I do understand, dear readers, that that previous proposition of mine could seem awkward. After all it would involve renouncing to one’s own sovereignty – as a people I mean, it is more comfortable being oppressed by your own fellow citizens isn’t it? At least nobody could claim cultural misunderstanding or racist biases. I get your point and agree with you: any German or Japanese leadership may end up demanding efficiency. Imagine they set up some of their well-designed mobility plans and have the Italians move their ass off their beloved cars for example; or even worse decide that soccer is a weapon of mass distraction, chiefly employed so far to channel discontent and social violence, and thus forbid it. That will mark for sure the only possible begin of any Italian revolution and all plans for a peaceful change will therefore crumble down, even though the time might be arrived to leave behind us old-fashioned consensus building practices such as “panem et cirnceses”.
And yet, once acknowledged the non-feasibility of any compulsory administration, since no sovereign State would ever accept to be other-directed, all the problems of a crooked, goof-off and overpaid political class still remain on the table. Let me sum up a funny story that all the Italians know very well –at least I hope so- to give you a sample evidence of my concerns.
At the beginning of the 90s the Italian political scene was shaken, and the public opinion shocked, by a huge bribe affair involving 90% of the political parties and which is remembered as bribe-town, or, in Italian “mani pulite”. Corruption was so endemic in the system that as a consequence of investigations and trials all the parties involved were literally wiped off and many politicians committed suicide, although the majority of parliamentarians recycled themselves in new, empty box parties. Differently from what happens in the democratic world, where political parties are solid institutions whose leaders change more or less often, in Italy the key people have remained quite always the same since the 50s – a part those whom the gods have wisely called to join their glory. As a Brit friend of mine used to say: two Englishmen make an ordered line, and two Italians three political parties.
Now, after the scandal, which was deeply connected with the parties’ funding system, the Italians were called to vote whether or not the State should have continued to sustain political parties with public money. The unanimous answer was obviously: NO AND NEVER AGAIN(90.3% voted to repeal the law in April 1993).
In 1999 anyway, with the kind of loyalty that everyone of us would expect from those who flatten themselves with the title of honourable men (isn’t funny that onorovole is the official title of the Italian members of the Parliament and that the mafia affiliates as well call themselves uomini d’onore?)the Parliament approved law 157/1999 and reintroduced the public funding system simply calling it reimbursement of election expenses while at the same time unlinking the amount of money bestowed from the actual election expenses. Only six years from the referendum, the Parliament was already giving away more than 193 million Euros to fund the upcoming elections of 2001.
This new law worked (and still works) as follows: the State committed to issue these so-called reimbursements through annual instalments, splitting the abovementioned amount proportionally to the number of seats held by each party in the Parliament. In case the term lasted less than the nominal five years, leading thus to new elections, payments would have been suspended and instalments recalculated according to electoral results (In Italy we elect the members of Parliament, who then elect the Prime Minister who chooses his/her ministers) .
If you think this is an open violation of the people’s will, please keep reading because it is just one half of the story: greed, we all know it, is the ruin of our world and a very common vice, but it can sometimes generate absurd and obscene situations that could well live in one of Carroll’s tales.
Thanks to two new laws(157/1999 and 156/2002) the total amount available for these compensations was raised to 468.853.675 million Euros and those gentlemen also determined – what a bright brainwave!- that each party will receive the full five-years reimbursement even in case of anticipated elections, after which new instalments would be anyway calculated again and annual payments issued to the same parties, cumulatively.
Consider that, although the official legislature term, in Italy, should last 5 years, the average government duration is 311.24 days . Now imagine what consequences can have for a nation’s coffers paying out almost half a billion Euros each year to fund private organisations –since that is what political parties are in Italy.
This long digression, for which I hope you will accept my apologies, aimed to explain as clearly as I could what I meant (in the first post of this series) asserting that Italy is ruled by a “pillaging political class”. Borrowing again an Italian proverb, I gave you evidence that “our monastery is poor yet the friars are rich” and I bet that some echo about how the Italian politicians use to spend public money must be arrived to your press as well, despite of where you’re reading from.
Every taxi-driver I met recently around the world, once known of my heritage, loudly laughed in my face for Berlusconi’s bunga bunga parties, often underlining his amusement with an explicit mimic of his nodding hand. Yet that’s not only about that: we also have prostitutes being driven around with official cars; politicians caught while giving speeches, on coke, to invisible crowds from some transvestite’s balcony; 15 other parliamentarians tested positive to drugs (on an anonymous sample population of 50, therefore the 24% and all of them are still in charge); plus dozens of parliamentarians under investigations and others whose convictions have become final. A very sad picture against which the worse banana republic you can think of would appear as well administered as a Scandinavian country.
My question for you is: would you accept to be ruled by such a sort of thugs? My very pragmatic answer is: only provided they were able to improve people’s life conditions. After all power can corrupt and everybody has his private vices, not to be paid with my money however!
So, since the Parliament has become a mere honorific and advisory body, here it is my second proposal: let’s pass directly to open tyranny.
If things won’t work, at least, there will be a single and personal responsibility, one only man to blame and upon which direct the people’s fury. Always easier than looking for the truth among hundreds of narrow-minded and nimby bureaucrats.
And the Parliament, you may reply, ? Every country needs one, even the Afghans have one, even the Chinese!
Well of course I’m for maintaining it. Although with some little changes: instead of paying them for enjoying high-class prostitution I suggest to recover an ancient tradition of the Roman world, where some temples, devoted to particular fertility cults, hosted sacred prostitutes that would offer their services in exchange of an offer. A pious form of prayer that embodied and preserved the renewal of nature.
It is not my intention of course to touch anything slightly pertaining to religion: we already have the Vatican here and I’m not arrogant to the point of challenging its authority … chiefly because children are too young to sit in the Parliament … anyway I envision a new jolly Parliament of real, honest prostitutes, still paid with public money but working for the people, who will be then finally able to return to politicians what we’ve been suffering doggy style for decades.