlusconi may look foolish but he's no fool. In this election, with little achievement from the past five years to sell, he has reverted to the role that, as a tycoon and two-time prime minister, he would seem ill-suited to play: the outsider. Somehow it fits him. Mr. Berlusconi is a self-made man whose nouveaux-riche tastes and manners offend the smart set, which naturally tilts left, as well as the old business families, which don't. Another highlight was his screaming match at a meeting with the employers' association. The press roundly mocked him but many ordinary Italians cheered him on -- as crazy as it seems -- for standing up to the fat cats. These are the same Italians who also smile when their prime minister wears a bandana after another hair transplant or performs his own ballads at his villa on Sardinia.
In his remarkable business career, launched by seed capital of uncertain origin, Mr. Berlusconi succeeded by challenging and co-opting the establishment, first in real estate and then to pry open TV to commercial stations in the 1980s. Fond of TV chat shows and soccer, Italians are equally grateful to him for turning AC Milan, an also-ran before Mr. Berlusconi took it over, into a premier European club. "Silvio Berlusconi revolutionized Italy as a CEO, not as a prime minister," says Christian Rocca of the Milan daily Il Foglio, part of the Berlusconi media empire.
Many explanations are offered for his disappointing five years. One is the system of concertazione, literally concert, which refers to the country's messy coalition politics. Another is repeated assaults from prosecutors dredging up old corruption allegations. Yet another is Mr. Berlusconi's reluctance to dismantle the cozy guilds that protect professions, from taxi drivers to journalists; as a businessman, he doesn't seem to believe in open competition as a good in itself. But he did loosen up labor codes, in a fashion that French leaders can only dream of, and lowered unemployment.
His greatest failure, his "read my lips" moment, is on taxes. He won an unprecedented mandate in 2001 to lower and simplify rates, and could have. He didn't. Having broken that pledge, his core constituency of small private entrepreneurs is not so much turning to Mr. Prodi as staying home.
Italy's pathologies are serious. Its crushing debt burden (at 108.5% of GDP in 2005), demographic crisis and uncompetitive industries pose the gravest apparent danger to the euro, which many Italians want to drop for the old lira. Mario Monti, former EU competition commissioner and now president of Milan's Bocconi University, describes the euro-zone's third-largest economy as "self-inflicted strangulation." It need not be so grim. In contrast to the furies on French streets these days, Italians are protective of their perks but not hostile to capitalism itself. "The French are the only ones who have an alternative model in mind," Mr. Monti says. Italy could show Germany and France a way out of the woods.
Only this election seems unlikely to shake things up. A new electoral law, whose constitutionality -- in a little Italian twist -- is in some doubt, will produce a less stable government. A hung parliament could force a rerun of this circus in a few weeks. Assuming a clear winner emerges once polls close on Monday morning, Italy will be the only country in Europe, except for Lithuania, led by a prime minister born before WWII.
If that man isn't Mr. Berlusconi, it won't be because the latter backed the war in Iraq or considers George Bush a friend. Iraq wasn't an issue in the campaign; the alliance with the U.S. is a plus in a country that's tried, mostly in vain, to join the big league ever since Mussolini invaded Abyssinia. And it won't be a rebuke of Mr. Berlusconi's nominally free-market ideas, which were never seriously implemented, or his various business conflicts of interest, which everyone is aware of, or even of his legal troubles, since prosecutors are politically tainted.
For 600 years, points out Beppe Severgnini, Italians have put up with being ruled by i Signori -- grandees -- who in power are permitted to look after their own interests provided everyone else benefits as well. Reviving the winning formula of his last campaign, Mr. Berlusconi in Monday's debate pledged, out of the blue, to abolish the hated property taxes. To deploy the prime minister's own indelicate musings earlier this week: Are there enough coglio...ni in Italy to take him at his word again? Or to risk ignoring him?
Mr. Kaminski is editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114437419143719636.html
del nostro presidente del consiglio Silvio B.
per chi non legge l'inglese, preciso che alla fine
dell'articolo ci si chiede "Ci sono in Italia abbastanza
coglio...ni da prendere ancora sul serio lui sulla parola?"
(i puntini li ho aggiunti io, in fondo c'è il link all'articolo tuttora online)
DON COGLIO...NI
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI
April 7, 2006; Page A12
MILAN -- For sheer kitsch and bawdy fun, this Italian campaign rivals the worst of them. The main themes in the two-day parliamentary election starting Sunday appear to be botany and soccer. The dozen parties in the center-left Olive Tree Coalition include the Daisy party and the Rose in the Fist. The Communist Refoundation, not to be confused with the Italian Communists -- a separate Olive party -- employs a large green marijuana leaf against a red background, as inspired by its drug legalization agenda. Its posters here in the financial capital, in a sweet bit of irony, can be found hanging next to the gleaming face of Alessandra Mussolini, il Duce's granddaughter and a neo-Fascist pol. On the center-right, the "three forwards" bloc is led by Forza Italia (Go Italy!), named after a chant of the soccer pitch, and closely associated with the AC Milan team.
The substance, such as it is, of campaign debate is shaped by the country's one notable achievement of recent years: its replacement of Germany as the "sick man of Europe." Italy's minuscule growth and, more troubling for this hot-blooded society, fertility figures, are dissected daily, mostly by the resurgent Olive opposition. The favorite in this race, according to opinion polls conducted before a March 24 blackout, is il Professore, the charmless Romano Prodi, a professor of industrial policy who is a former prime minister and European Commission president, back home from Brussels to lead the Italian center-left.
And yet for all this noise and color, the election is not about any issue or party but rather a man known as il Cavaliere, the knight. For the fourth time in 12 years, Italians will vote up or down on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is loved and despised with equal intensity. Author Beppe Severgnini calls this weekend's main event a referendum. Mr. Berlusconi, Italy's richest man (net worth: $12 billion) and its longest-serving postwar leader, has divided, inspired, appalled and entertained not only Italy but Europe. No one dares count out the country's greatest ever salesman, but his troubles in this race are the result of his failure to deliver on the chief promise of his landslide victory in 2001: a changed Italy.
Five years on, the country's politics still beg not to be taken seriously. The scandal of the moment, a lead story even on the Berlusconi-owned news networks, involves pensieri positivi, a jarring slur, implying stupidity, derived from the Italian word for testicles. As in this Berlusconi comment from last Tuesday: "I have too much respect for the Italians to think there are that many coglio...ni around who'd vote against their own interests." The opposition was shocked, shocked. Silvio-bashers gleefully predicted this latest vulgarity would push the undecideds into the Prodi camp. Of course, what the prime minister claimed was meant ironically may turn out, if the vote swings his way, to be more proof of his instinctive feel for what Italians want to hear, or buy.
The coglio...ni affair is a high/low point of a long race. In Monday's second debate, which was in theory held under Teutonic rules on speaking times and decorum, Mr. Prodi characterized the prime minister as a "drunkard clinging to a lamppost." Mr. Berlusconi, in turn, called his opponent "an idiot," and throughout the campaign has managed to hog attention by simply being himself.
On the day that Mr. Prodi put out Olive's campaign program, Mr. Berlusconi stole the headlines by styling himself "the Jesus Christ of politics"; Napoleon, previously invoked as a historical mentor, was apparently no longer grand enough. The soon-to-be 70-year-old prime minister has vowed to refrain from sexual activity until after the elections; few believe him. He did find time to poll telephone sex operators. Seven out of nine, he claims, plan to vote for him. And so on.
Mr. Berlusconi may look foolish but he's no fool. In this election, with little achievement from the past five years to sell, he has reverted to the role that, as a tycoon and two-time prime minister, he would seem ill-suited to play: the outsider. Somehow it fits him. Mr. Berlusconi is a self-made man whose nouveaux-riche tastes and manners offend the smart set, which naturally tilts left, as well as the old business families, which don't. Another highlight was his screaming match at a meeting with the employers' association. The press roundly mocked him but many ordinary Italians cheered him on -- as crazy as it seems -- for standing up to the fat cats. These are the same Italians who also smile when their prime minister wears a bandana after another hair transplant or performs his own ballads at his villa on Sardinia.
In his remarkable business career, launched by seed capital of uncertain origin, Mr. Berlusconi succeeded by challenging and co-opting the establishment, first in real estate and then to pry open TV to commercial stations in the 1980s. Fond of TV chat shows and soccer, Italians are equally grateful to him for turning AC Milan, an also-ran before Mr. Berlusconi took it over, into a premier European club. "Silvio Berlusconi revolutionized Italy as a CEO, not as a prime minister," says Christian Rocca of the Milan daily Il Foglio, part of the Berlusconi media empire.
Many explanations are offered for his disappointing five years. One is the system of concertazione, literally concert, which refers to the country's messy coalition politics. Another is repeated assaults from prosecutors dredging up old corruption allegations. Yet another is Mr. Berlusconi's reluctance to dismantle the cozy guilds that protect professions, from taxi drivers to journalists; as a businessman, he doesn't seem to believe in open competition as a good in itself. But he did loosen up labor codes, in a fashion that French leaders can only dream of, and lowered unemployment.
His greatest failure, his "read my lips" moment, is on taxes. He won an unprecedented mandate in 2001 to lower and simplify rates, and could have. He didn't. Having broken that pledge, his core constituency of small private entrepreneurs is not so much turning to Mr. Prodi as staying home.
Italy's pathologies are serious. Its crushing debt burden (at 108.5% of GDP in 2005), demographic crisis and uncompetitive industries pose the gravest apparent danger to the euro, which many Italians want to drop for the old lira. Mario Monti, former EU competition commissioner and now president of Milan's Bocconi University, describes the euro-zone's third-largest economy as "self-inflicted strangulation." It need not be so grim. In contrast to the furies on French streets these days, Italians are protective of their perks but not hostile to capitalism itself. "The French are the only ones who have an alternative model in mind," Mr. Monti says. Italy could show Germany and France a way out of the woods.
Only this election seems unlikely to shake things up. A new electoral law, whose constitutionality -- in a little Italian twist -- is in some doubt, will produce a less stable government. A hung parliament could force a rerun of this circus in a few weeks. Assuming a clear winner emerges once polls close on Monday morning, Italy will be the only country in Europe, except for Lithuania, led by a prime minister born before WWII.
If that man isn't Mr. Berlusconi, it won't be because the latter backed the war in Iraq or considers George Bush a friend. Iraq wasn't an issue in the campaign; the alliance with the U.S. is a plus in a country that's tried, mostly in vain, to join the big league ever since Mussolini invaded Abyssinia. And it won't be a rebuke of Mr. Berlusconi's nominally free-market ideas, which were never seriously implemented, or his various business conflicts of interest, which everyone is aware of, or even of his legal troubles, since prosecutors are politically tainted.
For 600 years, points out Beppe Severgnini, Italians have put up with being ruled by i Signori -- grandees -- who in power are permitted to look after their own interests provided everyone else benefits as well. Reviving the winning formula of his last campaign, Mr. Berlusconi in Monday's debate pledged, out of the blue, to abolish the hated property taxes. To deploy the prime minister's own indelicate musings earlier this week: Are there enough coglio...ni in Italy to take him at his word again? Or to risk ignoring him?
Mr. Kaminski is editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114437419143719636.html
