Inexperienced cavalier

Silvio Berlusconi makes another attempt to return to big politics

According to preliminary data, in the extraordinary parliamentary elections in Italy, the levocentric coalition led by Pierre Luigi Bersani is the leader-36-38%. The right-centric coalition, led by ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, lagged behind 30-32%. In third place is the party of the famous comedian Beppe Grilo with 19%. So far, the turnout of voters is lower than in the elections last year - 55% versus 62.

At the age of 76, Silvio Berlusconi again “entered the field” - as the owner of the Milan football club loves to express himself - to bring his Freedom Party to the victory in the parliamentary elections that took place in Italy on February 24 and 25. And no one recalls how Cavalier was forced to resign on November 12, 2011, when, due to the growing distrust of financial markets in relation to the Italian government, the spread between the Italian government bonds and German bonds reached a critical mark of 574 points, and the country was on the verge of a foul. More recently, the Italians threw coins in the trail of the car with Berlusconi, who left the Quirinsky Palace after the resignation, and rejoiced about his departure, and now he is counting on a triumphal return.

I will leave you with early voting in the parliamentary elections, Italians owe precisely the party of the gentleman. After on October 26, 2012, the Milan court of first instance sentenced the Italian politician and telemagnate to 4 years in prison on charges of tax fraud in the framework of the Mediaset television and the Berlusconi television, he threatened the technocrats to the head of Mario Monte to leave the parliamentary majority. The threat was put into force on December 6, when the Party of the "People of Freedom" refrained from voting under two bills in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate. At the same time, the political receiver of Berlusconi and the alleged candidate of the Coalition of the Right-Procedureists for the post of Prime Minister Angelino Alfano announced that Berlusconi would take part in the election campaign. As Berlusconi himself declared 10 days later during the transfer to his Canale 5, he intends to become the Minister of Economics. Then the news was announced about the next “bride” of the Italian politician, 28-year-old Francesca Pascale.

The votes of voters within the radius of “moderate” political forces, along with Berlusconi, claims to the resignation of Italy Mario Monty and resigned on December 21. Like the lifelong Senator Monty, who received the veiled support of Angel Merkel and Barack Obama, could not put his candidacy, but he symbolically headed the Center Coalition, where his list of candidates “Civil Choice” entered, inspired by the so -called “Monti program”. However, the Berlusconi considers the main rival to the left -centric coalition at the head of Pierre Luigi Bersani.

A week before the elections at the rally of supporters of Berlusconi in Milan, where the New Times visited, the Cavalier clearly identified the enemy: "Lefts, who are leading to communism, the most dangerous ideology in the world." Italy more than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the USSR continues to frighten the “ghost of communism”, still alive antagonism between partisans and fascists, between left and right. And if the day before, at a rally of the left in Milan, from the stage, where Bersani and the former Prime Minister Romano Prodi (whom they were able to be the next president of the Italian Republic) were performed by the partisan song “Bella, Ciao”, Berlusconi and his supporters, when the provocateur appeared in the crowd, began to jump, “who did not jump, that is the communist.”

Down with the rostrum, the rostrum talks about civil rights, equality, marriages between homosexuals and the provision of citizenship to children of immigrants, Berlusconi concentrated his campaign on the most now excites the lion's share of Italian voters - taxes and work. As Bruno Vespa put it, a well -known TV presenter, devoted to Cavalier, at the presentation of his new book in Milan, in which The New Times took part: "Berlusconi is an expert on" Puza ", he knows how to determine what people want." According to the latest data made in the Italian CGIL Italian union, previous to the election, in Italy 9 million people experience difficulties with work, while unemployment among young people from 15 to 24 years old reached a record figure - 36.6 %. At the same time, the tax on the main housing, introduced by the Monti government and brought 4 billion to the treasury, forced many Italians to get into debts or say goodbye to savings. It is on these two problems that Berlusconi speculates.

Cavalier surpassed himself and presented a new version of the “contract with the Italians”, which he signed in 2001 during the Bruno Vespa program on RAI 1 before the end of the election campaign. The “proposal-shock”, as he himself defined it, does not stop on the abolition of the hated by Italians the main housing tax, and promises the return of the tax already paid in 2012 in 2001, when the Berlusconi was running for the first time, he sent his autobiography “Italian history” to millions of Italians, now the Italians found a letter from the postal drawers from the postal boxes Candidate Silvio Berlusconi, which explains that the paid property tax can be obtained in the back in the post office or to the current account by reporting the details. This, of course, provided that the “people of freedom” will win the elections. “Berlusconi buys voices” - Mario Monty is indignant, but the gentleman does not stop there. He promises 4 million new jobs, and explains that the recipe for unemployment is simple: it is enough to free 4 million Italian entrepreneurs for 5 years from tax and social payments for each employee hired. Only now, to the question, who will then pay the pension to this employee, Berlusconi is difficult to answer.

The battle for Senate Bruno Vespa says that he was originally sure that he should only take on the election campaign, and the “people of freedom” will grow by 10 % of the vote. In Italy, according to the law on Par Condicio (equal conditions), the publication of pre -election polls of public opinion in the last two weeks before the elections is prohibited. But according to one of the latest polls released (the customer is the SWG company) in the Department of Deputies, the leadership of the Left -Gentric Coalition, which gains 33.8 % of the votes among the respondents, while the right -centric coalition, which includes the League of the North and the People of Liberty, is 6 % and is retained at 27.8 %.

But a real fight is played between the coalitions of Berlusconi and Bersani in the Senate. According to the law regulating the electoral system in Italy, the votes along with the “prize” in 55 % of the places that get the party with the highest result are counted at the national level, while in the Senate separately in each area. In this regard, the victory of the levocentrists, guaranteed in the lower ward, may not be confirmed in the upper. It all depends on the outcome of the voting in a number of key regions, and mainly in Lombardy, which is called Italian Ohio by analogy with the presidential election in the United States where the voting results in this state of traditional play an almost decisive role: the northern pawnshop, where at the same time as the parliamentary elections should also be elected by the governor (the previous legal administration was resigned due to corruption. The scandals and accusations of one of the officials in relations with the mafia) brings 49 seats in the Senate of 315 to the winner. According to one of the latest polls, the Berlusconi coalition is leading in Lombardy, gaining 37.5 % of the vote, while Bersani’s coalition is following 34.6 %. In Lombardy, Berlusconi went to the main concession and supported the candidate of the League of the North, the former Minister of Internal Affairs Robert Maroni for the post of governor in exchange for the formation of a new coalition at a nationwide level.

The comic threat, however, Peter Gometz, the editor-in-chief of the online version of the newspaper Il Fatto Kotidiano and the author of numerous books about the Berlusconi and about the judicial and sexual scandals accompanying it, is skeptical about the rapid growth of the party of the Berlusconi party in sociological surveys. “The point is not that Berlusconi is growing,” said the New Times Gometz. - According to the results of polls, his party is gaining from 17 to 20 %. 4 years ago it was 37. That is, they lost almost 20 % of the vote. It’s just that levocentrists who hoped for a very high result are losing ground. ”

In this, according to the journalist, the scandal, which flared up at the end of January around the oldest bank of Italy, “Monte de Siene”, associated with the left, invariably led Siena, is also to blame.

And, finally, Berlusconi, like all Italian politicians without exception, is afraid of the Genoese comedian Beppe Grillo gaining all the great popularity of the “Five Stars Movement”. The adherent of network democracy and virtuoso of platform performances, Grillo, who became the voice of protest against the “caste” of politicians, collects crowds throughout Italy. Public surveys are reading to him about 19 % of the vote. While the centrist coalition of Mario Monty is estimated at 13-15 %. Perhaps it is with her that the bersani levocenters will have to unite in order to provide their government with sustainable support for the parliament. Because the main fear of the leader of the “Democratic Party” is that the situation of 2006 may be repeated, when the left -centric coalition, led by Romano Prodi, won the Berlusconi with a slight advantage in the ward of deputies, and a little short to most in the Senate. As you know, the government of the prodi had a short life, and many have been subject to the same fate of the Bersan’s office, seeing repeated elections on the horizon.

Photo: RIA Novosti

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