Friday, September 02, 2005

Italian political tragedy

Silvio Berlusconi, our prime minister, is politically dead, as already pointed out in previous posts. Why would that have tragic sides?
Italy, sadly, is able to turn every comedy into tragedy and, happily, every tragedy into a comedy. Berlusconi's slow decline belongs to the former category.

With elections coming up next April, Berlusconi is desperately striving to maintain his position. He has to fight against the opposition and against his own 'comrades,' who are desperately trying to get rid of him as a leader of the center-right coalition. The problem is that, as Berlusconi controls the vast majortiy of italian media plus a good slice of italian companies, he is planning to use all its 'artillery' to fight back and avoid defeat.

This macabre show is all the more sickening when looked at from the viewpoint of small/medium dignitaries of Berlusconi's party who, in a very italian way world wide known as 'trasformismo', are quitting the ranks of Berlusconi's party to join the opposition in view of forthcoming elections.

Berlusconi declared once that he made the transition from 1st to 2nd republic possible. The spectacle we are witnessing these days, however, reminds us of the early days of the italian republic, if such thing has ever existed.

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