Articles by: Judith Harris

  • Op-Eds

    Elections 2013: "A Pit Bull Fight"


    ROME

    Feb. 24 and 25 will bring what commentators here are calling Italy's most important national general elections in half a century. Nevertheless, as Nichi Vendola told the foreign press in Rome Thursday, "The politicians have talked alliances, not policies, and the polls have trumped issues. It's turned into a pit bull fight."


    The engaging Vendola, a leftist who has revived the formerly faltering Southern Puglia region he heads, has a point, and the result is that pit bull battle, and what lies behind it, has alienated many voters. Teresa is a hairdresser whose colleagues have given up their shops to tend to clients' hair-do's in their homes. Asked what is a stake, she replied, without hesitation, "to learn what will become of us." How will she vote? "I won't. I don't like any of the candidates." I asked two nurses the same question.  "Blank ballots," they said in chorus. As a result, the turnout is predicted to be at least 10% below the 80% turnout of 2008.


    Surprisingly, considering his former popularity, this alienation fallout extends even to the outgoing Premier Mario Monti, former European Union commissioner, and is being transferred to a backing away from (and sometimes downright hostility to) Germany, to the point that Monti has had to deny that Angela Merkel is interfering in the Italian elections. Monti has also come under attack for failing to decide whether he will ally himself with Pier Luigi Bersani's Partito Democratico and Nichi Vendola's group (Sinistra Ecologia Liberta', or SEL) or list to a more conservative position, stealing thunder from both Berlusconi and the Northern League.


    The most successful to capitalize on the mood of alienation is the wrathful Beppe Grillo, who has made the generalized loss of illusions about the political system his stock in trade and tirade, and who is hoping to have an audience of hundreds of thousands attend his final harangue in Piazza San Giovanni in Rome Saturday. Grillo is a skilled communicator, who flings slogans into the cheering crowds like bouquets; one of his most recent is to yell, as if addressing the political class he despises, "You are surrounded - go home." Thanks to succinct messages like this, he may well deliver 100 deputies into Parliament.


    The stakes remain high, and whoever wins, he (no she's; women in Italy have the lowest rate of employment in all Europe) will immediately have to face a host of problems. A financial analyst interviewed on Italian radio Thursday morning warned that, "Unless a clear governing coalition emerges after the elections, our Standard and Poor rating will slip, leaving us to pay even higher interest rates on our country's gigantic debt. We would all be the worse for that - poorer and less able to relaunch an economy that has stagnated for two decades." As if this were not scary enough,  La Sette, the sole national TV network not yet absorbed into either the Italian state or Silvio Berlusconi's media networks (albeit just purchased this week by a former associate of Berlusconi), has been running daily TV reports on the desperate economic plight of middle-class Greeks, shown buying food from charity shops and the like. Italy could equal Greece, get it?


    One major change in this election period is completion of the shift from allegiance to a traditional party like Christian Democracy or Socialism to loyalty to an individual leader. Political parties have morphed into fiefdoms - hence the proliferation which will make formation of a governing coalition extremely difficult, and hence the GR1 financial analyst's warning Thursday. In the worst case scenario this could lead to a stalemate and another costly, time-wasting round of elections.


    Yet this is no time to waste money. Second in manufacturing capacity in Europe, Italy has had 14 years of near-zero growth, according to the London Economist, coupled with a double dip recession that began in 2007. Add to this an austerity "diet" for the past year of Monti's technical guidance of the government, plus the collapse of confidence in sovereign bonds. Industrial production has fallen even as costs of labor per unit - aggravated by Italy's particularly expensive energy prices - have risen higher than those of the rest of Europe. Confindustria figures just released show bleakly that Italy at this time simply cannot compete.


    Some of the alienation, then, is from fear of the future, made worse by the daily revelations of scandal that have left few parties untouched. The arrests of the former managers of the bank Monte Paschi di Siena has tarnished the image of the Partito Democratico on the left. Then there is the colorful Oscar Giannino, whose miniscule party is called "Stop the Decline." Problem is, he is part of the decline, having invented a non-existent master's degree from the University of Chicago, and has been forced to resign as party leader. 


    On the right is former premier Silvio Berlusconi, who mailed nine million letters to potential voters regarding a refund, if he is elected, of the hated property tax (IMU) on first homes of families. After reading the letter, Antonio Ingroia, himself a party leader on the far left with perhaps 5% of the vote behind him, said that Berlusconi risks charges of electoral fraud. According to Ingroia, the letter actually says only that citizens have a generic right to reimbursement of the IMU, whereas in speeches Berlusconi made outright promises of its restitution. Indeed, already lines have formed in some towns with people clamoring for their money to be returned, now. Only a former magistrate, as is Ingroia, could work out the legal details for such a law suit, filed with a magistrate Feb. 19.
  • Fabio Fazio and Luciana Littizzetto
    Op-Eds

    Election Music, Maestro, Please!

    ROME 
    Guess what: way back when, I co-anchored Sanremo Festival broadcasts on RAI International Radio for two years in a row, and a thrilling experience it was - not least because during one of those festivals none other than Luciano Pavarotti headed the committee of judges. Besides seeing the gracious Pavarotti in action in support of young pop singers, what was especially moving was to speak at Festival intervals with Italians tuning in from remote places. Speaking from India, one woman told us that, while at home in Italy, she'd been indifferent to the Festival, but that hearing it from far away made her feel back home and homesick as well.

     

    This Sanremo season is the 63rd for Europe's oldest music festival, and pits against each other fourteen well-known performers plus eight newcomers (and well I remember the challenge of interviewing one of these newcomers, who happened to be a shy girl of fifteen). Its five nights of competition are co-anchored by perky performer Luciana Littizzetto and expert TV host Fabrizio Fazio. The competition kicked off Tuesday evening with comedienne Littizzetto arriving in a horse-drawn carriage and then a musical homage to Giuseppe Verdi and, for that matter, to Italy, with patriotic music from the beloved Nabucco. The first-night audience peaked at almost 59% and well over l7 million viewers. Among the guests this week: Andrea Bocelli, Antony, Asaf Avidan, Gaetano Veloso, Daniel Harding, Felix Baumgartner, Lutz Forster, Roberto Baggio and Toto Cutugno.

    The fact that Littizzetto, who is cute and comely but not a bathing beauty, was chosen has attracted attention in itself. "At last we don't have to have only showgirls," crowed one female observer. "Times are changing!" Indeed they are, and with it the Festival. This was the first time the Festival has had to deal so overtly with current politics, in a bitterly personalized campaign such as has never been seen before. Through a political fluke, national general elections are only days away, a fact that Crozza, a satirist hired for Sanremo to be just that, could hardly ignore. And even Littizzetto, not to mention the musical event itself, was upstaged by politics when comic Maurizio Crozza bounced down the stairs looking and then sounding exactly like former Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

    In performing on the stage at the Ariston Theater, Crozza faced the same problems any other commentator, comic or otherwise, faces at RAI: he had to be careful to play fair with all the political candidates. And so, trying to ignore a chorus of boo's interrupting his in fact innocuous sketch about Berlusconi, whose face lifts and hair transplant lend themselves to comedy, Crozza then gave equal time to mocking the other candidates, from acting Premier Mario Monti (aka "Rigor Montis") and the dull Pier Luigi Bersani to the over-excited Beppe Grillo.

    A few acid commentators suggested that the claque booing Crozza for imitating Berlusconi had been pre-organized, which is not impossible. As for savvy Berlusconi himself, he chose to play the good sport and today offered to perform at the Festival, bringing his own song. At the same time, as he said on a TV talk show Wednesday morning, "The Festival is a boomerang for the left. I've already criticized the fact that Sanremo is being held just at this time." And then Crozza too was upstaged the first night by the evergreen and ever popular Toto Cotugno, singing Mimmo Modugno's beloved "Volare" with, in the background, the world-famous Russian national chorus.

    In the end, the music was not the only thing taking flight. So did politics, which suddenly bounced up in the air with no one yet knowing the final destination. The abdication of Pope Benedict XVI has literally stolen the show, and the shock news produced a near blackout of political comment. Indeed, pundits here are trying to guess which of the leading candidates - in order of presumed popularity Bersani, Berlusconi, Grillo, Monti - would suffer most from being bypassed in the headlines in favor of news from the Vatican as Italy, and the rest of the world, turns its attention to the breath- taking and literally historical proceedings across the Tiber, to use the Italian phrase for the Vatican City.

    And from there comes news on the ground. Hotel reservations in Rome bounced up by 10% overnight, with the faithful planning last-minute pilgrimages to Rome to see the pontiff before he leaves the scene. Souvenir sellers report a brisk trade in Benedict-related souvenirs, such as book marks; previously, they say, they sold almost exclusively souvenirs and photographs of John Paul II.

    What this means, taken together, is that secular Italy has transferred to Sanremo for the week while the faithful of Italy are looking elsewhere, far from politics - at least for now.
  • Op-Eds

    Pontiff 's Resignation Stuns the World


    ROME


    For the first time in history an American cardinal is among those considered to be serious candidates to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, who stunned the Roman Catholic world on Monday by announcing this morning that he will resign at 8 pm on Feb. 28. The ailing pontiff's plans to turn the keys of St. Peter's over to a successor were kept so tightly secret that even Father Federico Lombardi, longtime director of the Press Office of the Holy See, was taken by surprise.



    The pontiff's formal statement this morning contained this passage: "In today's world, subject to so many rapid changes, and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to steer the boat of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognise my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me."



    The Vatican has let it be known that it expects a new pope to be elected within five or six weeks, and perhaps before Easter. Benedict, 85, has presided over the Roman Catholic Church for eight years. It has been whispered for some months now that he may be suffering from Parkinson's disease, but there is no confirmation. In recent months, although his voice has been firm, he has appeared frail, and his dislike of the travel that has become routine for the papacy has not been a secret. His own explanation in a formal statement today was that he is too old to continue.



    During the Middle Ages, when different popes vied for the office, other popes resigned. The most noted to resign, however, was the modest and much admired Celestine V in 1294. Indeed, when Benedict XVI toured quake-stricken l'Aquila last year, he made a particular point of visiting the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, in which Celestine V is buried, and praying before the tomb. At that time Vatican insiders raised the question of whether this was perhaps an harbinger of things to come, as indeed it has turned out to be.



    No sooner was the resignation made known in Rome than speculation began over his possible successor. Unusually, because the U.S.A. has been until now viewed as too much of a super-power, an American cardinal was not considered a serious candidate. However, at an autumn synod, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York emerged as a potential candidate. "He was forthright and youthful," said one admiring Vatican insider. "Everyone was favorably impressed." A second North American candidate is Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet. Also considered unlikely until now has been an Italian candidate, but as of today Cardinal Angelo Scola, 71, of Milan is in the forefront. Among the electors at the Conclave, one-quarter will be Italians.From Africa comes a fourth possible candidate, Cardinal Peter Turkson, currently president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Turkson speaks six languages and understands Latin as well. Already, Irish bookmaker Paddy Power and others are taking bets on who will be his successor. William Hill bookmakers mentioned Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria and placed 8 to 1 odds on Scola.



    The pope's formal resignation will begin coincidentally (or not) exactly three days after Italy's important national general elections.



    The shy Benedict XVI is popular worldwide, but his papacy has been shadowed by the revelations of pedophile priest scandals which the global Church was reluctant to allow to come to light. Only last week an important report on an Irish Catholic workhouse called the Magdalene Laundries, in which young women were exploited and even brutalized, was made public in Ireland.
  • Op-Eds

    Dear Diary, It's Election Time


    ROME.
    Monday - On his nationwide hustling "Tsunami Tour", Beppe Grillo is in Parma, where 4,000 people turn out to applaud him as he harangues in the piazza. Knocking his style is easy, but Grillo now commands the third largest following of any individual save for Pier Luigi Bersani on the left and Silvio Berlusconi on the right. Grillo's Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) is a protest platform - and indeed he is the only party leader out on a real platform as opposed to a TV stage. Not coincidentally, although his campaign schedule is daunting, he dodges debates, including on TV - but then he does not need them. His peppy showman presence and righteous indignation appeal to people of every age, as can be seen on the videos and on the TV stations which willingly relay his every shouting appearance. In his delivery he mocks Berlusconi with words like these: "He'll take away the IMU [property tax] and give you a set of kitchen pans. To believe in Berlusconi is like believing in fairies." In turn, Berlusconi mocks not Grillo but Bersani, whom he imitates with the Grillo-like skill of a born comic.
     
    Tuesday - They used to kiss babies but now the politicians cuddle dogs. Monti's American spin doctor reportedly has suggested that the candidate known as the "icy professor"  become more cuddly. As a result, his wife is apparently being dragged into the campaign, although she'd initially opposed his running. And so is a foundling dog named Trozzi, photographed while being clutched in the professor's arms. Berlusconi could do no less so now he too is being photographed fondling a foundling named Vittoria, given him by animal lover Michela Vittoria Brambilla. Could Bersani not participate? Come on, pose with the puppy: he did, with two dogs, not one. "Yes we cane," people are joking, cane meaning dog. Politics is a dog's life. (For a satirical version, see >> )
     
    Wednesday - Bersani has just thrown the door open to outgoing emergency Premier Mario Monti. "We are ready for cooperation with all the forces opposed to Leghismo [the Northern League], Berlusconismo and populism. And certainly with Professor Monti." Finally! The offer is formally spelled out for the first time. If we can believe the polls, then, a coalition Monti-Bersani plus Nichi Vendola would be truly strong and outwit the right, no matter how well Berlusconi does.
     
    Thursday - Oh dear, Bersani's offer has put the cat among the pigeons. "The center-left is incompatible with the centrists," Vendola declares, meaning Monti and his allies, who enjoy the support of the Roman Catholic Church as well as some of Italy's big business magnates. Bersani is still expected to deliver the most votes, but Berlusconi's bouncing up in the polls is making him nervous. Bersani can govern only with a coalition, so is he to be forced to choose between Vendola and Monti? Monti insists: "He [Bersani] has to choose." Bersani's response is negative and plain spoken: "Our group [i.e., Vendola and Bersani] is untouchable," and "We are ready for a dialogue, but not at any price."
     
    Antonio Ingroia, the leftist magistrate who is himself running with a support group estimated at 4-5%, for once praises Bersani for (at least apparently and at least for now) choosing to stay faithful to his ally Nichi Vendola, this country's most prominent gay party leader. But a savvy TG La7 commentator accurately dubs this "a tug of war" that's leading into a "stall."Once votes are counted, will the stall spill over into formation of a government, and then into government itself? Some pessimists are mumbling about these elections becoming a prelude to a second election.
     
    Friday - Gosh, the week is gone and today is the last day before elections when public opinion surveys can still be published. How much of a loss is this? Although most involve a thousand or so interviews, the polls are something of a hit-or-miss operation because they rely upon "computer-assisted telephone interviewing" computer usage, which becomes patchy, depending upon the territory. In addition, especially because it is by phone, not everyone replies truthfully. A third possibility is that some polls may be manipulated to show a surge, in hopes of creating a bandwagon effect. As a result, "If you ask who'll win, our answer would be 'Nobody,'" says engineer Mirco Giubilei of Mondo Informazione, speaking of the risk of a failed election that would require another.  (see >>)
     
    To the extent that these final surveys are accurate, they show that the Bersani coalition, which includes Vendola, leads by 6,5% over the Berlusconi group. However, although the PD on its own has 30% - more than any other sngle party - pollster EMG says that Bersani's coalition, with 35%, has dropped a percentage point over last week, meaning that it may shed more followers. Monti's ccntrist group, too, has dropped slightly, to 14.%.
     
    Berlusconi's PdL has 20% and its partner, the Northern League, 5%. The entire center-right coalition, then, which includes a couple of miniscule action parties,  has risen to 28.5% - close enough to please many and to scare others. Finally, all on his own, Beppe Grillo, whose future role remains an incognito, solidly occupies 16%, up 1.5% over a week ago while that other protest candidate, Ingroia, has dropped to 3.5%, down 1% over just last week.
     
  • Op-Eds

    Misery and the Elections in the Final Stretch



    ROME - The national elections loom all the more important and obviously nerve-wracking  because they are flanked by regional elections to take place at the same time in Italy's financial capital Lombardy and its administrative capital Rome. Under the circumstances, it is disappointing that, in this final stretch of one of the most bizarre election campaigns in Italian postwar history, the non-stop TV talk show appearances are salted with personalized insults, but little of substance.
     
    Here's this week's synthesis, admittedly simplistic. Pier Luigi Bersani said the other day that anyone attacking his Partito Democratico (PD) would be "torn to shreds" (sbranato) and that the party winning the most votes has the right to hold the premiership--i.e., Bersani does. "We have a great project!" he exclaimed in a TV appearance, building castles in the air and wearing just-folks shirt sleeves. In that other populist campaign on the right, backed by the Northern League, former Premier Silvio Berlusconi says that Italy's problems will be resolved by its quitting the Euro. Like it or not, Berlusconi has now risen to within five or so percentage points of the PD's estimated 30%. 
     
    Mario Monti, speaking for the centrists (and polls currently give his list around 15%), tried to attack the PD politely by remarking that it was "founded in 1921." He'd meant the Italian Communist party, in an attempt to suggest that the current aging PD with its strong trade union ties had exceeded its shelf life. But at this the youthful Matteo Renzi of the PD  retorted that Monti was confusing the rival party with the year of his own birth.
     
    Monti can say what he pleases, however, for he is currently like a prom queen being courted by both Berlusconi and the non-Berlusconi conservative right, for Monti's declaring this week that the centerpiece of his "Agenda" will be fiscal reform. At the same time, speaking for the PD, its second-in-command Enrico Letta is now also openly courting Monti.
     
    But the spoilers camp on the left also warrants attention. From his camper on his "tsunami tour," Beppe Grillo continues to vilify everyone and everything while collecting votes and applause. His rival leftist candidate Antonio Ingroia, whom polls show is backed by one out of 20 voters, outraged fellow magistrates of high rank and reputation by unwittingly - and witlessly - seeming to compare himself with martyred Sicilian judge Giovanni Falcone.
     
    As insults and invective fly, the problems remain on the table, probably because they are so great that no serious solution is a viable election platform, and the politicians shy away from tackling them. As countless observers here, right and left, point out, one of the worst is youth unemployment, standing now at 36.6% for those between 15 and 24 years of age. Although a hair above last month's figure, this is the highest in two decades, and many here believe that these young people without prospects - today, some 600,000 - will make up the bulk of the 40% of alienated voters who will stay at home or turn in  blank ballots if they bother to leave their parents' house. They are what author Beppe Severgnini calls "the transparent generation" because political Italy has grown accustomed to screening them from their vision.
     
    A factor in the desperation of young people seeking but not finding work is the lower quality of education, in large part due to scant funding. Even school buildings left without maintenance are placing some children at risk. Of public spending, education accounts for at most 4.9% of GDP today, leaving Italy 31st down of 32 nations studied, well below the median of West Europe, 6.2%. According to an OCSE report of September 2012, while infant school teachers are fairly well paid, salaries of university instructors are well below the median. The top earners are high school teachers, who take home a relatively modest $36,600 a year.
     
    At the Small Industry Forum in Prato last October, a study of Italy's total government expenditures and its fiscal pressure showed that both spending and taxes are notably higher than Germany's. The conclusion: Italians face a double waste: those who pay taxes overpay and in return "receive [public] services at an excessive price and of poor quality."
     
     
  • Tourism

    TV Advocacy For Cultural Heritage: Harnessing New Forms of Support


    Little sets the imagination on fire, and invites an appreciation of heritage, so much as well-wrought fictive recreations of antiquity. Some films are amazingly accurate, such as Kubrick's Spartacus, and at an Oxford conference on archaeology, a segment was shown. For this reason the American Institute of Archaeology has compiled a list of nearly ninety such films, with many of them reviewed; you can find the list on line at their site.
     
    A problem for TV documentary makers - and for the BBC I produced a half-hour documentary on Pompeii - is that sites are difficult to photograph. Stones are just that - stony and hence static. The people interviewed can break this stasis, but this means the over-use of what TV professionals call, disparagingly, "talking heads." TV needs drama, but drama is expensive, and I've seen the same footage of sandal-clad ancient Roman feet marching through many a docudrama; costs have to be cut somewhere.
     
    But it is useful to bear in mind that the media interact, as they always have. In 1834, Edward Bulwer-Lytton published his novel The Last Days of Pompeii, which was inspired by his seeing, on exhibit in Milan, Russian artist Karl Briullov's gigantic painting of Vesuvius erupting. From the dawn of cinema through a century of remakes the novel inspired movies.
     
    But some of these movies fostered the image of Pompeii as a Sodom and Gomorrah compound of spectacle, violent death, and sex. Thanks to this image, the longest visitors' line is outside the tiny brothel of Pompeii, whose wall paintings are therefore at risk in the same way as were the neolithic cave paintings of Altamira. Its image helped make Pompeii a cash cow, to which visitors flock no matter how poorly maintained the site, or how little they are helped to see and understand it. To combat this, an Imax-type theater at Pompeii with a well-made reconstruction could help.
     
    Media images endanger other heritage sites. The Return of the Mummy and Indiana Jones adventure archaeology do no favors to archeology. Then there is the reality TV series American Digger, entering its second season next week on the National Geographic Channel. In it a former professional wrestler and his team research and then dig for such buried historical artifacts as Civil War Relics. American academics protest that treasure-hunt shows like this glamourize and "encourage looting." The producers respond that their digs are all on private property and, anyway, the buried material would just go on rotting underground. A 2d cable TV show is being developed along the same lines.
     
    For today's meeting, via email I asked two distinguished American archaeologists, John R. Clarke of the University of Texas and John Dobbins of the University of Virginia, for comments. Dr. Clark, co-director of The Oplontis Project, replied that TV tends to over-emphasize drama and dressing actors in 'ancient' costumes, to react to an (invisible) volcano. Rather than entrust a docudrama to actors and producers, the expert should have control, choosing speakers and locations, he suggests.
     
    In "Cellar of Skeletons," Mary Beard presented one version for the BBC, but, in a second version, distributed worldwide including to the US, "Full explanations were cut into stupid, brief, sound and video bytes, making even intelligent archaeologists and scholars say what seemed obvious or even stupid." An "wildly gesticulating" actor was hired to mouth Clarke's words even as historical accuracy went by the wayside:  "In one such film, a a man mixes cement with his bare hands. Never mind that, as is known, quicklime burns the skin."
     
    One of the most successful of all archaeology broadcasts, the BBC Channel 4 series Time Team, ran for 20 years but is now being phased out after its production costs soared and its audience sank from 2.5 to 1.5 million. Among the causes of the demise, says one of its regular experts, Mick Aston, was the dumbing down of the show and its reduction in archaeological content.
     
    On the bright side, Dr. John Dobbins, who directs the Pompeii Forum Project, praises the 100 local societies of the Archaeological Institute of America in the US and Canada, for encouraging layman's interest in all aspects of archaeology. Besides producing Archaeology magazine, the AIA organizes a traveling lecturer program and encourages cultural tourism, important because,he says, "individuals learning to appreciate the material remains of earlier times will have a broadened and more fulfilling view of the world and its history," On the Internet the AIA, by the way, lists 80-plus archaeology movies, many with reviews by archaeologists.
     
    Graphic reconstructions of monuments are improving, thanks to academics like Bernard Frischer of the University of Virginia. His "Tour Through Ancient Rome in 320 CE," posted by Past Horizons Archaeology TV, has been seen by 27,000 viewers. The free internet lectures called TED talks (short for Technology, Entertainment, Design) include innovative short videos on the ancient world, such as Ray Laurence's brilliant animated feature, "A Glimpse of teenage life in ancient Rome." Created in 1990 by the private, non-profit Sapling Foundation of California, TED Talks have a viewing public of over 500 million. One such talk was on the Elgin Marbles; another was a lecture by Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas P. Campbell on "The importance of preserving cultural artifacts."
     
    Not least, the Internet offers a stunning variety of archaeology sites with specific content aimed at children and younger students. Some are interactive, like the one allowing a child to unwrap a mummy. To see this new type of production and its variety, and to see what attracts the most viewers, make these a useful tool for other media. They are available for free, without actors, without hand-churned cement, and without dumbing down.
     
     
     
  • Op-Eds

    Checking Out Electoral Twitterdom


    ROME - Twitter is a fact for i-Italy (check out: @iitaly), and in Italy is playing a role for the first time ever in a national general election. Now entering its last four weeks, the campaign is characterized - no less than any other activitiy these days - by lack of funds, and the streets of Rome are surprisingly free of posters by comparison with previous elections. But like TV, a Tweet is free for a candidate, and, like Pope Bendict XVI in Latin, most are therefore busy Tweeting their hearts out.

     
    One holdout was former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who recently commented on a TV talk show that he intended to use the internet ("We already do"), but that, "I don't know if we'll use twitter because I see that so many futile, nasty comments crop up on it. I think that a statement on Twitter could unleash a universe of negative responses." He changed his mind, and within 24 hours his Twitter fans jumped from 7,000 to 70,000 in a single day. Indeed, this upward surge came so quickly that skeptics became suspicious of what they called "inflated Tweets" until the "Berlusconi Committee 2013" spoke up, explaining that they were unpaid "Digital volunteers" working "for a Better Italy." Something similar happened with the Pope's advisors, who initially were concerned about abusive Tweets. In the end they were persuaded to ignore whatever negative came down the Tweet path.
     
    Because the scandal of Monte dei Paschi of Siena broke this week, the Tweets and reTweets on this prevail as we move into the weekend. According to the Bank of Italy, "hidden documents found recently" reveal that the managers of the world's oldest bank concealed toxic transactions. Although Economic Minister Vittorio Grilli said that the government had known of the bank's problems for at least a year, this did little to defuse the situation. Bank stocks  tumbled. The fallout is also potentially political: the bank in the heart of Italy's "red belt" serves the prevailing leftist administrations, and the bank is therefore considered an ally of the Partito Democratico (PD) of Pier Luigi Bersani. From a Tweeter:
     
    ON MONTE DEI PASCHI: "Bersani says the PD not involved. Banks do banking. O please give me a break"--MariaLuisa Trussardi
    "The PD: "We're not involved." True. In 1472, when the bank was founded, not even Rosy Bindi was born"--Lia Celi
    "The PD is a candidate to lead the country. I hope not the way it led the Monte dei Paschi"--Maurizio Belpietro [editor-in-chief, rightist daily Libero]
     
    A second, minor flap involved the candidacy of controversial Sicilian magistrate Antonio Ingroia, whose new party is called Rivoluzione Civile Ingroia. On Jan. 3 Twitter suspended its account, @RivCivile, on grounds of "inappropriate" usage. Ingroia's followers responded, accusing Twitter of censorship. Ingroia's supporters' tweets are back, curiously interlaced with regular retweets from Bruno Vespa.
     
    Taking a peek at what Twitterdom has to say on the elections and on individual politicians, it's only appropriate that we begin with the anti-Tweet Berlusconi himself. A footnote: almost all of these Tweets appear in Italian; the (rough) translation is mine.

     
    ON BERLUSCONI: "Interesting fact: Berlusconi was on air for a total of 63 hours between 24 December and 14 January"--Open Europe.

     
    ON PIER LUIGI BERSANI: "Can you help me? I'm down with t9, it's like when you vote for Renzi and Bersani pops out"--anelemella

     
    ON GIANFRANCO FINI: "Fini's defense: I did everything wrong, vote for me"--Andrea B

     
    ON MATTEO RENZI: "In the primaries Bersani's faithful participated more - Renzi maybe has more consensus but not all in the PD [Partito Democratico]"--benitotar

     
    "Italy and Italians are wasting years of their social and politicl life for voting Bersani. Renzi is the future"--Il Baba

     
    ON RENZI vs BERSANI: "Some people would rather have a turkey on the roof than a bird in the hand"--Floriana Mar

     
    ON MARIO MONTI: "Even the applause [at Davos] is feeble, quiet, sober just like Mario Monti"--La Scelta di Sofie

     
    "Mario Monti admits voting for Berlusconi in '94 "but that day I had a a vever and vomited"--GialloParma

     
    ON BEPPE GRILLO: "Power to flower vote @beppegrillo" - Beppe Grillo Forever
    "The situation is tough but you know they won't give you an easy ride, you're a thorn in their side, pungent and annoying"--Lino Pugliese

     
    A POX ON ALL THEIR HOUSES:
    "Berlusconi Monti Bersani & Renzi, reformers or conservatives?"--TzeTze Politica
    "Bersani Renzi and buddies 1 ministry each hurts nobuddy, time to go home"--Angelolmbraini1
     
     

     
     
     
     
  • Op-Eds

    Projections for an Edgy Election


    ROME - The unknowns far outweigh the certainties. The organized political spectrum is extraordinarily fragmented, with seventeen or so official parties, plus dozens of other wannabes too small to be counted, vying for votes. Even within the small official parties new splinter groups erupt. A rift is taking place even within the much diminished Radical party, whose historical leaders are at odds over support of a rightist candidate, Francesco Storace, who is backed by Marco Pannella but opposed by Emma Bonino.

     
    The largest single party in the fray remains the Partito Democratico (PD). Its popularity has slipped slightly, but the pollsters still give the PD over one-third of the vote, according to the respectable survey company IPSOS on Jan. 16. Translated into parliamentary seats, the PD can expect to obtain 294 MPs. Nevertheless, the bloc composed of the 40% who continue to say they are undecided remains larger still. Once in front of the ballot box, will these voters make a choice, and if so, what choice? Together with the others who say they will abstain or turn in blank ballots, these unknowns amount to almost half the electorate.
     
    Among the other causes for an edgy political campaign is the popularity of Beppe Grillo, whom IPSOS gives over 12% of the vote. Then there is the possible effect of a spanking new political formation run by magistrate Antonio Ingroia, controversial former prosecutor in Palermo running on his own ticket, Rivoluzione Civile, whom the polls already give almost 5% - votes which otherwise would have gone to Bersani's PD. Alert to the threat, Bersani's response was to enroll into the PD ranks of candidates Pietro Grasso, the respected magistrate who has served since 2005 as head of the Anti-Mafia Commission of the High Council of Magistrates. Word is already around that Grasso is Pierluigi Bersani's candidate for Justice Minister if the PD is in charge of the future government.
     
    It was supposedly a step forward when PD leader Bersani and outgoing Premier Mario Monti met Wednesday to forge a non-belligerence pact. Although Bersani has resolutely denied that any such pact existed, or that the two even met, the news immediately circulated that they had agreed to cooperate with each other, or at least to stop attacking each other, with an eye to defeating Silvio Berlusconi's Partito della Liberta' (PdL). Predictions are that Monti's new party, Con Monti per l'Italia (With Monti for Italy), will win 10.9% of the vote. If Monti joins forces with the PD, the two would command a healthy 43.8% in the 630-seat Parliament. Nikki Vendola's Sinistra Ecologia Liberta' (Left Ecology Freedom, or SEL), today quoted at 4.7% of the vote for perhaps 41 seats.
     
    But can these three make common cause? This ménage à trois does not seem easy at first blush, either to form a coalition or to attempt to govern in tandem. Bersani is already solidly allied with Vendola, who is openly gay and decidedly left leaning. By contrast, Monti has the open backing of both the Vatican, whose views he can hardly ignore, and some support from big business as well as the Euromanagers. Most importantly, Monti is certain to deliver more votes than is Vendola on the left. Bersani has been showing his frustration by thundering against what he calls overly personalized political formations. But when push comes to shove, can he coax Monti and Vendola, with their extremely diverse ideologies and voting bases, to join forces with the PD so as to boost their votes into a solid winning coalition? It is not impossible; Vendola has begun to make soothing noises about cooperating with Bersani over any future agreement with Monti. In theory, it may not even be necessary to do so because the Porcellum or Hog Law of election rules would give a Bersani-Vendola coalition a premium in Parliament. But would Bersani want to govern without Monti?
     
    Among the possible candidates for premier, Bersani is for the moment the most popular, with 31% preferring him. Monti is second, with 17%. Silvio Berlusconi is simply ignored as a candidate in favor of his second-in-command, Angelino Alfano, with 10% of the still hypothetical vote, in a tie with Beppe Grillo. Berlusconi's PdL, with 18% of the vote, would have perhaps 91 MPs. His party's on-and-off but just now loyal supporter, the Northern League headed by Roberto Maroni, is expected to win 4.8% of the vote (for 23 MPs). This would give the conservative bloc in the Chamber at least 114 MPs--more, when support from splinter right groups is included.
     
    Nevertheless, although the PD seems therefore far ahead, Bersani is said to fear that, by entering politics with his own personal party, Monti is inadvertently helping the duo of conservative parties led by Berlusconi and by Roberto Maroni of the Northern League to gain control of Lombardy, an important factor since regional strength feeds into the Senate vote; if the PD together with the Northern League win control of the Senate, they can stalemate legislation, just as the Republican party in the U.S. House of Representatives challenges President Obama.
     
     
     
  • Op-Eds

    Arsenic and Old Pols


    ROME - Because we live due north of Rome atop rocky volcanic soil , the water piped into our homes is heavily laced with arsenic. For safety the town fathers have installed a low-cost water purifier, which means that of a morning a dozen people stand in line to fill their bottles (eight for just eighty cents). As the water gushes into bottles, the neighbors disgorge their political views. For the past three days they have focused upon an evening talk show that went on for 2-1/2 hours on the left-leaning, independent (presumably) national TV network La Sette.  This long, long show featured just three persons: that master emcee of political debate Michele Santoro, the former Premier Silvio Berlusconi (for whom Santoro had once worked) and the lively intellectual Marco Travaglio, second-in-command at the leftist daily Il Fatto Quotidiano.
     
    With open support from the Catholic Church here, acting Premier Mario Monti, an economist and president of the prestigious Bocconi University in Milan, is now running on his own moderate ticket, for national general elections to take place in just six weeks. During this week's poisonous TV duel a' trois, Berlusconi called Monti's emergency government a product of the "envious, inhuman and criminal Communist left." This ignores the fact that, for eleven of the thirteen months Monti was Berlusconi's successor as head of the present emergency government, Berlusconi's Freedom Party (PdL) voted in Parliament again and again in favor of Monti. It was Berlusconi's withdrawal of support that brought down the Monti government in December. At the polls Feb. 24-25 Monti will be a keen rival to Berlusconi for centrist votes.
     
    Berlusconi tossed out plenty of other poisoned darts. Here are a few:
    - Under my government, "I am not accepting any responsibility for what this government has done.... The travel agencies were busy, the restaurants were working at full speed, and it was tough to book an airplane for a weekend getaway." The crisis, in short, came after he left as head of government just 13 months ago.
    - Under his government - which lasted 17 years altogether - unemployment stood at 8% (today, over 10%). "The profs [Monti and several of his cabinet members are university teachers] got swollen heads after a bit and paid no attention to our observations. Let's be clear: they brought the country to this sorry pass."
    - "Monti was kept in power by the left, who brought with them the dirt and envy toward those who have more, those who with sacrifices managed to buy themselves a home. With the left comes the envy of the Communist ideology, inhuman and criminal, which has always remained just the same."
    - "Santoro, you're getting paid to be here, but I'm here for free. But I need to make money, I have to pay the woman who was my wife no less than 200 million lire [error: he meant euros] a year." For this he has to thank three Communist feminist judges who took the part of his ex-wife, he added.
     
    Marco Travaglio's role was to attack Berlusconi. He reminded Berlusconi of the bunga-bunga parties, of his three ongoing court cases (one involving alleged sex with a minor), of putting a purported former girlfriend on the public payroll, and on and on, concluding by saying: "Berlusconi, you wasted 20 years. You used your energy and power, not to combat the Mafia and tax dodgers, but to combat those who fought against them.... What's most important today is not what you said and did in those two decades, but what you did not say or do."
     
    Fighting back, Berlusconi attacked Travaglio in what can only be described as an underhanded manner. A bigoted part of the Italian press alleges that Travaglio is gay, and so, when Berlusconi unexpectedly claimed the chair in which Travaglio had been seated, the former Premier ostentatiously wiped the chair seat clean with a big white kerchief. It was a pantomime by a consummate actor, and no one missed the point. But on the off-chance someone did miss it, Berlusconi also said pointedly, "Hey guys, don't let yourselves get screwed." Get it? The Italians did, and many were pleased with Berlusconi's dumping on presumed homosexuals.
     
    Although one-third of Italians watched the show, it can hardly be described as Italy at its best. Down at the water pump today the villagers were still expressing outrage. "Santoro knew that Berlusconi would use him to make a comeback." "Santoro is sleaze - he never attacked Berlusconi!" "Santoro and La Sette cared more about getting a big audience share than about giving Berlusconi a platform that would relaunch him." Indeed, the pollsters acknowledge that the performance has relaunched Berlusconi to some decree, just when he appeared most feeble. Berlusconi himself considers his appearance a terrific success, and is already supposedly asking which of his collaborators will come join him at the Quirinal Palace when he is elected president of Italy to succeed Giorgio Napolitano in mid-2013.
     
    If this seems audaciously ambitious, a realistic problem is control of the Senate. Italy's election law, insultingly dubbed the "Porcellum" (hog law), gives the regions a greater margin of control than has Parliament. The upper house has 315 elective seats plus five for lifetime senatorial appointments. The winning coalition automatically receives 55% of Senate slots. Berlusconi's new election pact with Roberto Maroni of the Northern League just may tilt the Senate to the right in opposition to the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies, which is expected to be controlled by a coalition of leftists and moderates with Church support.
     
    Hold onto your hats. To paraphrase the poet, "The best is yet to be."
  • Life & People

    Monti in the Arena with a Cup of Tea


    ROME -  He is no longer a glacial emperor seated above the fray, but on an equal footing with the other gladiators, right, left and center, many of whom are more expert at the game than he. Quick judgments matter: because national general elections, teamed now with elections to the Lazio and Lombard regional assemblies, are only seven weeks away, there is little time to get campaigns back on track if they are sliding off the rails.

     
    One of the pithiest early judgments came from Mario Secchi, the moderate editor-in-chief of the Rome daily Il Tempo. "He has jumped into the ring with the smile of a man carrying a cup of tea," sentenced Secchi. The smile is because, "He is amused at trying to overturn the political paradigm of the past twenty years by building first an 'agenda,' then a campaign (its slogan is 'With Monti for Italy') and lastly a coalition." The idea, says Secchi, is that Monti laid down the railway tracks while he was in government, then bought some coal and now he's building a locomotive to which he is attaching train cars. Will he run off the rails? Get there in time? "That will depend upon the passengers. The conductor is fine, but on a train you also need someone to take the tickets."
     
    Needless to say, former Premier Silvio Berlusconi has been less generous with Monti, calling him a "mini-leader" (leaderino). It was, of course, Berlusconi who brought down the Monti government in December, in a vote against Monti's austerity package. Speaking Jan. 3, Berlusconi declared that Monti "is a rotter (mascalzone) with a guaranteed income [from his position as lifetime senator] who lies saying that part of our Freedom Party is against liberalization. I'm beginning to doubt his ability to make judgments." (This was a retort to Monti, who had just said virtually the same thing about Berlusconi.) Berlusconi is currently engaged in tough negotiations with his once and future allies of the Northern League, and - hint, hint - has informed voters that he may not necessarily be premier if his party and/or coalition triumphs. And a triumph is what he predicts, claiming that his polls show that from its starting point of 15% a month ago his party has already surged to 20%. "In the end we will win 40% of the vote, the same as in the elections of 2008." 
     
    However exaggerated such optimism, Berlusconi remains a formidable campaigner, and no one is writing him out of the fray. Pollsters say his  appeal is to two specific social strati, one on the emotional, the other, on the rational level. His message - jokes, lively chatter, fluency, personal success, frequent appearances in the media - speaks to ordinary "folks" whose primary news source is television. "This technical government has been a disaster," Berlusconi says heatedly. "We're in a full recession. We have to let the Italians know that we are still here and that we have a program for digging Italy out of recession." His second audience is composed of the small businessmen who resent Italy's heavy taxation. Striking out at both Monti and the leader of the center-left, Pier Luigi Bersani, he says, "The left wants a luxury tax on houses, on your savings and your stocks." His third weapon is support in Southern Italy, thanks to a new agreement with the Sicilian politician Gianfranco Micchiche' for support from his action group "Grande Sud" (Great South`). Micciche', after working with Marcello Dell'Utri in Berlusconi's PR company Publitalia '80, was elected president of the Sicilian Regional Assembly in 2006. He was the subject of controversy for his opposing naming the Palermo airport in the memory of the Mafia victims Judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
     
    As this shows, for Monti the coming election will not be a nice cuppa tea. One of his earliest mistakes was to allow the PR department of the premier's office to release his new party's action program, the "agenda." Since then he has made other errors. According to Monti's old friend Eugenio Scalfari, editor-in-chief of the daily La Repubblica, Monti has already proven a disappointment. Scalfari's reasoning is that Monti's program coincides to great degree with that of Pierluigi Bersani, who had been Monti's strongest supporter in Parliament during the past year of restoring Italy's international credibility and keeping Italy from going bankrupt. Today the two political leaders are at loggerheads, battling against each other instead of making common cause, in Scalfari's view.
     
    Monti was "less than generous" in failing to acknowledge that the success of the Monti government came about thanks to Bersani. The failure to come to an agreement with Bersani, whose party is expected to win over 30% of the vote, risks throwing the country into chaos, Scalfari warns darkly, and has implications for all of Europe. Making common cause instead with the centrists like Pierferdinando Casini, even with Vatican support, the outcome may be disappointing, Scalfari predicts. Addressing Monti directly, he adds: "You have changed.... I am worried at what you have become now."

Pages