Italian Cucumber

This is the claim of a Government- backed campaign aimed to boost touristic business in our country, the highlight of which is a a memorable video, starred by vice-prime minister Mr. Francesco Rutelli, who reads an incredible and irritating message that should sound like an invitation to visit our country. Rutelli’s pronunciation is not bad, but it is the impression that he simply repeats something he is not really understanding makes this performance a true work of art.

The ad should have been part of the content of a huge project to establish a website, www.italia.it, where promotional material about artistic, historical and leisure attractions of our country should have been posted. Everybody knows that the Internet allows almost everyone to spread contents all over the world basically with no cost, or at a very low cost; Italian touristic portal was exception to the rule, though, as it is going to cost Italian citizens the unbelievable amount of 58 million euro: 20 m. for engineering, realization and promotion, 25 m. for content production, 2 m. from Italian Regioni, 9 m. from Ministry of Environment and 2 m. for portal promotion.

Interestingly, Italian Regioni will both contribute and receive money from the portal project: in fact, out of the 25 m. for the content production, 4 m. were allocated to national content production, while the remaining 21 should have been distributed among Regions to support local content realization. Uhm… looks like a good bargain for Regioni, pay 2 to receive 21 - this is the nature of the Italian administration, middleways between Kafka and Machiavelli.

Even though the project was started in 2004, the portal was up and running only in February 2007 and it was a disaster: four years to develop a website that was “slow, full of mistakes, omissions, technically flawed and not fully accessible for disabled people” (for more details, refer to scandaloitaliano website). The rest of the story is a stream of litigations involving the project and Regioni and technical partners dressed with a lot of political exploitation, culminating in the shut-down of the site, occurred on Jan 18th, 2008. Ironically, it was Mr. Rutelli, former cameo performer of www.italia.it project, the one who sent a big dossier about the portal to Corte dei Conti (a court who rules on wrongdoing against Italian Public Administration) for investigation.

Despite the cyberactivism of a bunch of good men and women, urging the Government to disclose the real numbers beneath this Italian disaster, it is still impossible to understand how much money has been burnt in this crazy exercise, though the figure should be between 8 to 15 million euro.

A really dangerous man…

According to a local sardinian paper a kenian guy, who 9 years ago, just out of the hospital, stole one yougurt and a cookie pack from a shop, has been condemned to a 10 month jail sentence for his “crime”. Luckily enough this man did not show up when the sentence was issued.

Mr. Callisto Tanzi, a real criminal who, in conjunction with a bunch of corrupted investment bank managers, is responsible of the Parmalat crack (EUR 14 bn. and an endless number of families still to be reimbursed), passed a few days in jail, and was reported at the end of 2006 to be thinking to start some new business activity.

Justice: number one problem in Italy.

Why a new government makes a lot of sense (for someone)

In april 1993 a national referendum was called to ask Italians if they thought that parties deserved public transfer from the state: the answer could not be clearer, as more than 90% of voters said: “no”. This is Machiavelli’s country, though, and Italian parties decided that, regardless the clear indication of the referendum, they still wanted to steal moneis from our pockets: so they used the “electoral reimbursements” as a trojan horse to replace the money they lost with the (nominal) abolition of the government support to the party racket.

The amount of reimbursement was brought from the original EUR 0.42 per voter to the present EUR 1.00. As number of citizens with voting rights is about 50 million (but this should be carefully checked as offical voters’ list are not “cleaned” from the names of dead people and of those that relocated to another country) and that the Parliament is composed of two chambers, this adds up to a round EUR 100 million per year. It is worth noting that the current system even citizen who do not vote pay one euro for each chamber.

This is crazy, you might be thinking, but I can add something really upsetting: in February 2006 Italian Parliament approved what we call a “leggina” (tiny law) according to which, if the government falls due before the 5 years of its normal duration (the usual outcome in Italy) the parties have the right to get the money also for the years they could not rule. In other words, if a government loses majority after 10 days from the start, the parties will get state contributions for the full 5 years. This is beneath even the normal ethic code of an Italian MP. To bring it back to solid numbers, if no solution is found for the agonizing Italian Government, the parties will be stealing from our pockets EUR 300 million, 100 for each year the Government did… not rule.

So sure they are that they will get away with it that Forza Italia, the party of Mr. Berlusconi, - according to Forbes, 51 in the list of the richest men in the world with little less than USD 12 billion assets - securitized its receivables towards the state for electoral reimbursements.

Christian Rescue

 

Just a few seconds before the national Government started the procedure to suspend from his role as head of the so-called Sicilian mini-parliament, Mr. Cuffaro calls the assembly to declare that he resigns. No worries, as the head of his party (UDC - Christian Democrat Union), Mr. Pierferdinando Casini “officially invites” Totò to join the Senate: after all a 5 year sentence is a very good bullet point in a potential MP curriculum vitae.

Due to the indecent electoral law that Mr. Casini’s party badly wanted and had previous Centre-Right government approve, Italian citizens do not have any role in the choice of the people they send to the Parliament. Indeed, parties sometimes reserve seats in the Chambers for people with trouble with the law. I am not sure that people from Sicily would elect someone like Salvatore Cuffaro, accused of jeopardizing a wire-tapping operation aimed to provide evidence against a mafia member, if only they had the chance to chose.

The kissing Godfather

Something about Mr. Salvatore (Totò) Cuffaro, whose nickname is “Vasa vasa” (in Sicilian dialect: “kiss kiss” - referring to his habit to kiss every person he meets).

Cuffaro is currently the President of the Sicily Region - in a ridicolous attempt to force Italy to sound like the US the presidents of the Regions a usually referred to as “Governors”. A few days ago, the Court ruled that Mr. Cuffaro is guilty of aiding and abetting some criminal, and convicted him to a five year jail sentence.

This nasty outcome was no tragedy for Totò, who, encouraged by the baroque and fool Italian juridical system (he might go to prison only if the sentence is confirmed in the third degree), declared that, as the Court did not recognize the mafia aggravation in its sentence, he will not resign, adding that the five year sentence came as the end of a nightmare for his and his family. It is probably worth noting that the sentence implies a nominal interdiction from any kind of job in the Italian Public Administration (his included).

Mr. Cuffaro is probably the only one in the world happy after being sentenced to prison. One of the many friends of his, a confectioner, thought that the occasion deserved a special celebration, so he sent Cuffaro a tray full of cannoli (a delicious Sicilian cake).

Something Wild in Rome

Yesterday Italian Prime Minister resigned after failing to have a motion of confidence approved by the upper house of Parliament (Senato). Two MPs of UDEUR the same small local party headed by Mr. Clemente Mastella, former Minister of Justice, splitted their vote: Mr. Barbato declared to be against Prodi motion, while Mr. Cusumano, regardless contrary indication of his party, approved it. After Mr. Cusumano ended his speech, Mr. Barbato tried to attack him and insulted him with hideous indecent words.

Though foreign papers do not go into the details of the ways in which Mr. Barbato addressed Mr. Cusumano, I think it is worth reporting his performance verbatim: “Piece of shit, Fag, Betrayer, I spit in your eye”. In the meanwhile Mr. Barbato showed the other guy the index and the little finger, folding the other fingers, in a gesture that represent horns - a way to deliver the idea that the recipient partner is cheating on him / her. Mr. Barbato also showed Cusumano the index and the thumb, folding the other fingers, so representing a gun.

Regardless his denial a video posted on YouTube proves that Barbato also spitted in the direction of Cusumano. It is worth noting that UDEUR leader, Mr.Clemente Mastella, former Minister of Justice, left his job after his wife was jailed under allegations of bribery.