Letter from Thessaloniki
Modern politics in Greece and Italy have always had a strange kind of symmetry. The similarities are once again rising to the surface as our next-door neighbor finds itself in the throes of high-profile, caustic and sometimes ridiculous election campaigns. As you know, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is fighting to keep his longtime hold on Italy’s politics. And along the way, the ostentatious politician is making more than a few faux pas. You could draw an analogy between Berlusconi and Greek Minister of Culture Giorgos Voulgarakis, who both recently tried to distance themselves from their own bad actions. Ten days ago, Voulgarakis was accused of doing nothing to stop protesters from hurling vulgar epithets at PASOK leader George Papandreou during student elections in Thessaloniki. And Berlusconi recently asked a merchants’ group to pardon his «rough but effective language» when he told them he had too much esteem for the intelligence of Italians to vote for such «coglioni» – an insult addressed to the voters of Prodi’s center-left coalition. Now, literally, «coglioni» means testicles. It can also imply «moron.» The Papandreou-directed insults in Thessaloniki also employed the same kind of low-grade language. Greeks and Italians alike seem to enjoy blaming their politicians through puerile insults about their personal failings. And the politicians reciprocally lay the blame on the people while also attempting to reform them. And so it goes during elections, big or small. In Italy, the battle of words on the campaign trail has also become a battle for good taste. Some 50 million Italians are eligible to vote in Italian elections, which end today. The bitter battle pits current PM Berlusconi, who above so indelicately described those voters who do not support him, and Romano Prodi, who is expected to win by a slim margin. If Prodi wins, he will inherit an economy which has failed to reap the expected rewards of joining the euro club and is suffering badly from the vicissitudes of globalization. Italy’s economy is in straits as dire as Thessaloniki’s old, abandoned neoclassical Italian Consulate building – which, though the exceptional work of mansion builder Xenophom Peonidis, is falling apart. Romano Prodi, 66 and a professional economist, has repeatedly portrayed Berlusconi as the sheer disaster who has single-handedly run Italy’s economy into the ground. During Berlusconi’s domination of Italian politics over more than a decade, Italy has fallen into more debt than any other country in the European Union. It ended up in 47th place – just ahead of Botswana – on the Davos World Economic Forum’s 2006 Global Competitiveness Survey. True, more than a million new jobs have been created under Berlusconi’s center-right government. But instead of trying to spotlight this, Berlusconi self-inflects himself with unfortunate remarks like this: «I am the Jesus Christ of politics… I am a patient victim, I bear everything, I sacrifice myself for everyone.» He makes these sacrificial lamb comments without explaining why he never followed through with his promises of tax reductions, further privatization and the structural reforms so dramatically needed to increase competition and deprive the bureaucracies of power. This election, Italians have to choose between the glitzy trash and the burlesque of Berlusconi’s ANT-1 and Star Channel-like TV programs and the ERT-3 TV sobriety of Professor Prodi. Well, considering the similarities between Greeks and Italians – don’t they say: «Una faccia una raccia?» – I could not easily predict who would win a similar face-off in our own land. Even if Prodi’s center-left coalition, «Union,» wins, Italy’s immediate future isn’t full of roses either. His disparate alliance includes parties ranging from Catholics to communists. Now, how could they all possibly agree to the necessary reduction of the national debt? Furthermore, there is the obligatory launching of unpopular reforms that Berlusconi simply postponed. Not to mention that the new government must find ways to help Italy’s small and mid-sized companies confront the always-growing competition from Asia. These are situations we know very well in Greece, too. The flashy 69-year-old Italian premier kicked off his re-election campaign last February with a soccer-style vow not to have sex until he was re-elected. (His wife, a former actress, soon informed the media that the randy old premier had promptly broken his vow.) Berlusconi is about glitz. Even his own party, Forza Italia, is structured as a fan club. As it now goes, if neither Prodi nor Berlusconi can fix Italy’s economy, there is still hope coming from football. Yesterday’s Observer noted that a win in this summer’s soccer World Cup could bring a confidence boost for Italy. «With cheerful football fans, whoever is in power could sneak in a few reforms while the nation was still celebrating,» the Observer wrote.
