Translated material
Silvio and his "musketeers"
The Italian government will be saved by beauty
This week, both houses of the Italian parliament are likely to pass a vote of confidence in the country's new government. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party has such a solid majority that there are no surprises. Berlusconi, 71, who won the snap elections on April 13-14 , is seeking to create an impression of efficiency and efficiency. In less than a month, he presented his cabinet to the 82-year-old President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, and received the go-ahead. There has never been such speed in the history of Italian parliamentarism.The government has 12 ministers with a portfolio and nine without a portfolio. In total, there will be 63 people in Berlusconi's cabinet, including deputy ministers and secretaries of state. This is also a record: Italy has never had such a small government. In the former cabinet of Romano Prodi, there were at least 120 officials.
According to polls, 56% of Italians like the new cabinet. But authoritative commentator Giovanni Sartori wrote in the leading newspaper Corriere della Sera that many ministers are incompetent.
There are four women ministers. Evil tongues claim that so far the only outstanding quality of these ladies is their extraordinary beauty. “Silvio Berlusconi and his four musketeers” is what local commentators called this female call to government. 31-year-old Giorgia Meloni will be responsible for youth policy issues, 34-year-old Mariastella Gelmini will be responsible for education, and 41-year-old Stefania Prestigiacomo will be responsible for the environment (when she was a deputy, she received the title “Miss Parliament”). The post of Minister of Equal Opportunities (there is such a position in Italy) was taken by 32-year-old Mara Carfagna. She hosted a show on television, and in 1997 she became sixth in the Miss Italy competition.
In choosing his ministers, Berlusconi had to take into account the needs of the three components of his party, which in reality is more like a coalition. This is his original liberal party “Forward Italy!”, the “post-fascist” “National Alliance” that merged with it and the xenophobic-separatist “Northern League”, which in the “People of Freedom” retains its independence. The presence of the League, which received 8% of the vote in the elections and doubled its traditional figures, is the Achilles heel of the new government. Its strong point is the “federalization” of Italy, and in the long term, the separation of the northern regions under the general name “Padania”.
Among the ministers there are more and less “serious”. Among the most “serious” is Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, 51, from “Forward Italy!” In 2002-2004, he already held this post in one of Berlusconi's previous governments , and in recent years he was the European Union Commissioner for Justice, Internal Affairs and Security. Frattini is a supporter of Berlusconi's own foreign policy concept, which is based on three pillars: a strong alliance with the United States, unconditional support for Israel in the Middle East conflict, friendship with Russia and its involvement in the “European concert.” It is possible that it was at the instigation of Franco Frattini that the Corriere della Sera newspaper recently suggested that Berlusconi appeal to the new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev with a request to pardon the ex-head of the Yukos company Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The Italians explained this by the need to improve the investment climate in Russia.
But Frattini is cool about bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. Silvio Berlusconi also believes that in view of the huge mutual economic interests of the EU and Russia (especially in the energy sector), there is no point in irritating Moscow again.
Despite the protests, Silvio Berlusconi included 52-year-old Roberto Calderoli, a prominent leader of the Northern League, in the government. In February 2006, he caused an international stir when he appeared on television wearing a T-shirt with a picture from a series of notorious “Danish caricatures” of the Prophet Muhammad. He was destined for the post of Deputy Prime Minister, but in the end he received the post of minister without portfolio. A special department has been invented for it - the Ministry for Simplification of Legislative Acts. We are talking about eliminating bureaucratic obstacles that hinder the implementation of laws. Italy has 170 thousand laws, of which only 50 thousand find practical application. Obviously, we need to put things in order.
The appointment of Calderoli, who likes to walk with pigs on sites allocated for the construction of mosques in order to “desecrate” them, has already caused complications. Libya, through the mouth of Seif-ul-Islam, the son of the country's leader Muammar Gaddafi, threatened to stop cooperating with Rome in curbing the flow of refugees who are heading across the Mediterranean to the shores of southern Italy if the “Islamophobe” Calderoli becomes minister. True, Calderoli has already “repented” of his “sin” with the T-shirt, and the problem has been solved for now.
Another representative of the Northern League, 53-year-old Roberto Maroni, became interior minister. The League owes its success to the sense of "insecurity" felt by many Italians. Although statistics show that the number of serious crimes has decreased in recent years in Italy with a population of 58 million (in 2000 - 13 murders per million inhabitants, in 2005 - ten), some cases of rape and murder committed by immigrants (mainly Romanians) ), gave rise to a wave of sweeping xenophobia. The Northern League hastened to turn it to its advantage, advocating “law and order.” Maroney proposes decisive methods to combat illegal immigration and limit legal immigration.
The new Minister of Defense, 60-year-old “post-fascist” Ignazo la Russa, is a long-time member of the neo-fascist “Italian Social Movement”, which later turned into the “National Alliance”. La Russa is a supporter of Italy's unconditional loyalty to the NATO alliance and more active participation of Italian troops in peacekeeping operations. He demanded a review of the rules of service for Italian peacekeepers in Lebanon, who, in his opinion, treated the extremist Shiite group Hezbollah too favorably to the detriment of Israel's security.
A good minister of economy and finance could be 60-year-old Giulio Tremonti (“Forward, Italy!”), who recently published the book “Fear and Hope.” In it, he advocates state management of globalization processes. The 66-year-old leader of the Northern League, Umberto Bossi, who likes to flaunt phrases about his supposed “two hundred thousand armed militants, ready to march on Rome to defeat the thieving politicians who have been holed up there,” became the minister without portfolio for Italian federal reform. Bossie's supporters claim that this is harmless "political folklore". He suffered a heart attack, walks with difficulty and can barely speak. It is unknown how long he will remain in the ministerial chair. But it is possible that Berlusconi's government will remain in power for the entire five years of its parliamentary term. In 2001-2006 he already managed to do this. For Italy, where governments “lived” on average for less than a year, such “longevity” is a considerable success.