Articles by: Judith harris

  • Facts & Stories

    Rome, from Peaceful March to Mayhem—but “nobody got killed”

    ROME – “What I want to know,” an angry eye-witness told me after the event, “is why the Roman police chief, the Questore, did not resign.” The answer came from the chief’s boss, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, even as police trucks and ordinary people’s cars were still burning last Saturday evening: “Non c’è stato il morto” (nobody got killed), he said with obvious pride, as if that sufficed. “The risk was real,” he went on to say, “because the violent faction—criminals who must be given an exemplary punishment—used the [peaceful] marchers as a shield.”

     Speaking from Washington, where he was on an official visit, Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa agreed. “I think they were trying to have somebody die. Thanks to the police work, this didn’t happen.”
     

    What is to be done? Maroni said Monday that he will ask Parliament to put back on the books a tough law that allows police the use of weapons during demonstrations and the preventive jailing of presumed trouble makers for 96 hours. Adopted in 1973, a year of noteworthy political violence, following a referendum the law was abrogated in 1978.  
     

    Some onlookers saw moral damage in Saturday’s mayhem. “Piazza San Giovanni has been defiled,” a trade unionist complained. Traditionally that piazza has been the scene of massive, and non-violent, leftist and labor demonstrations. On the more pragmatic level, the cost of a burnt office, broken store windows, trashed vehicles, and torn-up streets is conservatively estimated at over $2 million. And then there were 135 injured. By contrast, and perhaps because the violent faction successfully used the peaceful marchers as shields, a scant twelve arrests were made, and these included four women and six minors.

    On Monday before dawn police in search of weapons raided the headquarters and hideaways of known “anarchist-insurrectionist” movements all over Italy. Helping the police are the Indignados themselves (the catch-all term is borrowed from Spain). Under Operation Let’s Unmask the Violent People,” a blogger called Il Fazioso invited the peaceful Indignados to put onto his blog all the photos taken with cell phones and cameras of the Black Blockers who were hurling Molotov cocktails and basalt paving stones at the police. (See: http://www.ilfazioso.com/) By way of thanks, the anonymous blogger informs us, complaints are pouring in from (presumably) the far left, alleging that the blogger is now an “indecent servant” of the Carabinieri and of Berlusconi.

    Most of those wallowing in the violence had faces covered, but reporter Francesco Cirillo, eye-witness to the demonstration as it slipped from peaceful march into mayhem, told me in a telephone interview that two things struck him in particular. The first was the skillful organization exhibited by the most violent. “It had all been meticulously prepared,” said Cirillo. The second was that a certain number wore signature scarves identifying them as “tifosi”—that is, members of a controversial fan club of the Rome soccer team, La Roma. These two groups spurred on others, including young teenagers akin to their looting counterparts in the London riots last month.

    Cirillo's account of skillful preparations beforehand is backed up by an unusual interview in Monday’s La Repubblica, in which one of the violent rioters boasted    that he and his 800 comrades (others put the figure at around 100, however) had learned their stuff from their buddies in Greece. “We were well prepared. We divided into small groups, each with a specialty—tearing up paving stones, throwing Molotov cocktails, hitting with bats.” In one chilling detail he related that the previous day they had parked a car loaded with weaponry by Piazza San Giovanni. As the march began they were already organized into phalanxes, as if by Napoleon, with a feint on one street and then action on the next, he explained. All were told to keep their gas masks and facial hoods and weapons well concealed in backpacks until the order for action came.

    Among those contested by the peaceful marchers was Mario Draghi, who takes up his post as head of the European central Bank (BCE) Nov. 1. Draghi knew that he was a target of the indignados in Rome, but on the eve of the demonstration expressed comprehension for their protest. “If we’re angry over the crisis, just imagine how the young people, the 20- and 30-year olds, without prospects….. Without them, there is no growth. Only by lifting the rigidity that blocks the development of the potential of the coming generations can the Italian economy be brought back onto the path toward growth.” Informed of how the demonstration had degenerated, Draghi said only, “What a shame.” Hear, hear.
  • Op-Eds

    The Porcellum Revisited


    ROME – The Porcellum (Law No. 270 of December 21, 2005) seriously altered the Italian election system. It awards extra parliamentary seats to the coalition in the lead, which automatically wins 340 seats in the Chamber, and hence a clear majority. Candidates cannot be voted by name, meaning that the powers of the political party in-groups who compile the electoral lists are reinforced, tending to freeze the system. To have candidates in Parliament, every coalition must obtain at least 10% of the national vote. A bright spot: the right for overseas Italians to vote. Otherwise, for the voters, it’s been take it or leave it.
     
    Its many critics blame the Porcellum for rewarding party loyalty and obedience over ethics or hard work in Parliament, and even for fostering corruption. Italian judicial expert Gustavo Zagrebelsky has called the law “absurd” because it transforms a minority (albeit the larger among the small fish) into a very large parliamentary majority. Nevertheless, efforts two years ago to overturn this unfortunate law by referendum vote flopped when the turnout was insufficient.
     
    The Partito Democratico’s chief, Pier Luigi Bersani, for one, called this week for new elections. Behind the scenes the debate is therefore revision of the Porcellum, whose conditions can influence the outcome. Curiously, not everyone wants revision, however, and the anti-Berlusconi parties are divided about what is to be done. Writing July 15, Zagrebelsky spelled out the problem, ominously warning in La Repubblica that the left must avoid the temptation to use the Porcellum for its own purposes, even if convinced it can sink the center-right of Berlusconi and the Northern League. The way out, Zagrebelsky suggests, is not recourse to another referendum, but a law to sent to Parliament that would revert to the previous election law, which could eventually be amended.
     
    While this revision or abrogation of the election law is still being debated, on Monday Calderoli himself, a former surgeon from Bergamo who today is Minister for something called the “Normative Simplification” (which includes trying to make bureaucratic life easier by simplifying laws), was looking beyond elections and into a new regime. To this end he has sent to Parliament, on behalf of the Silvio Berlusconi government, a bill that would significantly beef up the powers of the Premier. The president of the council of ministers would be known henceforth—in Calderoli’s proposed revision of the postwar Constitution—as the Prime Minister, “responsible for the general policies of the Government.” Among its other provisions: abrogation of overseas residents’ right to vote and, at home, universal suffrage for the election under regional direction of a “federal Senate,” whatever that is. This new Senate’s labors would moreover be aided and abetted by “some representatives of the Regions and of local autonomies,” albeit without a right to vote. No region could have fewer than five senators (today Molise has only two, and the Valle d’Aosta has one).
     
    The point, Calderoli stresses, is that the cost of government would be cut by reducing the number of deputies and senators to 250 for each house (today inflated to 630 in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and 315 in the Senate). Salaries would depend upon presence in the two houses. Only the Chamber of Deputies would have the right to vote in a motion of confidence for the government, while a mechanism called “constructive no-confidence” would be created. When a confidence vote fails, no dissolution of Parliament would be obligatory; instead, either the Italian President or the Chamber of Deputies would have the right to nominate a new Prime Minister, on the basis of election results. The Prime Minister himself would also be able to request the President to dissolve Parliament. The state would have exclusive control over energy and distribution networks. Finally, “in every instance in which he cannot carry them out,” the functions of the President of the Republic would pass to the President of the Chamber of Deputies.
     
  • Facts & Stories

    Naples rubbish: “Not God’s gift”



    When Neapolitan authorities, including members of Parliament, appealed to other regions to lend a helping hand, the Northern League leadership turned its back. The crusty co-founder of the League, Senator Giuseppe Leoni, who is also president of an organization called Padania Catholics, said harshly, “Taking it [Neapolitan rubbish] is unacceptable. Their rubbish is not God’s gift.”
     
    Admittedly, there are some credible grounds for reluctance. Renzo Tondo, governor of the Friuli-Venezia Region, argues that last year his region had accepted Neapolitan rubbish for disposal in its incinerators, but that once was enough. “They can ask us for a helping hand one time, but in Naples this reiterated state of emergency undermines the credibility of the people promising a definitive solution. The Northern regions simply cannot be called upon to help when the same problem crops up again only a few months later. But let me be clear,” Tondo continued. “We have no political prejudice against the garbage from the Campania Region. For us today it is a political problem: I am told we have no space whatsoever in our own incinerators for rubbish coming from other regions. It’s tough enough for us to get rid of our own.”
     
    The situation remained drastic enough that the Neapolitan Cardinal Archbishop Crescenzio Sepe issued a bitter statement last Friday. “Naples once again has been humiliated, its dignity betrayed, its future prospects blighted, its rights ignored.” The situation is “unacceptable,” he concluded, with organized crime holding the city in a “deathly grip, trying to turn this latest city crisis to its own interests.”
     
    In making a connection with organized crime, the Cardinal Archbishop was very much on target. When elected last month, Mayor Luigi De Magistris, who replaced Rosa Russo Jervolino, vowed that by year end Naples will recycle 70%. But then shock set in as he discovered himself committed to what he has described as a “civil war” pitting organized crime against civil society. And in fact the situation has been aggravated by gangs of hooded youths, suspected of connections with certain local interests, rampaging through town by night to torch piles of rubbish; some were reportedly caught on camera. Burnt rubbish is reportedly more valuable than unburnt, for disposal of each ton to the private business interests involved costs the seller E 1,000 (circa $1,450). Not surprisingly, therefore, in the past two weeks over 300 fires have been set—on Monday alone, 47—burning an estimated 2,100 tons of garbage. According to Italian journalist Cristina Zagaria, reporting from Naples, the fires released as much dioxin in that period as would normally be released by a proper incinerator in a decade.
     
    But today there is also good news. Despite the objections from the Northern League, from next week on a large amount of the rubbish can finally be sent to incinerators and dumps in seven of the nineteen other regions, according to Campania Regional Governor Stefano Caldoro, speaking July 7. These welcome Samaritans range from all over Italy: Sicily and Puglia in the South; the Marches, Tuscany and Emilia Romagna in the Center; and, in the North, Lombardy and Tondo’s Friuli Venezia Giulia.
     
    Mayor De Magistris is doing his level best. Ten days ago he climbed aboard a rubbish truck to set an example. (See him at the wheel at http://video.corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/?canale=politica&videoid=cm-157180) The next morning at 6 am he was at the rubbish collection center, thanking the men who had worked the trucks around the clock to clear much of the city’s historical center. From circa 1,500 tons of accumulated trash and garbage the amount has dropped to 1,300, according to Asia, the town’s rubbish collection agency. Ordinary citizens in Naples have been actively cooperating through ad hoc neighborhood committees who encourage careful division of rubbish into recycling. Outside Naples itself, Pompeii township is one of 12 which reports little trouble.
     
    The stakes are high. The European Union will apply financial sanctions on Naples unless the situation is resolved, according to Janez Potocnik, EU commissioner for the environment. In March 2010 an EU court found the Region guilty of neglecting the environment and froze E 500,000 of funds which were due to the Campania. The area’s politicians in Rome on the right as well as the left are concerned over this. And local magistrates have opened three separate inquiries into the health risks and political reasons behind the rubbish disaster.
     
    But there is another story in Terzigna, a town which lies within the Vesuvius National Park. Local women have formed a committee called Mamme Vulcaniche (Volcanic Moms), who demonstrated June 27 against its construction on health grounds.