Italy

Waiting for white smoke in Italian politics

March 20, 2013 8:35 pm by Ferdinando Giugliano

Situation vacant? Mario Monti (Getty)

There were two big job vacancies in Rome last month. The Catholic Church began looking for a new pope after the shock resignation of Benedict XVI. Meanwhile, Italians went about the business of picking a new head of government who would end Mario Monti’s technocratic interlude.

The Vatican is not exactly known for its speedy decision-making. Yet it only took the conclave of cardinals a couple of days to elect Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new head of the church. Pope Francis – as he is now – is already making headlines with his new message centred on the need for a humbler and more austere church.

On the other side of the Tiber, Italian politicians are still struggling to choose a new prime minister. Today and tomorrow, President Giorgio Napolitano is meeting party leaders and other institutional figures to talk about what to do next. But Italy-watchers do not expect white smoke to come out of the presidential palace any time soon.

Last month’s inconclusive elections have produced a three-way deadlock in the Senate between Pier Luigi Bersani’s centre-left coalition, Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right alliance, and Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. The only solution to the impasse is a government that is backed by at least two of these forces. But this trilemma has no easy solution. Read more

Tags: Beppe Grillo, Europe, Italian elections, Italy, Mario Monti, Pier Luigi Bersani, Pope Francis, Silvio Berlusconi
Posted in Europe, Foreign affairs, Italy, Italy elections, World affairs | Permalink

Smart Reads March 1, 2013

March 1, 2013 12:12 pm by Amie Tsang

The leader of a grassroots movement in Kenya has declared the Mombasa coast an independent republic and called for a boycott of next week’s presidential election.
Italy’s business leaders are fearful that, after this week’s general election, much-needed reforms will be stalled by gridlock in Rome or torpedoed by Beppe Grillo’s anti-establishment party.
In case you missed it yesterday, we bring you news that rats can communicate telepathically. Across continents.
Marc Lynch has some advice for John Kerry on his first visit to the Middle East, and how he can keep the bigger picture in mind.
Anthropologists are proving, through a mix of psychology and economics, that culture and environment have more influence over the way people think than previously believed (and more influence than some people feel comfortable with).
The spat between legendary journalist Bob Woodward and the White House shows just how weird Washington is, according Paul Farhi at the Washington Post.
The rise of Golden Dawn has been met with retaliatory violence from the radical left in Greece, raising fears of civil conflict.

Tags: Anthropology, Bob Woodward, Golden Dawn, Greece, Italy, John Kerry, Kenya, Middle East, Mombasa, rats, telepathy, Washington, White House
Posted in Smart Reads | Permalink

Smart Reads February 27, 2013

February 27, 2013 2:43 pm by Amie Tsang

Tony Barber argues that a decontamination of Italian politics must come before economic salvation, and the two issues should never be separated.
Clown-turned-politician Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva was elected into the Brazilian congress with a record number of votes in 2010. However, the joy of his campaign has given away to a weariness of the politician’s life: “You pass whole days here doing nothing, just waiting to vote on something while people argue and argue.”
“Enemy-initiated attacks” in Afghanistan have stayed constant from 2011 to 2012. The reported 7 per cent drop was actually the result of a clerical error.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a barrel full of pork that no longer exists. The Washington Post reports on the tiny local airports in the US that attract plenty of federal spending, but very few planes.
Tunisians and Egyptians have to fight for their right to do the Harlem Shake.

Tags: Afghanistan, clown, Egypt, Harlem Shake, Italy, Tiririca, Tunisia, US
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Beppe Grillo: five classic one-liners

February 26, 2013 6:05 pm by Esther Bintliff

(AFP/Getty Images)

Beppe Grillo, the big winner of Italy’s 2013 election, first rose to fame in the 1970s as an irreverent, foul-mouthed comedian with corruption of all kinds in his sights. Read more

Tags: Beppe Grillo, Italian elections, Italy, jokes
Posted in Italy, Italy elections | Permalink

Monti may have tanked in Italy, but he did better among Italians living abroad

February 26, 2013 2:03 pm by Valentina Romei

Two interesting trends that have shown up in the data from Italy’s election today.

1) The preliminary election results among the nearly 3.5 million Italian voters living abroad show a very different picture from the results within Italy.

The austerity measures and market-friendly stance of the ex-Prime Minister Mario Monti managed to convinced over 27 per cent of the votes of Italians living in Europe and in North and Central America, where his movement came in second after Pier Luigi Bersani’s Democratic Party (PD). Within Italy, fewer than one in ten Italians voted for him.

Meanwhile, the comedian-turned-political leader Beppe Grillo successfully won over Italians in the plazas where he held numerous rallies, but it appears that his anti-establishment message was not heard so sympathetically by Italians around the world. Read more

Tags: Beppe Grillo, Five Star Movement, Italian elections, Italy, M5S, Mario Monti, Pier Luigi Bersani
Posted in Italy, Italy elections | Permalink

Mario Monti, Paul Krugman and Italian austerity

February 25, 2013 4:13 pm by Gideon Rachman

Mario Monti exits a voting booth on February 24 (AFP/Getty)

Paul Krugman has got in early to comment on the political demise of Mario Monti – who now seems certain to trail in fourth in the Italian elections. According to Krugman, Monti’s reputation for wisdom is wildly overblown. On the contrary, he more or less deserves his fate because he was “in effect, the proconsul installed by Germany.”

Worse, according to Krugman, Monti’s policies did not even work. As in the rest of southern Europe, the economy has shrunk and so debt-to-GDP ratios have risen. There was only one “piece of good news” in the Monti era – that “bond markets have calmed down.” However, Monti cannot claim the credit even for this, because it is “largely thanks to the stated willingness of the ECB to step in and buy government debt when necessary.”

As ever, with Krugman, the argument is forcefully made. But it misses out a crucial stage in the argument and therefore unfairly denigrates the role of Monti in stabilising the Italian economy. Remember, when Monti came to power, the steady rise in the interest rates that Italy was having to pay to finance its debt was eating up more and more of the Italian budget. There was a real prospect that Italy might simply be unable to finance itself through the bond markets – and that might have sparked a terminal crisis in the euro. Read more

Tags: ECB, euro, eurozone crisis, Italian elections, Italy, Mario Monti, Paul Krugman
Posted in Italy, Italy elections | Permalink

As it happened: Italian elections

February 25, 2013 1:02 pm by Tom Burgis

This is a Live Blog transcript. Read more

Italians cast their ballots in a tight election, with Brussels, Berlin and the markets looking on. By Tom Burgis, Lina Saigol, Ben Fenton and Shannon Bond with contributions from FT correspondents across Italy and beyond. All times are GMT.

Tags: Beppe Grillo, elections, Five Star Movement, Italian elections, Italy, Mario Monti, Pier Luigi Bersani, Silvio Berlusconi
Posted in Europe, Italy, Italy elections | Permalink

Italy election: 5 ways to prep for the result

February 25, 2013 11:50 am by Esther Bintliff

On this, the final day of polling in Italy’s 2013 election, we thought it would be worth highlighting five blog posts from the FT that will help provide the context you need to understand the results when they eventually emerge… Read more

Tags: Beppe Grillo, Five Star Movement, Italian elections, Italy, Mario Monti, Silvio Berlusconi
Posted in Italy, Italy elections | Permalink

Smart Reads February 22, 2013

February 22, 2013 2:35 pm by Amie Tsang

Italy has a long record of weak and fragmented coalition governments – and it’s at risk of voting for yet another one, warns Guy Dinmore in today’s Global Insight.
Willy Mutunga, Kenya’s chief justice, said that he and members of the judiciary have received threats ahead of next months’ elections.
The elections have also stirred up old grievances – “ethnically based militias are mobilized and neighbors start killing neighbors.”
Robert Mackey over at The Lede has noticed that an innocent Syrian bystander, who often seems around to comment on events in Syria, may not be such an innocent bystander after all.
The New York Times has an in-depth report on the science of engineering junk food and the “bliss point”, the optimum level of sweetness. One ex-Coke employee says he is now paying his “karmic debt” for working there by selling carrots. After walking through an impoverished area in Brazil, he thought: “‘These people need a lot of things, but they don’t need a Coke.’ I almost threw up.”

Tags: Italy, junk food, Kenya, Science, Syria
Posted in Smart Reads | Permalink

Berlusconi: why is he still popular?

February 19, 2013 2:41 pm by Rachel Sanderson

Italy's former Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi delivers a speech during a rally of his party "Popolo della liberta" (People of the Freedom - PDL) in Rome, on February 7, 2013 (ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images)

(AFP/Getty)

As Italy’s increasingly surreal election campaign draws to a close, it is still hard to believe that Silvio Berlusconi, who exited government so ignominiously 18 months ago, may well garner enough votes with his coalition partners next weekend to deny the centre-left and Mario Monti an outright win.

Should that happen, as is probable, Italians are destined for more political instability. They may be back at the polls within a year or 18 months.

In that context alone, understanding the enduring appeal of Berlusconi – who failed to stem a decline of Italian economic competitiveness during his time in office and remains mired in corruption trials – can be baffling for an outsider. But go out on the stump with Italy’s veteran showman, as I did on Monday night, and it all becomes a little clearer. Read more

Tags: 2013, Italian elections, Italy, Mario Monti, Silvio Berlusconi
Posted in Italy, Italy elections | Permalink