9 marzo 2008

“Together with Berlusconi we shall change  Italy”,  yesterday declared an euphoric Gianfranco Fini [ex-leader of the National Alliance and now Berlusconi’s deputy leader in the new merged People of Freedom]. He seemed not to realise that the soundbite is fifteen years old. Yet it has not lost its freshness for it is still true because the landslide victory foretold yesterday at Milan by the leader of the People of Freedom is ready in any case to be repeated in reality in the ballot boxes whatever the Party’s leaders say from the podium. From Silvio Berlusconi we have already had the chance to be caressed by his oscillations in trying to square being a Christian Democrat and a free marketeer as he moves from red-blooded capitalism to conversion to the shop-keeper reasonableness and protectionism of Giulio Tremonti, the Minister of Finance [from the Northern League] in his last Government. Of Fini it can be said that the leader of the disbanded (?) National Alliance has finally entered into the  Berlusconian political anarchism by  infiltrating in hardly a week two topics into the campaign that are both at the same time tremendous and innocent. These were firstly the proposal for forced labour for prisoners and then  more recently which to declare the presumed inadequacy of Barak Obama to be President of the United States due to his colour. Yesterday Fini attempted to correct himself, but he did so with an excess of bile. “I did no more that report what so many American commentators have said.” However they are the putrid words of a man who fears being caught out and feels himself under constant scrutiny. This is an error the more cunning Cav. [Cavaliere Berlusconi] would not have committed. For him it would have been enough to blame it on “Communist journalists”. But this has all changed little and  is not the real crux of the matter. (translation by Richard Newbury)

© - FOGLIO QUOTIDIANO

di Alessandro Giuli