Articles by: Judith Harris

  • Op-Eds

    Quake-Stricken Abruzzo Revisited

    An ancient fortified borgo dating from circa 1300, Santo Stefano is situated at 1,250 m. high in the Gran Sasso mountain complex. However apparently remote, this has been a trade route since time immemorial, and the work "Sessanio" in the town name probably derives from the Latin Sextantio referring to a six-mile distance along a road in Roman times.

    The town is a serendipitous blend of traditional white granite Abruzzo construction blended with Tuscan highlights because it was ruled by the Piccolomini banking family of Siena in the 1500s and then, through marriage, for almost two centuries by the Medici of Florence. The alliance with the Medici was about the wool trade; Florentine merchants purchased wool in the big market at L'Aquila for their textiles. The importance of the wool trade is shown in the transhumance census of the year 1474 in Puglia, which showed that Santo Stefano and three other tiny mountain towns had brought no fewer than 94,070 sheep southward down the mountains through the trattura reale (the route through the mountain passes that were the exclusive property of the king) to avoid the heavy snows of winter.

    These cultural connections show from the Piccolomini came a fine defensive tower; from the Medici, architectural details and a number of churches scattered through the Abruzzo whose architecture reflects the Florentine style. One of these rises in nearby Castel del Monte, a fortified mountain borgo that vaunts a painting by Lorenzo di Monaldo, personally commissioned in the late 16th Century of Francesco de' Medici.

    Santo Stefano was among the towns hit hard by the earthquake in 2009. Its great Piccolomini tower collapsed. Roofs caved in, walls were cracked. Today's visitors, many of them weekenders from Rome, walk down narrow alleys between centuries-old buildings whose walls are still held up by scaffolding. The original stones of which the tower was built have been collected and saved, but four years after the disaster local builders are still awaiting the promised government contribution for reconstruction. Finding the funds will not be easy during a tough recession, which continues to bring victims in almost every sector of the economy.

    This reporter was last in the Abruzzo shortly after the quake, for a benefit concert offered by conductor Riccardo Muti. Hopes then were high for speedy reconstruction but so far little has been delivered by the Italian Government; indeed, according to the daily Il Messaggero in a headline April 24, "Earthquake: From the government, nothing." However, a second sum of E500 million was promised this April by Fabrizio Barca, Minister for the Territory in Mario Monti's cabinet and a leader of the left-leaning Partito Democratico. "The Government should undertake to provide about E 1 billion to cover the needs over the next 12 months and, in all, E 10.7 billion for a full reconstruction," said Barca.

    Other reconstruction funds have arrived from outside Italy including a $2 million donation from Canada, where Ontario Province donated $500,000. On a more homespun level a group of private citizens organized an international conference last weekend called "Let's Blog Abbruzzo" for passionate bloggers willing to turn their skills to helping the Abruzzo emerge from the quake. Profits from participants' contributions are going toward two community causes that will help provide employment and increase tourism in the area.

     
  • Op-Eds

    Local Elections Stun Pundits


    ROME - Local administrative elections this past Sunday and Monday in Rome and other key cities throughout Italy stunned pundits and the rest of us, and not only because of the results. The turnout was 20% lower than the last round five years ago, as nearly half those entitled to vote in the cities, which included Rome, Ferrara and Siena, stayed home or abstained. Whereas the left-leaning Partito Democratico (PD) made a surprisingly good showing, Berlusconi's Partito della Liberta' (PdL) slumped behind. Even more interesting was that Beppe Grillo's Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S, or Five-Star Movement) just dropped a few stars. No one had predicted a debacle on this level. Just what their shellacking means, and what they are to do about it, is being hotly debated by the losers.
     
    The inner tensions have one obvious conclusion: the government headed by Enrico Letta of the PD, and backed by Berlusconi's party, is strengthened.
    The elections for a new mayor and city council in Rome help to explain why. Amazingly, with 512,000 votes, Ignazio Marino, the mayoral candidate of the PD, captured almost 43% of the total vote in Rome. Just three months ago in national general political elections the Partito della Libertà (PdL), headed by Silvio Berlusconi, had 299,000 votes. Last weekend the PdL candidate to succeed himself as mayor, Gianni Alemanno, had one-third as much, with only 100,000. Elsewhere the PdL vote sagged by from 20-30% from just three months ago. The slumped showed in North Italian cities like Brescia and Treviso and, on the Adriatic coast, at Ancona, where some 40% of the electorate deserted the polls.
     
    Similarly. the Northern League vote lost ground. Among the surprisingly big losers in Rome were the six candidates standing for former Premier Mario Monti's Lista Civica, who altogether reaped less than 2%. This triumph was all the more surprising in the light of the fragmented Partito Democratico, which today has no less than eleven quarreling factions. What also casts a slight shadow over the PD victory, besides the fact that the high abstentionism muddies the waters, is that the leading candidate for the Lazio regional election (again, only three months ago) had 715,000 votes, 200,000 more than Ignazio Marino.
     
    Beppe Grillo's showing was particularly disappointing to his followers. By one estimate, one Grillo voter out of 10, or some 40,000, deserted the M5S to vote for the Rome PD candidate Marino. In Ancona, Grillo took only one-quarter of the votes he had won in the same city in political elections in February. According to Prof. Piergiorgio Corbetta of the respectable Istituto Cataneo think tank, half of Grillo's supporters chose to abstain rather than turn out to vote for the M5S again. In Barletta in the South half of those who voted in February for Grillo fled back to the PD. The poor showing of the M5S has Grillo himself in an obvious quandary. His most recent shock tactic: to attack Stefano Rodota, the leftist intellectual whom Grillo had supported as candidate for Italian president. "He [Rodota] is an octogenarian who had a miracle thanks to the Internet - he's freshly put in brine and brought of the mausoleum." Asked about this savage about-face attack, Rodota' said only, "Well, I'm not surprised." In his editorial for La Repubblica daily Thursday, Massimo Giannini picked up the cudgels of the insults to Rodota and accused Grillo of suffering from a "delirium of omnipotency."
     
    As a result, at least some of Grillo's mostly untested representatives in Parliament are threatening to bolt and to shift their loyalty elsewhere. "His voters are immature," in Rodota's analysis. "Those without a strong presence in the territory tend to find themselves in difficulty. It's no coincidence that the party that won the most votes in these elections was the PD, despite the high abstentionism meaning fewer voters altogether." His conclusion: "It's not enough for Grillo just to talk." As for Grillo himself, he seems confused and accuses others of spying on his movement. "He's destroying the very movement he created," said Giannini. Grillo's own professorial supporter and M5S guru Paolo Becchi seemed disoriented, admitting that, "I would not have used such harsh words about Rodota."
  • Facts & Stories

    Falcone Remembered Amid (Mostly Un)friendly Fire

    ROME - May 23 marks the 21st anniversary of the murder of the anti-Mafia Judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo and their three bodyguards, blown up by 500 kilos of dynamite on the highway between the airport at Punta Raisi and the city of Palermo. Most of those considered responsible, acting under the direction of Mafia boss Toto Riina, are long since in prison.

    But what is believed to lie behind his murder, and that months of his fellow magistrate Paolo Borsellino, is still being analyzed by Palermo magistrates, who have revived the investigation into allegations that an illegal secret pact had been agreed upon between the government and the Mafia in 1992 following simultaneous bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan that left five dead. In the words of the chief prosecutor of Palermo Roberto Scarpinato, during this week's commemoration of Falcone in the Justice Building in Palermo, "We must take cognizance that the Mafia evil is not outside of us but also among us."

    Palermo prosecutors are now requesting that President Giorgio Napolitano testify in court on what he may have learned, in his role as Justice Minister at that time, about the alleged pact. If he accepts, he would not be asked to comment, as was earlier requested, upon phone taps in which he was reportedly heard speaking with the defendant, the former Interior Minister Nicola Mancino. On court order those tapes have been destroyed. Will Napolitano accept? Some here hope he will at least testify, if not in Palermo, from behind his desk in the Quirinal Palace.

    Elsewhere a step in the right direction was Premier Letta's success in facing down Berlusconi's Liberty party (PdL) efforts this week to reduce by half sentences for Mafia association. Among those who would benefit from this proposed easing of sentences for alleged Mafia association is Marcello Dell'Utri, longtime Berlusconi associate. This truly disgraceful attempt to weaken the anti-Mafia prosecutors' delicate position, especially in Sicily, did not succeed; Deputy Premier Angelino Alfano of the PdL is reportedly given credit for mediating between the two who share government responsibility, PD and PdL.

    Otherwise most was unfriendly fire this week. On Tuesday the governing coalition partners decided to place before Parliament, and then before Italians in a referendum, a modified electoral law to replace the hated "Porcellum" - the dirty pig law, as it is universally known. Passed while Silvio Berlusconi was premier, it included a provision that whatever coalition cluster achieved a relative majority would have an absolute majority in Parliament. The government's proposed revision would increase the minimum to 40% of the vote in order for a party to win that coveted freebie majority, or from up to 50 MPs to perhaps 25 or 30.

    It seemed like a step in the right direction until Wednesday, when the Partito Democratico (PD) leadership unexpectedly converged in opposition, from the youthful captain of the guard Matteo Renzi to Rosi Bindi of the old guard, saying that the move was phony, a camouflage instead of true reform, and would do nothing but help Silvio Berlusconi and Angelino Alfano to become leaders of a future post-election government. Another problem: no mention was made of the Letta government's plans to reduce the number of members of Parliament.

    And there is a real if not perceived as an immediate problem. The present government headed by Enrico Letta of the left-leaning PD came to power because its electoral coalition was amplified through its embrace of Nichi Vendola's further left party, the Sinistra Ecologia Liberta' (SEL, for Left-Environment-Freedom). This union of two parties gave Letta sufficient votes and hence enough freebie MPs to win control over the Chamber of Deputies, if not the Senate. As a result, Letta rather than Berlusconi or the irascible Beppe Grillo is premier, thanks to the Porcellum he himself had lobbied to correct for future elections. However, in recent days Italy's high Court of Cassations ruled that, if a ruling coalition crumbles while in government, the validity of the very Parliament is in essence questionable. Although this ruling has slipped conveniently through the cracks, it is precisely the case today because Vendola has slithered out of the coalition that brought the duo Letta-Vendola into office only two months ago.

    The ever vocal opposition Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) is also running into new problems. Senior PD members of Parliament are calling for stricter norms for political party funding that would in essence force the truculent Beppe Grillo's M5S to become a party like others, or not be permitted to field candidates for office. Needless to say, Grillo is vociferously outraged, claiming that the parties in power are trying to remove him from the political scene and that, if they go on, he will bring his multitude of followers into the piazzas. At the same time he is cracking down on his own warriors, being asked to concede interviews only to Grillo-approved journalists. Once approved, the interview must take place in an open hall and be tape recorded. Grillo's movement being by its very nature more anarchic than soldierly, there was a chorus of protests against what amounts to a gag rule. 
  • Art & Culture

    Vatican at the Biennale: Where Sacred and Profane Art Meet

    ROME - For the first time in the 110-year history of the Venice Biennale, open June 1 through Nov. 24, the sovereign state of the Vatican will have its own pavilion within the Arsenale. Its theme, "Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation," is intended as an illustration of the first eleven books of Genesis and also as modern homage to Michelangelo's five-centuries-old Sistine Chapel ceiling. Although the Vatican participated in the Biennale two years ago, it was as a neighboring outsider whose exhibition was presented inside a building belonging to the Church but outside the Arsenale area of Venice where the Biennale proper is held.

    A reconciliation between the sacred and the profane in art has long been the goal of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Cultural Commission. Speaking at a press conference at the Vatican Tuesday, Ravasi explained that, "We are trying to reconstruct what has been essentially a divorce between art and faith. The fracture has existed; art went its own way, including with sometimes provocative and even blasphemous themes." In an interview for the New York monthly ARTnews some years ago the then Mons. Ravasi had expanded on this, adding that, whereas the new Roman Catholic churches are the works of the finest contemporary architects, their interior adornments fail to achieve the same artistic level.

    The new Vatican pavilion, which has three separate spaces within the old Sala d'Armi of the Arsenale, features three radically different and, each in its way, novel works. The first, which represents the Creation, is by a three-man multi-media team called Studio Azzurro of Milan. In the center of a dark room is a stone mass which can be touched by the visitor, who by his hand evokes sounds and images evoking the earliest phases of life in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. This interactive installation is in its way a development out of computer gaming, and akin to the Vatican Museum's new interactive installation in its Etruscan collection, called "Etruscanning."

    Un-Creation, which can also be interpreted as chaos and man's inhumanity to man, is illustrated by dramatic scenes of war and devastation taken by the prize-winning Czech photographer Josef Koudelka, who was had countless international exhibitions and was recently featured in National Geographic magazine. The concept is of man's defiance of God's plan, Ravasi has explained. Koudelka's smuggled photographs of the brutality of Soviet tanks hurtling down the streets of Prague in 1968 were published throughout the West but could not be signed so as to protect his family in Czechoslovakia. He is also noted for his series of sensitive photos of the Rom (the people we once called Gypsies).

    The third pavilion area is occupied by a one-man exhibition of works by an Australian-born artist who has worked for decades in the U.S., Lawrence Carroll. His abstract illustrations of Re-Creation - that is, the search for hope - are built upon the concept that outgrown, castoff objects, such as an artist's canvass that has been thrown away and re-used by another, can imply the possibility of a new beginning and spiritual rebirth, as in Noah and his Arc. Carroll's works are in some of the collections of some of the world's most important museums, not least the LACMA in Los Angeles and  the Guggenheim in New York. Interestingly, in 1994 Carroll participated in on exhibition in Koln, Germany, with Ugo Kittlemann, a German who is also present at the Biennale as the first non-Russian curator of the Russian pavilion.

    An additional exhibition space is dedicated to three works by the late Tano Festa, who died in 1988, who made a series of works inspired by Michelangelo. Two by him had been exhibited at the Venice Biennale in l964.

    Choosing representatives of contemporary art to present at the Biennale cannot have been easy for Ravasi and his advisors, who included Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums, and Micol Forti, a member of the Pontifical commission. As Biennale president Paolo Barratta explained, with Ravasi nodding beside him, the works shown at the Biennale represent a moment of gestation and are not necessarily chosen "in view of their final destination." The Biennale is a "birthplace," Barratta emphasized, "reflecting the artists' sense of urgency."

    A few Catholic bloggers protested in advance that the forthcoming exhibition would employ artists signed up, "not to represent Catholic spirituality, but to demonstrate that the lay artist too can acceed to the sacred." Another consideration was cost, and prior to the announcement of the trio of exhibits Catholic bloggers were already complaining of what they considered money they considered wasted on costly insurance, packaging and transport. In fact, the total cost of under $970,000 was paid by a group of sponsors. The largest single cost ($400,000 circa) was for rental and maintenance of the pavilion space.

    In the end, the Church commission chose not to ask friendly artists to exhibit three Crucifixes or three Madonnas, although, said Ravasi, "We may do just that in the future." Several women artists were considered but, when invited to participate, were unable to do so; one, because the work proposed was too delicate to travel because it was composed of butterfly wings.
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    Giulio Andreotti Larger than Life even in Death

    ROME - The death of Giulio Andreotti marks the end of an era. He was the last important figure of the first Italian republic, and as such his death on May 6 was a top news story in Italy and worldwide. For many at home it was also an occasion for soul searching. Countless Italians of every walk of life remarked that, whatever his sins might have been, Andreotti loomed larger than those trying to fill the political shoes today. He was born way back in 1919, and, when I first met him  in the early 1960s, he was an already seasoned politician who did not miss a beat. He slept little, read omnivorously, was ever cordial and somehow managed to attend every appropriate event, and not only those organized by his Christian Democratic party, the DC.

    In later years he was accused of going too far in allegedly having secret meetings with Mafia bosses. By one account these began with an attempt to stop the Mafia from hounding Piersanti Mattarella, an unusually decent Sicilian Catholic politician who became President of the Region in 1978 and fought the Mafia. For his pains Mattarella was murdered in 1980. Later a Mafia turncoat told investigators that he had seen Andreotti give a polite kiss on each cheek to a notorious boss. Andreotti's biographer, Massimo Franco, denies that there is no evidence for either incident and retorts, "Andreotti does not kiss even his wife." Twice Andreotti was tried on alleged Mafia association but never convicted. In one case he was cleared, in another, the statute of limitations ran out so there was no pronouncement.

    What is true is that Andreotti's link to the Mafia was a link to Sicily itself, and in the early postwar years, like it or not, the Mafia was very much part of the Sicilian establishment. The majority Christian Democratic party (DC) was ever forced to fight for its life (albeit with U.S. financial backing and Roman Catholic Church moral backing) against the Communist party (the PCI, with a quarter of Italian votes and Soviet financial backing). For the DC, Sicily provided 20% of its party members, meaning that the island represented, within the party, a particularly strong power base.

    The Sicilian DC, moreover, was not the sole party in Sicily which had factions with links to local Mafia organizations that turned out and guaranteed the vote. Prior to Sicily's becoming in the 1980s the world capital of heroin manufacture, after seizing the title from the French - that is, in its pre-drug era - the Sicilian Mafia was, in its way, an accepted part of the entire Sicilian society. A Sicilian journalist told me of attending an important event in Palermo in the Seventies. On the platform were the authorities including the local politicians and a priest. Just before the event began the local Mafia boss walked in, to applause, and sat down in the empty seat left for him in the front row. He was not on the platform, but it was as if he were. This was Sicily at that time - the real Sicily.

    Andreotti in the meantime had been the DC's go-between with the Vatican, in a period when the Church was selling vast swaths of land for construction projects, especially housing developments. He had personal relations with  at least six pontiffs. It is a safe guess that the DC as a party (but not, as today, individuals filling their personal pockets) took some benefit through the negotiations between Vatican and the contractors building the new Rome. In short, if Andreotti were the negotiator between Pontiff and state - and the DC was the state - he had limited interest in Sicily.

    At that time the Sicilian organization was headed by Vito Ciancimino of Corleone, DC mayor of Palermo who was expelled from the party in 1984 after his arrest for Mafia association. Ciancimino was responsible, according to magistrates, for the "most explicit infiltration of the Mafia in the public administration" and as such was convicted by the Italian supreme court to a total of thirteen years in prison. When Amintore Fanfani left as the coordinator between the Sicilian and the national DC, Andreotti inherited the running of that tainted Sicilian organization, whose importance, as he once admitted, "I underestimated." Fighting the Sicilian Mafia, however worthy a cause, was not his priority. Doubtless it should have been, but one should also bear in mind that, over the decades, Andreotti was serving seven times as premier and in twenty-two other governments, as a cabinet minister.

    Unlike that of Margaret Thatcher, Andeotti was not given a state funeral nor was the body of this life-time senator laid in state inside the Senate. Instead his funeral three days ago took place in private. In death others came to him, both while he was lying at home in Rome and in the private funeral in the nearby basilica of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, his parish church. Among those who called at Andreotti's house before the funeral were President Giorgio Napolitano and former Premier Mario Monti. Most significantly, the Senate President Pietro Grasso, whose long experience as an anti-Mafia prosecutor, also attended.

    What most here were saying is that his secrets, whatever they were, died with Andreotti. He has however left massive archives which are expected to shed light, not on the mysteries of Italy (if those papers ever existed, they have surely been destroyed), but on the entire postwar governance of Italy.
  • Facts & Stories

    Female Stars in Letta's Firmament


    ROME - The good news is that Premier Enrico Letta's 21-member cabinet of ministers, sworn into office by President Giorgio Napolitano on April 26 and confirmed in  votes of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies and then the Senate on April 30, has the largest number of women ministers of any of the previous dozens of governments since the birth of the Republic. Although the Letta government is not expected to last the full five-year legislative term (and since WWII only one government has), let us enjoy this female presence as long it lasts, whether nine months, as some predict, or l8 months as others guess. Here they are, in profile.

     
    The women in the news begin with the new foreign minister, Emma Bonino, 65, a graduate of Milan's prestigious Bocconi University. She was first elected to Parliament representing the Radical Party 28 years ago and has been secretary of that (now much reduced) party since 1993. Bonino is also a familiar figure in Brussels, where she became European Commissioner for humanitarian aid in 1995, and worked on behalf of victims of the warring Balkan nations. As Commissioner her bailiwick later included consumer health and food safety. She turned her interest to Cairo in 2001, where she began studying Arabic, before returning to Brussels in 2004. Two years later Premier Romano Prodi took her into his government as Minister for European Policies. Among the tough problems she will face in dealings with Brussels, an Italian foreign policy priority, are the rights and responsibilities of immigrants for whom Italy is a gateway to Europe.
     
    Anna Maria Cancellieri, 69, is often described as a professional super-bureaucrat. She served as Interior Minister under Mario Monti and is now Letta's Minister of Justice, a particularly sensitive post. In 1973 she was made a prefect with responsibilities for a string of cities stretching throughout Italy from Catania to Bergamo. In 2010 she became special commissioner for Bologna. Serving under Monti, she dissolved 33 local governments for Mafia infiltration, including the prominent Reggio-Calabria city council headed by Berlusconi's Liberty party (PdL). In her new role she is expected to deal with such fraught issues as money laundering, cheating on balance sheets and the spread of political corruption during the past decades. Another challenge will be to revise, if she can, the statute of limitations. "Prescription," as it is called here, has already allowed countless cases to be ended without a judgment because previous governments have reduced the time period before which a trial automatically (and conveniently for the defendant) cancelled.
     
    At 37, Nunzia De Girolamo, Minister for Farms, Food and Forests, is the youngest in the cabinet. A lawyer and PdL loyalist, she began her rise to power by organizing Berlusconi's supporters in the Southern Italian town of Benevento, but she is married to an MP from the Partito Democratico (PD). Her legal expertise is in civil rights, labor and commercial law, but for over two years she served on the Agricultural Commission of the Chamber of Deputies. Agricultural policy is a major theme in Italy's dealings with the European Community and involves over $7 billion.
     
    Maria Chiara Carrozza, 48 and from Pisa, is Minister for Education, Universities and Research, and was brought to government to represent the Partito Democratico. Carrozza is a noted scientist and a professor of bioengineering at the Sant'Anna University in Pisa, of which she was president. She has also taught at universities in Rome and Vienna. Among the most important tasks she faces: grave cutbacks of funding for schools, universities and research. Salaries for school personnel are considered at risk, and ordinary maintenance of schools is often neglected.
     
    Beatrice Lorenzin of the PdL is 41 and Roman, and the fifth woman to become Italy's Health Minister. Although lacking in experience in the sector, she has a strong political background in Berlusconi's inner circle. The ministry is working hard to find ways to apply the massive cutbacks (circa $39 billion) in Italy's national health service first demanded by the last Berlusconi government and ratified under Monti's austerity plan. Among the specific health reform plans likely to generate controversy is to cut back on the number of hospital beds available and to boost patients' payments.
     
    Cecile Kyenge (the name is pronounced French style), 48 and an MD, was born in the Congo but is an Italian citizen and today Minister for Integration. Her medical specialty is as an eye surgeon, and she is married with two children. She moved into politics for the PD in Modena in the North and in 2009 became a provincial representative for an international group meeting on cooperation and integration. Since 2010 she had been an advocate for Primo Marzo, an organization which attempts to protect the civil rights of migrants. This is her first season as a member of parliament. The disturbing news is that her appointment triggered a host of nasty racist insults.
     
    Josefa Idem, 49, of the PD is a world Olympics champion in kayak racing and is the new Minister for Equal Opportunities, Sports and Youth. Born in Germany, she holds 38 medals from international sports competitions and participated in the eight Olympics competitions between 1984 and 2012. Her governing experience was strengthened, say her supporters, by six years as sports commissioner for the town of Ravenna, and she has served on a Ministry oversight committee that dealt with dumping. As minister she will have to address cut-backs on previously planned spending on sports activities for Italian youth and, above all, on curtailing planned construction of new sports facilities and arenas.
     
  • Facts & Stories

    Letta's Omnibus Cabinet Gets Rolling


    ROME - Aboard the omnibus cabinet assembled this weekend by the youthful and canny Premier-designate Enrico Letta, under the watchful eye of President Giorgio Napolitano, are 21 cabinet ministers. Letta's government is expected to take office early this week with support from Silvio Berlusconi's Freedom Party (PdL), Mario Monti's smaller centrist party Movimento Civico and Letta's own Partito Democratico (PD).Most are fresh faces, and the new look is cause for optimism. Despite a smattering of old pols, there are young politicians as well as a few experts, if not always in the fields they are destined to govern. Above all, there are the politically correct, who include more women than any Italian cabinet has ever before fielded. Among these is one African-born black woman, whose presence immediately triggered veiled racist protests from the Northern League that the forthcoming government would be soft on illegal immigration.
     
    The congenial Letta, 46, continues to apply the term "sober" at every opportunity to describe his governing aims. In effect his life itself is fairly sober although he lives in the colorful downtown Roman neighborhood of Testaccio and rides around town on a Vespa. He trained in political science at the University of Pisa and was later associated with the respected Nino Andreatta, at one time economic counsellor to Aldo Moro. Letta has served twice in government, once as Minister for EU policies and then as Minister for Industry. He is the nephew of Gianni Letta, senior counsellor to Silvio Berlusconi, and, when uncle Letta participated in pre-government talks together with Berlusconi, many read this as more of the usual Italian familism, with Letta Senior a guarantor protecting Berlusconi's interests. On the other hand, Gianni Letta was in fact Berlusconi's ambassador to the Vatican or, put more correctly, he was the Vatican's ambassador to Berlusconi. And indeed that Vatican connection may be more important in hatching the new government than any link with Berlusconi, who personally aimed to be given the economics ministry, or for it to go to his faithful economist ally Renato Brunetta. Enrico Letta kept both Berlusconi and Brunetta at bay.
     
    But the general sense is of admiration for Letta's creativity. The most prestigious is perhaps Emma Bonino, former EU Commissioner, who will be his foreign affairs minister. The average age of the ministers is, at 54, youthful for Italy. In addition, Letta managed to dodge inclusion of a number of all too familiar faces. Among the missing: Renato Brunetta and Silvio Berlusconi of the Liberty party (PdL) on the right, Massimo D'Alema of the Partito Democratico (PD) on the left. Reportedly it was Mario Monti's withdrawing of his name for consideration that also axed D'Alema's possibility for a return as foreign minister.
     
    True, Letta was obliged to make Angelino Alfano, the Sicilian politician who was Berlusconi's assistant for years before becoming deputy head of the PdL, both deputy premier and interior minister. At the same time Letta succeeded in naming Anna Maria Cancellieri minister of justice. This essentially pits Alfano against his feisty and seasoned female predecessor at the Interior Ministry, Cancellieri, His job is preside over the police investigations into possible Mafia collusion with the powers-that-be; hers is to oversee those judicial processes which affect a large number of politicians of every stripe, including Berlusconi himself.
     
    How long will it last? No one expects this legislature to withstand a five-year term. But it should last long enough for Letta to demonstrate to those in his own PD who voted for Grillo that ordinary, normal politics can function. If so, he will have driven a stake into Grillo power - but only after a new and fairer election law is passed.
     
  • Facts & Stories

    Letta Seeks a "Slim and Sober" Cabinet


     ROME - In his attempt to weld together governing partners so as to end over two months of dangerous political void, Premier Designate Enrico Letta, 46, of the Partito Democratico (PD) has called for a "slim and sober" cabinet that will hit the ground running and will be a "government of service." As he negotiates with a trio of parties who have finally agreed to work together for the good of the nation - Letta's own fractious PD, of which he is deputy secretary; the Freedom Party (PdL) of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi; and the smaller neo-party of acting Premier Mario Monti - the program points under discussion reflect some of the advice put forward by the so-called "sages" appointed last month by President Giorgio Napolitano.

     
    "Our objective is to moralize public life and give it new impetus," Letta declared. His program calls for reducing the number of MPs and senators, rewriting the present detested electoral law, revising the law on public funding for political parties, and possibly eliminating the costly overlay of provincial administrations. Needless to say, also on the carpet is reconsideration of the tax laws, from the hated tax on first homes (IMU) to the VAT tax, which is set to rise automatically by 1% on July 1, with the risk of further cooling consumer demand.
     
    But until there is a cabinet the moment the program points are the least of it. The heated negotiations this weekend are over names of the 18 or so cabinet ministers, at this writing still the subject of speculation and only that. For the PdL its secretary, Angelino Alfano, is handling negotiations with Letta until Berlusconi returns from Texas, where he attended the opening of the George W. Bush presidential library (and where Berlusconi told Fox News that he had done in six leftist premiers). On Friday Letta returned to the Quirinal Palace for another session with Napolitano, who continues valiantly in the role of the nation's good shepherd, but no new government is expected until early next week.
     
    It is clear already, however, that a Letta-led cabinet will have a fair political backing and will not be, as Monti's was, a government of technicians. "We will not back a summer season government (governo balneare)," Alfano declared. At the same time, Berlusconi has warned that, if this government - which he promises to support - fails to take actions he considers appropriate, after what he deems a decent interval (nine months or so) his party will withdraw its support. As if anticipating such a threat, Letta said firmly, in accepting President's appointment, "We cannot permit ourselves to have new elections. The outcome would be the same at any rate: blocs." By this Letta was referring to the paralyzing three-way tie among the PD, the PdL and Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement. Not incidentally at this time of financial crisis, a new round of national general elections would cost the country, as did those of February, over $500 million.
     
    The key cabinet posts are economy, justice (whose choice inevitably affects Berlusconi), the interior and the foreign ministry. Berlusconi has been accused of blackballing the candidacy of Anna Maria Cancellieri to succeed herself, supposedly because she axed 33 local city governments on grounds that they were Mafia-ridden. By way of response, in a faux compliment, Berlusconi said that his party appreciates her and indeed has offered her a post in (notoriously leftist) Bologna. Alfano himself is considered a possible deputy premier.
     
    Among the missing in the cabinet will almost certainly be Matteo Renzi, the popular Florentine mayor and probably the most popular single individual in the PD, with perhaps 35% of the party behind him. Italian news reports have Berlusconi casting Renzi aside as "too young, too untested and, above all, too popular." But it is just as likely, since Berlusconi and Renzi just had a long and friendly private meeting, that Renzi is standing aside in his own long-term interest.
     
    The newest public opinion polls show that the PD, with its former head Pier Luigi Bersani confirming his resignation, is split between two factions: those who sympathize with the Grillo's M5S and those, headed by Renzi, who are not unwilling to negotiate with the Berlusconi-Monti area in the national interest. As for Grillo himself, he refuses to participate in any forthcoming government, and continues to call Napolitano's re-election a coup d'etat and to make acid personal comments about Napolitano himself. Nevertheless, a delegation of "Grillini" did participate in preliminary talks with Napolitano earlier this week and spoke cordially about the meeting afterward. And then Grillo went on to offend many - including Napolitano - by refusing to honor the solemn commemoration April 25 of Italian liberation from Nazi-Fascism.
     
    "Will the parties understand that they have an opportunity and no alternative?" asked Beppe Severgnini, in Corriere della Sera Friday. "The recent past suggests caution," he answers his own question. They have shown "grotesque" lack of appreciation of Monti's efforts when he was called in to head an emergency government "like a medic in a casualty ward" in November 2011. "Europe doesn't want a rerun of a vampire film."
     
    Speaking of vampires, Il Venerdi (the weekly magazine published by La Repubblica) points out that in l992 Giuliano Amato, former premier and only last week still a candidate for the presidency, had the state collect .006 in funds from private citizens' bank accounts, albeit not on the level of Cyprus. Amato is among those now under consideration for a cabinet post.
     
  • Op-Eds

    Giorgo Napolitano Fights the "Fatal Deadlock"


    ROME - Italy, but not only Italy, heaved a sigh of relief with the reconfirmation Monday at 5 pm of Giorgio Napolitano, in his 88th year elected to a second seven-year term as president of Italy. His re-election concludes the most fraught of the twelve presidential elections since the birth of the Republic out of the ashes of Fascism and war. Napolitano's reconfirmation is firmly within the framework of the Italian Constitution. But in the background the raucous leader of the new left in Italy, Beppe Grillo, who is backed by a quarter of the voters, has called the re-election a putsch and warned that he will, if he desires, bring a million angry Italians into the piazzas.


    Otherwise there was a generalized sigh of relief, even though concerns remain that this year's Italian political debacle is far from over. Napolitano himself, openly moved and with breaking voice, was outspoken in warning against the risks the country continues to run. In his address to the Parliament after his swearing in, he called for talks to begin immediately for creation of a new government. Two months have passed since a national general election brought three warring factions - at this point to call them "parties" is almost inappropriate - into a "fatal deadlock," in Napolitano's words. Implicitly warning that new elections will be the result of failed negotiations for a new government, he also admonished the political leaders of the risk of "ungovernability, at least for this legislature." Unless reform measures, including a revision of the present electoral law are enacted, he threatens to resign, a move that would be deeply convulsive.


    But what will come next is uncertain. Napolitano is urging a broad coalition government - "una politica delle larghe intese" - in the larger interest of the nation. It could be a government with full political authority or another babysitter cabinet of technocrats on the lines of that of the economist Mario Monti, which has held power since November 2012. If the former, it will ratify the splintering of Pier Luigi Bersani's Partito Democratico (which is likely to happen at any rate). But some commentators today are saying that the same men and women who stood up in Parliament in joint session to applaud Napolitano's words are precisely those who will sit on their hands stubbornly and try to reproduce more of the same rigid, vieux jeux politics which brought the country to the present sorry pass.


    The concerns go beyond Italy itself. As European leaders point out, a politically and economically weak Italy is of generalized concern because unable to act as a counterpoise within Europe to German power.  On the bright side, the spread, or cost of borrowing, dropped with the news of Napolitano's re-election since no one expects a government he might appoint to ignore its financial responsibilities within the European framework.


    Beppe Grillo is now considered to stand on the farthest left point of the Italian political spectrum with his demands for a guaranteed minimum wage for all citizens and improved public health system and schooling. Few would argue that the latter two are worthy goals, but the idea of promising a generous minimum wage for everyone, at a time when the economy is weak and immigrants from desperately poor countries continue to pour into Italy, is so unrealistic as to appear either idiotic or cynical, and no one considers Grillo an idiot. In political terms, Grillo rejects the concept of the "inciuccio," which translates literally into the piglets all sucking together at the teats of a big sow. What he will do, how his members of Parliament will vote, is fairly predictable: they will follow his orders to continue a blanket opposition. But the implication is that, for the good of the nation, the splintered Partito Democratico will have to make an uneasy coalition with Berlusconi.


    If so, there is great interest in who will be minister of Justice because of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's ongoing scuffles with the judiciary, which he accuses of persecution. This will be a key ministry in any future government, and if Berlusconi is not satisfied with the nomination, there is the risk that he will, through his circa one-third of Parliament, throw out the government baby with the bath water. This would throw the country into the upheaval of another general election, whose outcome is absolutely and ominously unpredictable.


    The leadership of the Partito Democratico is in a state of shock. Its older and newer leaders like Matteo Renzi and his young Turks are at war with each other after the debacle of Bersani's attempts to have his candidate elected president. That the party is dead in the water is apparent, and press reports are that Massimo D'Alema is shifting his power base toward Renzi. Already some are calling for Renzi himself to become premier of the sort of larger coalition Napolitano is promoting, as well as head of a new British-style Labour party, to be called the Partito del Lavoro, a splinter of the woebegone, splintered Partito Democratico which Pier Luigi Bersani led from strength to disgrace.
  • Facts & Stories

    Habemus Presidentam? Not Just Yet



    ROME - Agreement upon the name of a new president remained an elusive will o' the wisp on Day Two of the vote. At 7 pm the session was suspended after Romano Prodi received only 395 votes - 109 less than necessary to be elected to succeed Giorgio Napolitano.


    Behind Prodi was Stefano Rodota' with 214 votes and, farther in the distance, Anna Maria Cancellieri, who has been serving as Interior Minister under the emergency government of Mario Monti (78 votes), followed by Massimo D'Alema (15). Tomorrow a new vote takes place. But at this point, the outcome remains uncertain, and new national general elections remain a serious risk, as well as an expensive prospect. The only safe guess is that the midnight oil (and tempers too) will be burning as the forces in the field debate about what is to be done before the next vote tomorrow morning: continue to press for Prodi, return to a vote for Marini or invent a new strategy.
     
    In theory, the electoral college, composed of all members of Parliament and the Senate, plus a selection of regional delegates, totals 1,007 "grand electors." This morning the last of the three votes requiring a two-thirds majority took place without a successful candidate, so that this afternoon only a simple majority was required, or 504 votes - four fewer than the actual 508 expected because of absentees, who included one woman MP in hospital because about to give birth.
     
    With the largest single voting bloc, Pier Luigi Bersani's Democratic party (PD) supposedly had 496 votes committed to their official candidate, former Premier Romano Prodi. However, the ballot was secret, and it had already been predicted that some would ignore the party directive and vote their own choice, as in fact some did. In theory, the candidacy of constitutionalist Stefano Rodota', backed by Grillo's 5-Star Movement (M5S), was the second most likely to succeed, with l63 theoretical votes; in point of fact, Rodota' scored significantly better, meaning that he picked up votes from other sources. Bersani's party, in fact, was split over the question, with his leftist ally, Nichi Vendola, openly preferring Rodota'. Another who bolted in his own way was the babysitting Premier Mario Monti. Although Monti is a personal friend of ex-Premier Prodi, Monti's neo-party, Scelta Civica, with 69 votes, announced it would not vote Prodi.
     
    It did not escape notice that Grillo's suggesting the dignified, highly respected Rodota' for president was the angry comedian-turned-politician's first statesmanlike act. Following this gesture, in the wake of the third failed vote that required a two-thirds majority Thursday, a representative of Grillo's Five-Star Movement (M5S) sent a tweet intimating that, if Bersani's PD would vote for Stefano Rodota' as president, a government could be guaranteed. "Rodota''s candidacy remains on the carpet," Nichi Vendola insisted as he left Parliament.
     
    However it ends, tough times lie ahead for Bersani in the party whose leadership he is losing. During the past two days he tried without success, first to impose the candidacy of former Catholic trade union leader Franco Marini, and now Prodi. Both these failures are more than raps on the knuckle. Until today, at least, Bersani has flatly rejected the concept that his supposed followers might ignore his counsel. But when it came time to vote for Marini, Berlusconi's PdL voted for him, but Bersani's own PD did not. That stunning rejection showed to what extent Bersani has alienated many of his traditional followers, among them some of his top aides. It is unlikely that Bersani can coax his party back into docility and remain at the helm.
     
    Silvio Berlusconi, at least, must be celebrating. The two men, Prodi and Berlusconi, share a keen mutual dislike. Back in 1995 Berlusconi had called Prodi "a useful idiot." The following year Prodi responded, remarking that, "Berlusconi throws out numbers like a drunk." That same year, he also said, "Berlusconi is ridiculous and a liar, and that's that." When Prodi emerged as a candidate for President this Spring, Berlusconi, who until recently had entertained his own presidential dreams, said acidly, "If Prodi wins, we all go to live abroad."
     
    In the background outside Parliament today were, literally, two rival demonstrations. One group in front of Parliament was composed of Silvio Berlusconi Freedom Party (PdL) supporters shouting invective against their old political bête noir Roman Prodi, while, in a neighboring piazza was another demo of slogan-shouting fans of Prodi, the economist from Bologna who defeated Berlusconi in the struggle for the premiership in 1996 and again in 2006. Another and admittedly less important sideshow was mounted by Senator Alessandra Mussolini, who showed up in Parliament wearing a T-shirt sporting the slogan "The Devil Wears Prodi." "This is a country that's split in two," commentators here were saying.
     
    If so, the split is generational. An interesting sideshow was the disappearance from center-stage of the Northern League, sidelined by the dynamism of the two leaders who most clearly represent a reaction against the old pols' way of doing things and the demand for a generational shift: Beppe Grillo's hefty chunk of followers (the "Grillini") and the supporters of Florentine Mayor Matteo Renzi, 37. Renzi had been a valiant ally of Pier Luigi Bersani in the Partito Democratico (PD) until Bersani snubbed Renzi by dropping him from the roster of grand electors for the presidency. At that point Renzi moved out from under Bersani's shadow and began openly challenging him.
     

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