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Parties are shying away from the radicalism Rome needs

Italians go to the polls to choose their next prime minister in a little less than five weeks. The election result will reverberate well beyond Italy. The eurozone's future prosperity will depend on whether its third-largest economy can keep its fiscal house in order and resume growth after a decade of stagnation.

The technocratic government led by Mario Monti as well as decisive action by the European Central Bank have helped restore Rome's fiscal credibility. Foreign investors have resumed buying Italian paper and yields on 10-year bonds are significantly lower than what they were in November 2011. Yet the economy is stuck in the longest recession since the second world war. Italy's external competitiveness has not improved since the start of the crisis. Productivity is stagnant and, unlike Spain, Portugal and Ireland, unit labour costs have barely started to fall.

Solving these deep-rooted problems requires a trustworthy leader with a credible economic programme. Neither applies to Silvio Berlusconi, the plutocrat-cum-politician who is planning a comeback after taking his country to the edge of the fiscal precipice. Some elements of his election manifesto, such as steep cuts to government spending that would finance a reduction in business taxes, are sensible in principle. But we have heard it all before. In his nine years in power, Mr Berlusconi, the laughing cavalier, promised much but delivered nothing. Italians should not be beguiled again.

Pier Luigi Bersani, candidate for the centre-left Democrats, and Mario Monti, who is heading a centrist coalition, both have personal credibility. During his time in government, Mr Bersani passed many reforms, including liberalising the legal professions and pharmacy shops. Mr Monti, meanwhile, is trusted both by investors and Italy's eurozone allies

However, neither leader has yet to set out a convincing economic vision for the country. The Democrat leader has to prove he will not be taken hostage by the left wing of his party, which opposes reforms to an inefficient labour market. Mr Monti is right to argue for tax cuts but must spell out where he will find the savings needed to deliver them.

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Here starts the dictatorship?

MOSCA - The leader of the opposition movement "Other Russia", Garry Kasparov, said, in an interview to the TG1 (the main italian tv news journal), that the victory of the Vladimir Putin party, "United Russia", at the legislative elections, signs the beginning of the dictatorship in the Country. "All that powership that Putin has built around him and that, in the electoral campaign, is transformed in a political-administrative structure able to destroy any form of dissent: in one word dictatorship". (Agr)

(From Corriere.it; Here is the link to a Kasparov post in english language about the elections)

Other links (in italian):
ANSA.it: OSCE: ELEZIONI IN RUSSIA 'NON CORRETTE' (OSCE: ELECTIONS IN RUSSIA HAVE BEEN "NOT CORRECT")

How the world knows well us... Read now on the BBC News about italian government crisi, a comment of a Buenos Aires's reader:

The beauty of Italy is that life goes on, despite their anachronistic, difficult to understand politics – it is like a parallel universe, a game with its objectives and a life of its own. Politics is an art practiced in Italy for its own sake, democracy a way of getting into power and staying there, but quite unconnected with people's everyday aspirations, wishes and problems. Of these, the important ones are solved by taking matters into their own hands.

On one side we have this:

On the other side we have:

So let's ask to ourself if it's an option to give Iran some availability of defence or it's an option to safeguard the international treatments against nuclear proliferation.

Sources: BBC News

It's some time that I don't speak about politics..

Maurizio on the today's post resumes a political topic that could be defined as the "abandonment of the extreme electorate" when elections come closer. In the post, .mau. gives a mathematical interpretation to the phenomenon, showing that the politicians don't do good accounts. Read it, because it is interesting. A synthesis cannot be made, if not that the conclusion of the mumbling is that the politicians prefer to move to "center" - watching to uncertain ballots of the moderate flanges - than losing (with smaller uncertainty) the ballots of the more extremist zones.

The temptation has come me to make a reflection, that I forward also to my few readers.

I guess that if politicians (those that make true politics) make this move, as they think that is worth moving to the center in order to take more ballots than to lose some leaving at the extreme sides, there must be one (or more) reason. The problem of the thought, (always considering that it is a metaphor on politics) is that if some percentages of voters don't go to vote anymore, perhaps it's not a problem: since numerically it counts who takes more ballots, it counts therefore who succeeds to "bring" the votes of the center electorate. Mathematically speeching: if a political formation loses 100 ballots on the left and 100 ballots to the right, but then it earns 10 ballots to the center that concur of having the game, so it has won. In a perfect bipolar system, it would win therefore who had sold 50% of voters plus one, and not how many votes has placed. A true objection to my reflection could be that since the system is symmetrical, also the other part earns 10 ballots to the center and - at the end - nothing changes. But in truth the center is so volubile..and politics unfortunately is not one mathematical demonstration (or perhaps).

Enzo Baldoni, the journalist that has been taken as hostage in Iraq, has been murdered. :-(

He was a blogger, as me and (probably) you. He was well known in the Internet community.

Probably you don't know italian situation: in Italy we're living the war in Iraq in a worst way.

We should not gone in Iraq. Only Blair+Bush. But we've go the same. In recent elections italians have expressed live the orientation we shouldn't partecipate to this war (which our government obstinately calls "peace operation"), and we are the same.
The Pope did in 2003 all His possibility to avoid the entry of Italy in this Iraqi war, but nobody heared the Pope.
Mr.Berlusconi (our "prime minister") didn't it.

This is the result. Enzo isn't the first civilian to be murdered -captive, not to mention italian soldiers.

How many lives we must still lose for this insulse-war? I don't speak only of italians, but also Iraqi people, also Usa soldiers...

Here it's the "wonderful" and completely useless declarations of our foreign minister:

The political situation in Italy has to be analyzed by politic professionals, who know their electorate, why has voted why.
My analysis will be limited to some common consideration on the european and italian vote for UE Parliament on june 11-13 2004.

In this table you can see the results of vote in Italy. The name of the parties are in italian.

First of all, there's been an embaracing european vote. The eurosceptical have been prevalent, and the vote expected the european organization was just from the East countries, the new ones that have voted with the lowest affluence, too. In all the countries, except for the Spain, the vote punished the governements. In the UK, Tony Blair's party falls to the 3rd floor and his popularity index crashes down of dozen points. Not bad, for a left party that has firmly desired the Iraqi war.

But considering the italian situation is not so bad to view other countries retirement from public estimation. We have Berlusconi as premier, the incarnation of a sort of "self made government/commercial man" with full control over private television and in part on the public television. His debacle has been evident and for the party "Forza Italia" (sort of "Go Italy!") the fall has been of 4 percentual points. Berlusconi leads a coalition of right-center parties, but seamlessly the right part counters more than the centrist one, and this makes this model of governing very conservative and not-so-liberal as publicly declared. In effect, the more problem of interest conflict, the more premiership resolves in an anthipaty that's now shown by the vote cab. Nevertheless, the colation in the whole has growth since the past elections. (continue..)