I had been waiting for the Italian election to be decided before I wrote about it, and as of Saturday afternoon it appears the deadlock has been broken. Silvio Berlusconi has said that he will resign and Romano Prodi has his speaker of the senate, Franco Marini. This was only after 4 parliamentary votes that gave the Prodi coalition its first real test. But let’s go back a few weeks to the election itself.

I was in Italy during the election with the HB. We had travelled by train from Vienna and arrived in time for the election. It was an exciting time. There were election pamphlets everywhere. No windshield wiper or rear window was free of them. We were in Tuscano, in Firenze specifically. There were no Berlusconi supporters to be found in Toscano. Everyone from the taxi drivers to the hotel staff were Prodi supporters.

If Toscano had been reflective of all of Italy, Romano Prodi would have won by a landslide. Italy, however, is a fractious country. Italians have never really ever believed that it is anything more than the city-states that for so long defined it. That is why, when you tell someone from Villareggio that you had good lasagne in Pisa he will reply quizzically, “You had good lasagne in Pisa?!?” It may seem minor, but it is emblematic of the Italian psyche.

So, we knew better than to hope for a landslide; that would never happen in Italy. But, we had never expected the election to be as close as it was. Prodi’s coalition won by an incredibly narrow margin. To give Silvio credit, the outcome was in doubt for several days. That said, he really should have given it up a lot sooner. But then, Silvio has never been known for having a keen sense of logic, or irony.

This is the man who said that he was giving up sex for the election period. He also compared himself to Christ in the travails he’s had to face. He went on to state that anyone who didn’t vote for him was an unprintable Italian scatological word for a part of the human anatomy (yes, that’s redundant).

Now, in Italy, there are more political persuasions than there are stars in the heavens. So, I wasn’t surprised to find this headline at a newsstand in Firenze. I will tell you right off the bat the paper is from the far-left. The headline says, among other things that the election was “made up.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant until my eyes caught the line a little below midway down the sheet, “whether it’s Prodi or Berlusconi, it’s the church that runs the country.” But, my favourite is the one at the bottom. It’s a quote from Berlusconi, “There will be a revote. If I lose, we’ll vote again until I win!”

You’ve got love the guy. He truly lives in the state of denial. I mean who else but Silvio would think that wearing a handkerchief over his balding dome would not make people not realize that he had just had his new hair plugs put in? He’s the only former lounge singer to have run Italy. He also had the chutzpah to say the Prodi couldn’t govern with the country so divided. And how would that be different for Silvio? As I said, Silvio has never been one to get irony. He will be missed, if only for the laughs.

Romano Prodi, on the other hand, is an economist. That is a profession in which I’ve never really had a lot of faith, but Romano has other attributes and you’ve got to be have many attributes to survive in Italian politics. So, ciao Romano! You’ve got your work cut out for you. And addio Silvio, shine up your white loafers and dust off your leisure suit; it’s back to the lounge. One more chorus of “Volare.”

At a later date, we’ll discuss why a parliamentary form of government without a regular election cycle is less stable than the alternatives.

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

And, of course

(hewa ni hataraki: work for peace)