You see, THIS is why I like Berlusconi. He's basically an internet troll, living it up for real, and running a country. Think Enterpriser, when he was a mod here, and scale it up. How funny is that?
Italian PM Berlusconi tells Obama he's being persecuted
- Thread starter DarthTom
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You see, THIS is why I like Berlusconi. He's basically an internet troll, living it up for real, and running a country. Think Enterpriser, when he was a mod here, and scale it up. How funny is that?
Well, I only recently realised that debates in the German parliament are often a lot like bad TNZ discussions, so there's plenty of trolling, baiting and even flaming going on in politics, anyway. It can be hilarious but I suppose it's not as funny for Itlaians in this case.
sounds like you need some new media ownershp laws. In a lot of countries politicians would have to divest themselves of such interests on conflict of interest grounds.
We definitively do need such laws. We have regulations regarding conflict of interests, but they are easily circumvented (for example, Berlusconi solved the issue by appointing his eldest son as administrator of his television empire). The Left tried to pass such laws the last time they were in power, but they wasted too much time bickering between themselves about how to do it. Ultimately, the Prodi government lost confidence of Parliament due to the defection of a few representatives, who quite unsurprisingly were elected in Berlusconi's party at the following election...
Well guys, another small update about Italian politics (not that anybody cares, but as the wisdom goes, "I have one job on this lousy ship, it's stupid, but I'm gonna do it! Okay??").
This last weekend, Italians voted on a popular referendum against a few laws passed by the government (privatization of water supplies, construction of nuclear power plants, and a law allowing Ministers to postpone any trial they are involved in while they are in office -- yeah, really).
Voters turnout was 55% (above the needed threshold of 50% to make it valid), and the result was an outstanding 95% against such laws.
Now, in other countries, that would have been a political tsunami. But here in Italy, consequences are less easy to predict. Berlusconi has accepted the results, but it's already working on another law to protect himself from trials.
However, the Lega Nord, a regionalist (and rather xenophobe) movement and junior partner in the government coalition, is thinking hard about withdrawing its support to the cabinet, for it has seen its support plummet for its failure to address the issues of their base (mostly, taxes and immigration), while the goverment was busy dealing with the escapades (legal and otherwise) of the Prime Minister.
It could be everything, it could be nothing. Stay tuned.
This last weekend, Italians voted on a popular referendum against a few laws passed by the government (privatization of water supplies, construction of nuclear power plants, and a law allowing Ministers to postpone any trial they are involved in while they are in office -- yeah, really).
Voters turnout was 55% (above the needed threshold of 50% to make it valid), and the result was an outstanding 95% against such laws.
Now, in other countries, that would have been a political tsunami. But here in Italy, consequences are less easy to predict. Berlusconi has accepted the results, but it's already working on another law to protect himself from trials.
However, the Lega Nord, a regionalist (and rather xenophobe) movement and junior partner in the government coalition, is thinking hard about withdrawing its support to the cabinet, for it has seen its support plummet for its failure to address the issues of their base (mostly, taxes and immigration), while the goverment was busy dealing with the escapades (legal and otherwise) of the Prime Minister.
It could be everything, it could be nothing. Stay tuned.
Funny but true!
Funny but true!
I voted. And I simply couldn't believe the result. 95% is so awesome, lol.
I'm happy. I could stare at the result page on repubblica.it all day.
I alternated all afternoon between Repubblica, Corriere, and the Viminale website, in addition to listening to La7 run-on commentary. Not much work was done yesterday afternoon.
I confess, I made a little dance when I saw the results.
I confess, I made a little dance when I saw the results.
Think Enterpriser, when he was a mod here, and scale it up. How funny is that?
Enterpriser, the infamous poster who's tag line stated, "America, the leading light of freedom in the world."
I always heard he moved to Alberta Canada because the opportunities were better and to get in on all of the Canadian oil wealth as well as the fact that Alberta is one of the only fundi-Christian communities in all of Canada.
Well, he is persistent. You have to give him that.
Like herpes, he never really goes away.
Given he is currently facing four different trials, and he will undoubtedly face many more in the years to come as his traffics come out, he has little choice but to fight with nails and teeth for immunity.
I saw an interview by Marco Travaglio, one of the few last real journalist in Italy, about the difference between other western democracies and Italy about the relationship between politics and justice: in the rest of Europe, most politicians step down from office to be tried in court and then return to politics once they are cleared; in Italy, politicians try to stop trials while they are in office, and seek to remain in office as long as possible.
^Nope. And even after Berlusconi, I'm not sure I would support it.
Term limits strike me as a way to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Elected officials should be voted out because they lost their support, not because their warranty expired.
As much as it pains me, as long as people vote for him, he has a right to lead the government. What he shouldn't be able to do, however, is to break the law with impunity. That is the reason he should be excluded from public office, not because of a term limit.
But that's academical: even if we had term limits, Berlusconi would just end up doing like his dear friend Putin, putting a sockpuppet in the leadership position, but still holding the real power to himself.
Term limits strike me as a way to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Elected officials should be voted out because they lost their support, not because their warranty expired.
As much as it pains me, as long as people vote for him, he has a right to lead the government. What he shouldn't be able to do, however, is to break the law with impunity. That is the reason he should be excluded from public office, not because of a term limit.
But that's academical: even if we had term limits, Berlusconi would just end up doing like his dear friend Putin, putting a sockpuppet in the leadership position, but still holding the real power to himself.
Would term-limits even have a point in Italy? Italian governments are notorious for collapsing and Berlusconi took the record for longest-serving PM (excluding Mussolini) after only 5 years, or something absurdly short like that. No offence, but Italy is often used as an example of what's wrong with proportional representation for that reason.
Well, Mussolini was kind of a special case, with the whole more-or-less-self-appointed-dictator issue. Beside, pre-1945 Kingdom of Italy had a completely different constitution from modern Italian Republic, so there is really no point in comparing them.
None taken, because I completely agree.
I'm from America. Damn, we never get any of the really fun politicians here.
You had Bill Clinton, but you insisted in impeaching him for lying under oath instead of buying him a beer. You can't complain now!
Well, that's not exactly true because many of the dozens of governments since 1945 were headed by the same prime ministers.
The parties in power basically never changed until they all collapsed in the early 1990's. There were just so many fights between the different factions within those parties that the government had to constantly be rebuilt. But it's always been the same parties that were in power (with only slight variations).
De Gasperi for example basically headed 7 "different" governments over the course of 8 years.
So if it's always the same people in power you can't really call that "unstable". You could call it "screwed up", though.
With Italian politics split between fierce anti-communism on one side (backed by the USA *cough* including CIA) and the strongest communist party in Western Europe on the other side (which just never got strong enough to actually win an election and form the government) it was just a matter of time until corruption set in.
Having the same people in charge for 40+ years just never works out anywhere.
As I said it's a bit more complex than that but it's certainly "screwed up".
Yeah, the weirdest thing about Italian politics 1945-1992 was that it was the most stable and the most unstable system of government, at the same time.
How very... Gattopardian of us.
