Who cares about Alitalia

Three months after the elections, when Berlusconi aroused the traded unions into rejecting Air France's plan and promised a quick solution, the Alitalia saga still looks neverending. The ailing state-controlled air company, after long and overdue negotiations, was about to be sold to the French. Staff cuts were necessary, as Alitalia was (is) virtually bankrupt, and the deal looked reasonable to most observers.
Then Berlusconi, eager to win a third stint in goverment and eyeing a potential electoral coup-de-theatre, upset the table. He knew personally a group of businessmen willing to save Alitalia, and that would be a priority for his government. Alitalia's trade unionists, widely despised by Italians for being out of touch with reality and defending absurd privileges, upped the ante. And AirFrance left the table.

A hundred days later, Alitalia is barely surviving only thanks to a 300 million state loan, highly frowned upon by the EU. The company has cut flights but also lost passengers, and is losing over 1 million euros a day, more than it used to lose daily when a deal with AirFrance was still possible. Berlusconi is still promising to save the "italianity" of the company, but is now warning that some staff cuts will be necessary. Thanks for informing us: it would be bizarre if the new "saviours" cut more staff than AirFrance intended to do. Meanwhile, counting only the last three months, Alitalia cost every Italian more than 5 euros. God knows how much more during the years. And I don't know a single person who actually cares about the "italianity" of Alitalia. Cheaper flights and a better service would be more important.

You said renewable energy? Italy goes nuclear

There's much talk about a return to nuclear energy in Italy. After shutting down its (few) atomic plants in 1987, as Italians approved a referendum still in the wake of the Chernobyl accident, the government now wants to go nuclear again.

Now, I'm not biased against nuclear. There are pros and cons: it provides cleans energy, security has improved - but plants are expensive, they require huge investments, and the problem of waste-disposal is unsolved. But the point is: while the rest of the world is investing in new forms of energy - wind, solar, biomass, biofuels, geothermal - Italy is pursuing an old idea.

Other countries are betting heavily on nuclear energy: the UK is planning 8 new plants, and in the US John McCain has envisaged 45 new plants if elected. But in those countries, heavy investimens on new energy are already in place. And the cost of energy produced by solar, wind, biomass, thanks to (non-existent in Italy) R&D, is going steadily down. While the cost of uranium - a finite resource - has risen 19-fold since 2000. The future, it is widely assumed, belongs to renewable energy.

With its southern regions enjoying sunny days for most of the year, Italy has "one of the largest potentials for solar energy in Europe", reckons the US Energy Information Administration, which adds that "analysts estimate that Italy could have the largest, per-capita geothermal potential in the world". Why don't politicians talk about this, instead of squabbling on TV about secondary issues?

With no oil and gas on its territory, the country pays the highest electricity bills in Europe. Higher than Germany, which has put a renewable-energy tax on electricity bills since the early '90s, and now is one of the top producers of wind and solar energy in the world. And 40 percent higher than France, which thanks to its nearly 40 nuclear plants has an excess capacity, allowing the country to export electricy to - yes - Italy.

Of Mafia, Camorra and the real security emergency

Mafia, Camorra and all the other Italian criminal organisations have always sold well in Italy. In the '80s, a TV fiction like La Piovra was one of the biggest hit ever in the country. In the last years, Roberto Saviano's book (and later film) Gomorra has constantly been a best-seller. And when, between May and July 1992, Mafia killed the two most prominent anti-Mafia judges Falcone and Borsellino, Italians were shocked and united in their grief. Yet, never has an Italian government pledged to root the "grande criminalità" out.
Through drug trafficking, extorsions, prostitution, Mafia eats up 7 percent of Italy's GDP, dragging down the whole economy, particularly in the South. Despite some high-profile arrests in the last years, it's as active as ever. And it kills, not just rival criminals, but also innocent and honest people like Raffaele Granata, a beach-owner murdered yesterday near Naples for refusing to pay protection money, the so-called "pizzo".
Sicilians, it has been recently reported, are waking up against Mafia. The number of people reporting extortions to the police is rising. Citizens' associations have been founded. And what is the goverment doing? Nothing. The much-talked about "security emergency" focuses on Roma and immigrants.
Berlusconi's is surely to blame for never mentioning Mafia as a priority, and many analysts have linked the extraordinary success of the centre-right coalition in the South (in the 2001 elections, it scooped up all the 61 contested seats in Sicily) to the "soft approach" towards Mafia, a decisive vote-gatherer in some Southern regions. But the centre-left coalition, despite some commendable candidates (like Borsellino's sister Rita) has hardly played the Mafia card in any elections.
Maybe politicians think that Mafia is too big a cancer to eradicate, therefore it can just be contained. Maybe the Mafia backing is too important to win in some constituencies. Maybe investing heavily in the struggle against the high criminality would not improve noticeable results. Maybe it just requires too much courage to stand up to Mafia, because vengeance is likely. But I guess that, if a national coalition put the struggle against Mafia, Camorra, 'Ndrangheta and the likes at the top of its priorities, stressing the message that Italy can be different, that the state can really protect those who dare stand up, Italians would pull together and things could change.
Think of a new prime minister announcing on TV, or in his first speech to the country or to a crowd of supporters, "We shall overcome against Mafia", or "yes, we can". Unthinkable? Maybe. Surely unseen in Italy, up to now.

Italy's opposition, a laughing stock for all

Foreign observers used to laugh at Italian politics because governments changed once a year. Now they make fun of us because of Berlusconi. But the behaviour of the current centre-left coalition deserves the same treatment.
While the government majority has basicly coalesced into two parties (Berlusconi's People of Freedom and the xenophobic and populist Northern League), the opposition is more divided than ever, even after being drubbed in last April's elections.
Following all the splits and name-changing facelifts is hard even by Italian standards. After splitting into three Communist parties, the far left united under one flag but got kicked out from the Parliament. The Democratic Party, the biggest movement in the coalition, was born from the merger between the secular Leftist Democrats and left-catholic The Daisy and was led by Walter Veltroni, a popular former mayor of Rome who took inspiration from Kennedy and Obama, but suffered a hard blow in April, despite the alliance with a small but fiery anti-corruption party led by former Tangentopoli prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro.
After the usual grand electoral promises, Berlusconi swiftly changed his priorities to what he does best: fixing the trials he's involved in with some self-tailored laws. In today's case, by passing a law that would temporarily freeze trials for the four highest political figures.
And how does the opposition reply? The radical left is busy trying to find a new identity, and is nowhere to be seen. Veltroni's Democrats, unconspicuous in their opposition but active with a "shadow government" so shadowy that few Italians realize it exists, apparently are convinced that the best way to tackle Berlusconi is by means of "dialogue for the reforms", a vague mantra that Italian politicians have kept repeating for the last ten years, to the point that nobody knows what these reforms would be anyway.
Di Pietro's Italy of Values, together with citizens who feel unrepresented by any parties but follow Beppe Grillo, a stand-up comedian-cum-firebrand, is the only one actively trying to denounce the prime minister's attempts to muzzle the judiciary.
This week, tens of thousands of people took to Rome's Piazza Navona to participate in a mass protest organized by Di Pietro. Anti-Berlusconi voters watched with a mix of hope and perplexity, but it was a stirring event anyway, when compared with Veltroni's smooth style.
And what happened today? The Democrats attacked Di Pietro, vehemently asking him to choose "between the streets and the Parliament". Another division in Italy's beleaguered opposition. On the other side, Berlusconi must be watching the show and have a laugh, too.

Hello, Silvio talking. But not resigning

Some of them were made public. Others, the really juicy ones, were later destroyed after a judicial order. But, if secret they were meant to be, word got quickly around that countless wiretaps of Berlusconi phone calls exposed some sexually dubious behaviour by the Italian prime minister.
It didn't take long. In one of the conversations, as left-leaning La Repubblica subtly wrote, Berlusconi "boasts about some of his female ministers' qualities". And in his defence of Berlusconi, conservative Libero's editor Vittorio Feltri said that poor Silvio cannot be blamed if he likes "la gnocca" (pussy).
By word of mouth, now everybody points the finger at the Equal Opportunities minister Mara Carfagna, a 32-year-old former beauty contestant and TV presenter, who recently became the youngest minister ever in Italy. Many Italians, who maligned at the time on the reasons for such a quick ascent to power, now can't refrain from snickering.
In another conversation, published by L'Espresso magazine, Berlusconi - at a time when he was just the opposition leader - pressures a state TV manager to find a role for a little-known starlet who keeps saying the prime minister wants to block her career. One would wonder why. Anyway, that's a plain Italian-style recommendation, and not based on work merits.
A plethora of right-wing journalist, and of course politicians of his coalition, rose up to defend Silvio: his private life is his business, shame on the communist judges and journalists who revel in listening to his conversations. Many Berlusconi voters would probably think the same. After all, everybody makes recommendations in Italy, and most Italians didn't understand what the fuss was about, when the US got stuck into the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. The concept of resigning must be so absurd that nobody even mentions it. If somebody dared to, he would be quickly ridiculed.
Yet, nobody seems to get the ethical point. Shouldn't the prime minister explain to his voters if the "qualities" of one of his female ministers were a factor in giving her the job? Doesn't anybody see anything wrong in a prime minister who, when not even in power, uses his influence to favour somebody's career - in Berlusconi's case with a clear conflict of interests, as he appears to have a say in the decisions of the company that rivals his three TV channels? And don't Berlusconi's female voters have anything to complain about how these episodes confirm the depressing situation of "equal opportunities" in Italy?
In some Northern European countries, it would have taken much less to prompt a politician to resign spontaneously. Last April, Finland's Foreign minister resigned after the media exposed his sending improper text messages to a dancer. In October 2006, Sweden's culture minister resigned after she admitted paying a nanny under the table. But it's not just civil Scandinavians that can look down on Italians. In July 2007, Japan's defence minister resigned after suggesting that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were inevitable. Last January, Malaysia's health minister resigned Wednesday after acknowledging that he and a female friend were the couple in a secretly filmed sex video. And right today, Kenya's finance minister has resigned after being named in a corruption scandal. Had these cases happened in Italy, it wouldn't have been enough to get a resignation. And whoever had been caught in one of these scandals, they would have said it was all a plot against them.