ramjambunath said:
Redtreviso, same could be said of some of the Wall Street protesters.
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Italy PM Silvio Berlusconi faces confidence vote
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is facing a key confidence vote in parliament amid questions over his handling of the economy and personal scandals.
Mr Berlusconi is expected to survive but the margin could be narrow.
Italy's government credit rating was recently downgraded and parliament failed to back a key part of the budget this week, triggering the vote.
Mr Berlusconi also faces trial on sex, bribery and abuse of power charges.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15302695
The vote takes place today I think.
Berlusconi believes there is no alternative, but him, to govern the country, lest it fall in the hands of the communists. While his majority rely upon him to stay in power, especially the Lega. This is why the confidence vote will pass. It has been this way for 20 years. In the meantime the country has never been so split since the days of fascism between right and left, nor has it been so run through the mill since then in terms if international image and prestige as under il Cavaliere's populist regime.
He also practically owns the media and, unfortunately, there is a class of cynical and willy Italian that, if not identifies himself in Berlusconi, secretly wants to be like him and thus has cheerfully put up with his antics, his deplorably (and depressingly) embarrassing gaffes and bar room sense of humor.
Ironically Berlusconi and his supporters are continuously chalking up the voices of dissent and horror over his persona and all that it represents from his critics among the people of the left in this country, of which, thankfully, there are still many quite intelligent ones: to a form of self-flagellating envy. As if the people from the left in Italy could find anything to envy in the man. They would hate him, though, because deep down they really want to be like him.
The truth is that this is a perverse falsification of reality, to disguise the ones who truly envy Berlusconi: namely, his own supporters among the claque.
The other problem is that the minority coalition, now led by the rather uncharismatic and hapless Bersani and his Partito Democratico, has been quite pathetic in being divisive and hence weak, and so has indirectly kept Berlusconi in power for all these years, which has resulted in many among the left not finding that their side's political class in any way represents them. This has led to lower voter turnout, then say 20-30 years ago, in a country that has always taken its right to suffrage seriously. Of course, this too has helped the right stay in power for so long.
As a side note, there hasn't been a "threat" of the communists being voted into power since the 70's, when the
partito comunista italiana was led by the eminently refined Enrico Berlinguer. This means that Berlusconi's obsession with the "communists" is totally passé and pathetically instrumental to his political agenda, which is always to vilify the left and make mostly old Italians of his generation (of which the country holds the world record I think) believe that the threat is still quite real when it is obviously not. Berlusconi who has thus always portrayed himself as eminently progressive and modern, is in fact quite old and outdated in his world view. And in all the bad ways. Like polished silverware that in fact merely masks something rather aged and decrepit that was just previously tarinshed.
The wild and stimulating, though often violent, epoch of ideologies in Italy, which caused the lead years of the 70's and early 80's, is over and has given way to the same type of vapid materialism among today's generation that is the product of globalization, the market and the EU following in the path of American capitalism, of which the "self made” business tycoon Berlusconi is a veritable political incarnation
all'italiana.
There is, though, that other Italy, not the one of baseness, mendacity, depravity, indifference, populism, demagoguery, incompetence, corruption, conflict of interests, escorts, tasteless jokes and reeking materialism, but of profound culture (among the most cultured thinkers I have ever met) and social acumen, which in the post-ideological world of the market, however, finds that it has a much harder time making its voice heard.
I think, though, this is also taking place pretty much everywhere in the world. Culture and sobriety are being killed everywhere, by the sheer pornography of mass market, media and consumer driven, society.
But as it has been so often said: the peoples of democracy deserve the goverments they get.
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