Elections in Italy: The Country in the Hands of Buffoons!

Election polls are closing now as I write but we already know that Italy is in the hands of populist buffoons. Exit polls may show unclear results as the three major blocs of votes are head to head and we probably won't know for sure who won before tomorrow.

Consider the situation (this is in rough terms):
  • A little over a third of the votes goes to the big leftist party, the Partito Democratico, historic heir to the now defunct Communist Party, the so-called "Center Left Coalition":  the question is how much over 33% and whether the government coming out of the election can govern with the support of Monti who's hated by the Italian electors who cannot forgive him his policies of austerity, the property tax and attempts at labor reform;


  • One third of the votes - or maybe more? -  goes to the "Center Right Coalition" once again led by a Silvio Berlusconi revived from the dead and confirmed false comedian, singer and lover of bunga-bunga parties and young girls (in spite of his 76 years); but Italians love his lies and false promises of giving back the property tax raised by the "technical" Monti government: he's conveniently forgotten that before resigning from the government a year ago he had himself signed a letter of promise to the European Union, the IMF and the European Central Bank that he would raise taxes and balance the budget; he left Monti to do the dirty work but no one seems to remember his role in this story...






  • Another third of the vote - or maybe less? - goes to the Five-Star Movement led by Beppe Grillo, a real comedian, termed by French commentators the "Coluche" of the situation, a man with no political program and no ideas beyond vocal protest who loudly closed his campaign with the vulgar expletive "Vaffan culo..." (I'm not translating that!)




And Prime Minister Monti in all this, leading the "Centrist Coalition"? Just a few percentage points, around 10% if that,  obviously the loser...

Other big absentees: some 45% of voters, maybe more - in any case a huge percentage: too many Italians do not like exercising their voting right, which means that Italian democracy is left in the hands of ... comedians!

I'm not kidding: Berlusconi and Beppe Grillo taken together account for some 60% of the vote!

LATEST UPDATE: Here are the early numbers after the polls closed:


The Sky poll for the Senate:
Centre-left coalition (Bersani): 37%
Centre-right coalition (Berlusconi): 31%
Five Star Movement (Grillo): 16.5%
Centrist coalition (Monti): 9%
La Stampa is reporting for the Chamber of Deputies:
Centre-left coalition (Bersani): 34.5%
Centre-right coalition (Berlusconi): 29%
Five Star Movement (Grillo): 19%
Centrist coalition (Monti): 9.5%


There were also regional elections in some of the major provinces (Lombardy, Lazio...) but all eyes are trained on the main elections as people in Europe wonder whether Italy will continue with the policies set by the Monti government or not, and perhaps even fall out of the Eurozone if Berlusconi actually does what he promised to do...

Early results are somewhat encouraging: it looks like Beppe Grillo didn't make it - not really - and that he probably weakened Berlusconi's hand. If so, then the future is looking better for Italy.

If not - then Povera Italia, quo vadis? Where are you going? Some people are already talking about new elections as soon as 2015 but (I think) that's being a little too pessimistic.

It looks like Italy decided not to follow Grillo/Coluche down the road of systematic political obstruction...Let's hope so!


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Comments

Jack Durish said…
Just think how much better it would be if government didn't really matter. What if government was smaller, less intrusive; would it matter as much who ran it? What if government didn't take so much of what you earn to distribute to other; would it matter as much was was taking the money and who they were giving it to? What if entrepreneurs created new products and services, and were the principle job creators, to succeed or fail on their own merits; would it matter as much who was elected than in a country where the economy was centrally controlled? I spent the better part of my life in America never thinking about who was President. I didn't care if he was playing golf or playing with the "football". He wasn't a celebrity. The economy was distributed among the people. I could always find a job. Essential products and services were affordable. But now that the President is a celebrity and more of the economy is centrally controlled, everything has changed for the worse. Now I care who gets elected. What a shame.
I understand where you're coming from, Jack, but America is NOT Europe. In the US, there is extreme poverty, huge pockets of forgotten people left behind by the kind of tough capitalism (only the strongest wins) that Americans favor, convinced that this is what their country is about. In Europe, we don't like to leave behind the poor and downtrodden. That's why we have social security services that provide both pensions that are at an acceptable level in most cases (though there are exceptions and some ridiculous cases of obvious unfair and unjustifiable grabbing of state funds) and, more importantly perhaps, good health care for the whole population (Italy is second in the world in terms of health care quality, just behind France - don't ask me where the US is placed but it's way behind).

So yes, your model of small government and big entrepreneurship works for the big entrepreneurs for sure, for some smaller ones too (maybe) but it definitely leaves behind a large segment of the population. Back in the 1960s, this model was acceptabl because there wasn't the kind of income inequality we see today. Now the model is no longer acceptable: it means that 99 percent of the population is headed for the gutter.

Sorry about that Jack, I wish the world were more like you see it, but it isn't.
Jack Durish said…
Interesting. Poverty has risen the further America has left capitalism behind. How do you explain that one? Job creation has fallen since we have limited the ability of entrepreneurs to create new products and services. We now have a large group of people who have gone unemployed so long that they have given up seeking jobs. How did we limit them? Well, it begins with government borrowing so much that no one wants to risk capital on startups. Government regulations make it virtually impossible to get business licenses. Yeah, y'all go right on with your progressivism and we'll follow you into the financial abyss. Thanks for showing us the way and the consequences.
Jack, you're such a pessimist! Poverty has risen in America precisely because it's gone further down the Capitalist Road than any other country, and the drift to perfect capitalism has increased after the fall of the Berlin Wall! This is the perfect capitalistic world you've always been dreaming of. Entrepreneurs who make it are "winners-take-all" types that leave no space for start-ups...Though that's not strictly true: since the 1990s we've seen the rise of the Internet and Silicon Valley, and there has never been so many young billionaire entrepreneurs à la Mark Zuckenberg in the History of the country...

So, no, I don't see the world as such a dark place at all! Unjust, yes, but space for start-ups? Always!