Newsgroup: italia.firenze.discussioni
Titolo: Prime Suspect

Prime Suspect
So who really is responsible for the mess in Italy?
BY MATTHEW KAMINSKI
Sunday, November 19, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
ROME--From hidden speakers, a hectoring voice echoes through the narrow
streets around Palazzo Montecitorio. Right in front of the parliament,
protestors mill around bright blue, and striped green, and red
flags--representing disparate interest groups brought together, on this day,
by shared grievance. "No more precari" (or risk) in employment, they
proclaim, demanding tougher job-protection laws, though Italy's are already
some of the most rigid in the world.
Next door, at the 16th-century Palazzo Chigi, soaking in this background
noise of Italian political life, sits Romano Prodi, the former president of
the European Commission and, for the second time in a decade, Italy's prime
minister. Compared with his previous job in rainy and red-taped Brussels,
Mr. Prodi ventures that "it's chaotic here, more vital, with a lot of spotty
events." (So, Italians can do understatement.)
This is, after all, a man who leads a wobbly nine-party coalition, his days
reckoned to be numbered by nearly everyone but him. Rome, rumors say, is
swirling with Brutuses plotting his downfall. There are no less than three
different communist parties in his camp, each unhappy, each willing to take
to the streets at any hint of market-friendliness from their man. Unhappy,
too, are the moderates who want to open things up. The hatred for Silvio
Berlusconi that forged this center-left coalition and won a narrow victory
in April has given way to disenchantment with Mr. Prodi, a 67-year-old
former economics professor and state bureaucrat from Bologna.
In sum, Italian politics is back to normal. Mr. Berlusconi--media tycoon,
late-blooming politician and womanizer--seduced, scandalized, enthralled and
ultimately disappointed Italians by doing little to fix their obvious
problems. But he stayed a full five-year term, longer than any other postwar
PM. The Prodi era appears to herald a return to revolving-door governments,
though the man himself doggedly predicts that he'll be in his job "not only
next week, but next year, and the year after next." To him, "gossip is
gossip, politics is politics."
Whether Mr. Prodi can last beyond Christmas, no one knows. But can Italy
afford such political instability? Of the Continent's big countries, Italy's
ailments are by wide consensus the most serious--no mean feat considering
the competition from Germany and France. Growth is negligible (though rising
from about zero last year); productivity is declining and export markets
shrinking; universities spend a third of what America does on each student;
Italy's labor pool has the highest share of the unskilled of any OECD
country but Mexico; the population is declining and public finances are in
disarray. In any scenario for a crisis in the euro zone, Italy plays the
lead part. And, oh, throw in a weak (and wasteful) state, entrenched
corruption and rising Mafia violence. This mess is now Mr. Prodi's
responsibility.
Perhaps Mr. Prodi's favored response--outright denial--is what's necessary
to stay sane. Sitting in Mussolini's old office, he says that the economics,
the threats to his position, the apparent backtracking on promises to clean
up public finances and spur competition, are all nothing much to worry
about. "We have taken a lot of decisions," he blurts into the microphone
fixed to his lapel. (His aides have hooked us up, as if in a TV studio, to
catch his muffled English, accented but fluent. Experience has taught them
that a regular old reporter's tape recorder isn't up to the task.) "In five
months, there were more decisions concerning the future of this country
taken than in the previous five years. [The previous government] took a lot
of decisions but restricted [them] to a small number of people, to one
person." His eyes smile. The dig is at Mr. Berlusconi, charged in the courts
of justice and public opinion with abusing politics to further his business
interests; now the head of the opposition, he is a useful bogeyman. So
clearly eager is he to get back power, he helps keep the ruling coalition
from splitting.
In his first weeks in office, Mr. Prodi was on a bit of a roll, cutting away
at privileges long held by pharmacists, lawyers and other coddled cartels.
In Italy, a notary collects a fee to approve the sale of a second-hand Vespa
and only a druggist can sell aspirin; that's to end. By prying open these
professions, Mr. Prodi made most Italians happy, started to shake up a
sleepy services sector and showed that left-wing rulers can, by government
fiat, force through competition in a country where oligopoly is the natural
state. But Mr. Prodi dropped the ball with that most despised of guilds, the
taxi drivers, who struck against his plans to free up their sector and got
most of their way. "There were seven decisions of liberalization," he says.
"I made half a step back in the taxi case. This is true. Sometimes in
politics you cannot always succeed in what you do." This is a recurring
theme.
Though eager to appear a modernizer abroad--"if you read objectively the
newspapers, you'd find more resentment [of me] in the far left than the
moderates"--Mr. Prodi has of late appeared to side with the first group.
This summer, he blocked a merger between highway operator Austostrade and
Spain's Abertis, an action he defends at length on regulatory grounds.
Stranger still--and more revealing about the mix of politics and business
here--was the Telecom Italia affair. In September, the company's CEO Marco
Tronchetti Provera floated a restructuring plan that may have forced a sale
of the mobile phone arm, possibly costing jobs but raising much-needed cash.
Out of the blue, and during a trip to China, Mr. Prodi released detailed
notes of his private conversations with Mr. Tronchetti Provera, revealing
confidential information about the group's negotiations with Rupert Murdoch
and Time Warner. This remarkable official leak was designed to stop the
sale--and succeeded, when a compromised Mr. Tronchetti Provera resigned. To
many, this incident stopped reform momentum cold and revealed Mr. Prodi to
be an heir to Italy's tradition of Catholic Communism.
In response to this charge, his brow beetles and his eyes close for a few
seconds: "This is a complete lie. . . . Which has been the government
interference?" In releasing details of his conversation, Mr. Prodi says he
was only trying to correct the record about his contacts with Telecom
Italia's ex-CEO. "I know that Tronchetti has big influence in Italian
media." In Mr. Prodi's view, the press is dominated by enemies. "You will
never find one hint of pro-bureaucratic, of pro-state . . .," he says,
without finishing the sentence. No one has ever accused him of wielding a
silver tongue. "The mantra many papers have is 'Prodi is left, extreme
left.' In my coalition, the extreme left is 15%. But this is not my point.
My real point is, please find a decision where I have taken an anti-market
position."
I bring up next year's draft budget. Having promised tax and expenditures
cuts, the government proposed to raise taxes on Italians who earn above
&NBSP;7/840,000 ($51,000). That tax hike--in his words at the time of the
decision--would "result in a more just society." The markets panned the
budget; ratings agencies downgraded Italy. But powerful unions were happy to
see him back down on taxes and spending. Did he capitulate to the hard left?
"Absolutely not true" comes the response. He blames Mr. Berlusconi for
overspending (fair enough), and says that cuts are deep, and that tax
increases are "simply a correction to what was the most unequal distribution
of all the big European countries" (which is debatable). To put an upbeat
spin on it all, he adds: "If I can grow [the economy] more than 2%,
everything will be in perfect order. If not . . ."
In another sign of trouble, organized crime is resurgent in the poor south.
Naples has turned into an open battlefield for the Camorra. Critics blame
Mr. Prodi's early decision to amnesty thousands of convicts to relieve
prison overcrowding. "I should be happy this was the reason," he says.
"[There were] 61 murders this time last year [in Naples], 58 this. Of course
I am told the rate of murders is higher in New York, but that's not a
consolation." The government has talked about sending the army into the
city. Mr. Prodi's view is that a poor economy and weak law-enforcement are
only secondary causes for the Mafia's staying power in Naples, Sicily and
Calabria. The real culprit, he says, is "cultural, cultural, cultural--of
course culture means economy, because with this culture you cannot develop."
The priority, he says, "is fighting" them head-on with force. "You fight
also through new jobs, but it's something you can't get if you haven't
cleared an area of criminality."
Mr. Prodi turns relaxed and (by his standards) articulate when the topic
turns from problems at home to foreign affairs. Though he ran against Mr.
Berlusconi's support for the Iraq war and friendship with George Bush, he
has been careful to rein in anti-American excesses. Spain's Zapatero he is
not. The Italian withdrawal from Iraq, promised by both sides ahead of April
elections, has been orderly. On the war, which he opposed, Mr. Prodi says,
"I don't want to say I was right. This is nasty and stupid." He claims a
good working relationship on every issue but Iraq with the American
president going back to his Brussels days. The Italians took the lead in
sending a peacekeeping force to Lebanon, showing up the French, who promised
but failed to deliver the troops. This country wants to be taken seriously
abroad.
Yet like many in his camp, and true to his CV, Mr. Prodi hitches his foreign
policy to Europe. "What is Germany or Italy or France vis-à-vis China, or
vis-à-vis the U.S.? Nothing. If we don't stick together, we are lost." But
Europe looks lost, after last year's rejection of the constitution, which he
calls "a shock." Any more growth in the Union's membership is on hold. So
how far will the EU's borders stretch? He takes a long view. "I think that's
for the next generation. Europe is Europe and you have limits to this
expansion for the foreseeable time and in 50-60 years no one knows what will
happen."
Europe today suffers from a crisis of leadership. France, Britain and,
though Angela Merkel rules by force of personality, Germany are rudderless.
In Italy, the old ruling order collapsed in 1992, amid economic and criminal
scandal, and a new class of mostly unprofessional politicians (potentially
an asset) moved in, most notably Mr. Berlusconi and the current premier.
Unlike the former--Italy's richest man--Mr. Prodi is, in the words of one
Italian wag, "the man from nowhere" whose party is small and who doesn't
have a natural constituency, much less charisma. Despite these handicaps, he
has been a Zelig-like presence at great events in history. In his last stay
at the Palazzo Chigi, he twisted enough arms to ensure that Italy's economy
qualified for the euro. During an otherwise unremarkable five years in
Brussels, the EU opened its doors to the old Warsaw Pact, for which he takes
some credit. The mandarins of the left tapped him to challenge Mr.
Berlusconi, and in a slight upset he won.
Under his ungainly exterior Mr. Prodi is said to have a tough and, judging
by the Telecom Italia episode, vindictive side. He remembers very well that
his coalition allies defenestrated him in 1998, and is desperate to avoid a
repeat. He indicates that this time coalition weakness may be a strength. "I
think you deal better with nine parties [than two]," he says. "You can more
easily have the role of mediation, of setting the path, the direction. When
you are two there is always the necessity of prevailing." Machiavelli,
updated for 2006. Mr. Prodi hears the shouting outside, the criticisms from
abroad, and buckles down. "I am blamed by everybody, that is clear, I know
that." But he concedes little. There may be no bluster to him, but there is
a cold and quiet defiance.
Mr. Kaminski is editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.

So who really is responsible for the mess in Italy?
Melaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--
Foolfolly