Bye bye Silvio, good riddance!

(RESIGNED - The Italian crowd celebrating in front of the Italian Parliament)


Silvio Berlusconi resigned as prime minister tonight at 21.43 after the Italian Parliament approved on a package of austerity measures. His "reign" (government) lasted 1284 days.

Demonstrators chanting "resign, resign, resign" had gathered outside parliament and Berlusconi's car was pelted with coins as it drove to the presidential palace.

This is the end of an era. Let's hope it's the start of a new positive one. Let's hope that Italy can make it. Let's hope that something will really changes in the future both for Italy and Europe. Whatever happens now it will take a long time. And the Italian people, after tonight's brief euforic moments, will start complaining again, they will easily get fed up with the interim government, then with the auterity measures and then with the new permanent governement (whenever this is going to happen). I hope I'm wrong.

In the meanwhile, le roi est "mort", vive l'Italie!

Italian Spring

(Congratulations to all of Italy!)

They/we are calling it the Italian Spring. After Silvio Berlusconi's long years in power, the Italian electorate rose up and said they had enough, overturning laws passed by his government to revive nuclear energy, privatize the water supply and help him avoid prosecution.

The Italian government tried everything possible to delay, compromise and negate the possibility of Italian people expressing dissent. It wasted €300m preventing a high turnout at the ballot for a referendum on three crucial issues. It even passed a decree in the hope of nullifying one of the referendum's counts. In addition, it attempted to prevent adequate television cover of the ballot. Yet the referendum held on 12-13th June succeeded. The result constitutes another huge setback for Silvio Berlusconi's government, after the May local election where even Milan, Berlusconi's home city – rejected his party's candidate for mayor.

Italians were called to the ballot box to give their verdict on three crucial government policies: first we had the opportunity to reject the (in)famous "legitimate impediment’, the law that gave Berlusconi automatic immunity from trial proceedings. Second, we had the chance to stop another controversial reform brought in by Berlusconi's government: water privatisation. And last but not least, we were able to vote against Berlusconi's energy policy, which goes against the current European trend in proposing the construction of nuclear plants in high-risk seismic Italy.

And Italians have spoken. We said no to the current government's most controversial policies. We said no to an undemocratic law that placed the prime minister above the law and prevented him from ever coming to trial. We said no to water privatisation and, again, no to nuclear energy.

And for the first time in many years I am very proud of my country. Forza Italia! (And this is not intended as a pun!)

The Untouchable

"The Untouchable” is watching you from the streets of New York. "The Untouchable” is in this case none else than Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s controversial prime minister whom everybody’s got to know now due to the news spread out all over the international papers, of the despicable forced resignation of Dino Boffo, the editor of the Catholic Church's daily, L'Avvenire. Boffo announced his resignation following a campaign against him in Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family. With this resignation, Berlusconi was able to claim the first scalp in his rapidly escalating battle with the church and the media, which began when a string of sex scandals struck Berlusconi himself. I don’t usually like talking about politics in this modest blog of mine and even in private unless something really strikes me hard. For years now my country has been putting up with this disgraceful individual that is ruining the dignity and pride of his own nation.
But he was voted with a significant majority at the last elections and he seems difficult, if not impossible to get rid of. A friend of mine who lives in NYC saw one of these posters scattered around the city and emailed me a photo. Nobody knows exactly who’s behind this campaign. But it’s good that Berlusconi’s true colours are revealed abroad as well. Who knows, maybe sooner or later the untouchable might get what he deserves, exactly as it happened to Al Capone to whom this poster is inspired.

PS: Another friend of mine from Italy has just told me that these posters are already all over the Italian papers. So it wasn't a "scoop" after all!