Word: berlusconis
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Ultimately, the cards still rest in Rome. Indeed, Alitalia continues to be a political hot potato, which has helped make it a lemon of 21st century airline company. Italy is on the eve of national elections, and the man leading in the polls - former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi - announced in the middle of the campaign that he is dead set against the Air France takeover. The billionaire media mogul at first hinted that he would personally back an alternative deal, but has since retreated from that stance. He is, however, still publicly opposed to the Air France proposal...
Italians are heading to the polls on April 13-14 to choose a new Prime Minister, following the premature collapse of Romano Prodi's center-left government in January. The race between former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni comes at one of the lowest moments in post-war Italian history. With the country locked in a vicious cycle of public cynicism and economic malaise, the election does not bode well. Many pundits think the best-case scenario might be a failure by both Berlusconi and Veltroni to win a ruling majority - an outcome that would...
...that government ends up cornered and powerless if it yields even tacitly to criminal interests. He also underestimated the risks of having on his electoral lists unknown candidates who would later be placed under investigation for conspiring with the Mafia. All this while the center-right (led by Silvio Berlusconi) watched its ally, the governor of Sicily, celebrate as a victory a recent court decision that determined he was not a mafioso, even while finding that he had done favors for a noted Mob boss. In this febrile environment, Berlusconi is again seeking the Prime Minister's office, while Prodi...
...other hand, is a lifelong politico who talks about Italy's need to be "reasonable" and "pragmatic." He was Vice Premier in Prodi's first government from 1996 to 1998, before moving over to run the capital. Pale and bespectacled, next to the ever-tan, ever-spiffy Berlusconi, the Rome mayor has high-culture tendencies and a book-writing hobby; he has written an earnest novel and a biography of a little-known jazz musician. Veltroni even gets a mention in Ian McEwan's best-selling novel Saturday...
...Still, despite the apparent differences, the two rivals are essentially cut from the same political cloth. Unlike the plodding technocrats like Prodi who have often led Italy, both Berlusconi and Veltroni are persuasive orators with a populist touch and a nose for how to use the mass media. Berlusconi will be able to make the case that the center-left blew their chance to lead, stumbling and splintering into Italian politics-as-usual. He will ask for yet another chance to remake Italy in his image of success. Veltroni will respond that it is the center-right that is offering...