Roberto Maroni is back in the Italian press again today, and with another interview. This interview is in ilResto del Carlino. (Interestingly enough they are running an online poll, and the result was running at 51.7% euro to 48.3% lira). Unfortunately the interview is in Italian. I have translated a few extracts under the fold. The big issue that he draws attention to (and I was flagging this in an earlier post) is the apparent desire of Berlusconi not to commit himself if he can help it.
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Tag Archives: Silvio Berlusconi
Who is Roberto Frimigoni ?
Google thinks that means Roberto Formigoni and so do I. One year ago FreeRepublic.com
posted an effort to translate the list of people who got free (but not valueless) rights to buy oil from Iraq under the oil for food program. The list was published by an Ahmed Chalabi affiliated newspaper in Iraq. Chalabi to freerepublic is not exactly the most reliable sourcing. However I was interested that the
list included one Roberto Frimigoni, who does not, as far as anyone can tell actually exist.
8 months ago I guessed that Roberto Frimigoni was Roberto Formigoni president of Lombardy. A week ago confirmation was all over the papers.
So who is Roberto Formigoni ? He is the founder and leader of “communione e liberazione” a very devoutly catholic organisation which has a history of dubious financing. As such he became a rather prominent Christian Democratic politician. When the party collapsed he went with a splinter that was un-alligned then a sub-splinter allied with Silvio Berlusconi and finally a sub-sub-splinter allied with Silvio Berlusconi. In this capacity he was elected and re-elected president of Lombardy.
For some reason which I can’t understand, Formigoni uses every available opportunity to attack Rosy Bindi formerly health minister in the Prodi government. The obsession is particularly irritating, since he begins his attacks by saying that she divides the world into good people like her and bad people like her opponents. Aside from that, my most vivid memory of his service as president of Lombardy was when he said that Bindy was profiting from tragedy when she noted (correctly) that responsibility for inspecting a high preassur oxygen chamber which burned killing patients belonged the region. Formigoni insisted that the chamber had been inspected thoroughly. He had to revise his assertion when it was noted that the facility included two pressure chambers of which only one was licensed and that the thorough inspectior had failed to notice the second chamber (which is roughly the size of a beached wale).
In his capacity as a very devout catholic he followed the Pope in denouncing desert storm and then sanctions on Iraq. He was, in 1991, perhaps the most prominent and eloquent Italian opponent of Desert Storm over shadowing the Italian left which was divided and confusing Needless to say, like 80% of Italians he was opposed to Bush Jr’s invasion.
The sudden explosion of evidence and allegations against Formigoni is, for him, unfortunately timed since he is up for re-election in two months. My original post in Italian below the fold.
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From Gunboat Diplomacy to Compassion?
The sinking of a boatload of Somali immigrants off the island of Lampedusa seems to have set off something akin to a feeling of collective remorse in Italy. (Would that the human tragedy that is occuring on a regular basis just off the straits of Gibraltar could provoke a similar reaction here in Spain!) Indeed Belusconi (always the master of great theatre) appears to have had them near to tears over in Strasbourg.
Irony apart, even his old ‘enemy’ – the good-soldier schultz – is quoted as saying he has “the impression that what Mr Berlusconi said came from the heart”. He could not however resist a reference to remarks which were last year attributed to Italian Reforms Minister Umberto Bossi to the effect that he wished the navy would open fire on ships carrying illegal migrants. Schulz is quoted as saying: “We are very happy that it is not those members of your government who want these boats sunk who are responsible for this issue in the (EU) home affairs council.”
Well this is the second time this month I find myself asking whether Berlusconi is having a change of heart. Since I try not to engage in type M speculation, I don’t need to answer this. What we might note is the way Interior Minister Pisanu is making the direct link with Italy’s ageing population and (hence) pension difficulties. After the Greeks tried to raise the question in Thessalonika, we could ask ourselves whether the South of Europe (where the demographic collapse is most profound, and immigrants are traditionally less in evidence) is about to adopt a collectively different approach on this question.
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Immigration: Europe’s Difficult and Perplexing Road to Reform
The Economist has a couple of useful pieces this week ( here and here ) comparing the politics of immigration in the US and the UK. Meantime US economist Richard Freeman has an NBER paper where he argues we should “Stop spending so much time thinking about the WTO. Technology transfer, international migration, and financial crises have orders of magnitude more important impacts on human welfare and the state of the economy”. In other words globalisation is not after all so much about trade as about labour migration and capital movements. And just how is Europe shaping up to the challenge? Well, by all accounts, not very well. But a surprising proposal has just surfaced from a very unexpected quarter. Immigrants in Italy may (eventually) get the right to vote. Even if this is a very limited proposal, it is certainly a positive one. I am just very surprised by its source.
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