<nettime> the spaghetti conundrum pt.2

[Alex Foti <alex.foti@gmail.com>]

I owe you one, dear nettimers. I got one wrong Mr B is back. And one
right: Monti is leveraging the vatican pro-business center to have
access to power with a minority vote by the electorate.

Monti (allied with old foxes Fini and Casini) and funded by
Ferrari-Fiat's Luca Cordero di Montezemolo by being a shadow candidate
(he's not an official candidate altho his name screams from his Civic
Choice - with Monti for Italy pretty banal grey and blue logo) in the
upcoming general elections (Feb 24-25) is derailing
Bersani(PD)-Vendola(SEL)'s chances to government.

While the centerleft coalition has victory practically assured in the
lower house, in the upper house the electoral law giving absolute
majority of seats to the best-placed coalition calculates majorities
regionally, and so the centerleft needs to win Lombardy (where also
regional elections are held after the collapse of 'ndrangheta infected
rightwing catholic system of government) or another major region in
order not to be blackmailed by Monti & C into ceding
primeministership.

Monti, who's breaking the promise he made to the Italian people and
the President of the Republic Napolitano (his mandate will be over
soon after the elections) that he would remain one year as
"technician" and then go when elections were due to be called in
spring 2013 (he dimissioned a few months before he'd be forced do), is
not only a contestant for PD-SEL (democrats+postcommie left) alliance
but especially detrimental for Mr B's splintering armada, who has
allied his scandal-ridden and fissiparous party once more with the
northern league, by launching its new leader Maroni having similar
corruption problems in the party to governorship of the Lombardy
Region. He's unlikely to win, because there's also a strong Monti
candidate, while the centerleft features a decent candidate,
Ambrosoli's son (the lawyer killed by mafia in the banco ambrosiano
black funds affaire) the should carry the day. Regional and political
vote are likely to diverge in Lombardy, however.

My forecast is the Mummy aka Mr B and its team of green shirts are
heading toward an electoral rout, that will hopefully eradicate their
nefarious influence on spaghetti politics for a long time. The big
issue that remains is however that of austerity. As youth unemployment
skyrockets to Spanish and Greek levels and poverty and cuts in
cosumption are spreading alarmingly thanks to
Professor-turned-eurocrat Monti's cuts in spending and tax raises,
what's finally at state in the Italian elections is the continuation
of this recessionary course of economic policy or a finally
expasionary way (that is, keynesian rather than neoliberal) of looking
at the European crisis. My hope is that Monti's elitist political
experiment (he has asked Bersani to "silence" the left wing of his
party and coalition and has spoken to a selected audience of FIAT
workers in the company of CEO Marchionne while the metalworkers' union
was locked out of the plant, in one his last days in office) will fall
flat, which would mean 10% or below. But don't count on it.

Anyway the real left lies elsewhere and this is true in Italy as
everywhere else in Europe. Real-world lefties should reconstruct out
of radical democratic movements via their horizontal ways of
decision-making a left worthy of its name and the realities of the
21st century. If the comedian Grillo did it in Italy with its 5star
movement, can't we do a EU DRY (Real Democracy in Europe Now) that
remakes what is meant by left today.



#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org