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April 11, 2006
United we fall
It was the first time ever we follow Italian Political elections start to end on our macs, sack TV. And it was surprisingly good. Thanks to La Repubblica and the Corriere della Sera, both with an informative and agile web presence.
Despite the very close results, a first for Italy, Prodi won the Deputy Chamber with some 24,000 votes over Berlusconi, which gives the Left coalition 340 Deputies versus Berlusconi's 277. The other chamber, the Senate, was also won by Prodi, 158 to 156.
This is a very close margin. Unusually close. It is remarkably important that one coalition has got both chambers, our constitutional procedurals would otherwise nightmarishingly stall. And still this is not what both parties were expecting.
The election law is new, wanted and drafted by Berlusconi, a tailor-made return to the past and to him, paradoxically, suicidal. On the other camp much more was expected that did not happen. If these elections were a call for voters to make a definite choice they didn't.
It is quite predictable now that chunks of the House of Freedom (Berlusconi's coalition) will quietly migrate from one camp to the other. It's Italian genes to follow the power where-ever power goes.
Berlusconi is still the guts and soul to millions. He is only fading, inevitably, away.
Startling and disturbing is, in the news today, Bernardo Provenzano finally captured. Undiscussed boss of bosses, the Padrino from Corleone was missing for 43 years and in power for that long according to informants. Provenzano was captured today by police in... Corleone, the place where he was born. With typical, possibly the only good left to what these men represent, he elegantly and nonchalantly responded to the obvious brigadiere's question, simply: "Yes, I am".
He was captured today. I am sure this is just a coincidence.
In a previous post I was recalling The Economist and the paper's open call to Italians to screw Silvio and sack him from job. He was. But he does not fall alone. Two men fall today. United by circumstances together they fall.
The long-term task of dealing with the ruins he has left behind for us to cope with has begun. It is now up to Mr. Prodi and his very diverse coalition to grow stronger and learn to talk to the other half of this country. This is the daunting task the winners are up to.
Fair winds, Professor Prodi.
Posted by lck at April 11, 2006 02:07 PM
