Silvio Berlusconi and the reconciliation with the Northern League

Monday, January 7, 2013. Silvio Berlusconi and Northern League's Roberto Maroni sign an agreement. With not many clear points on it, but an blurry alliance is better then no ally at all, isn't it.

Silvio's smiling?

Actually Silvio Berlusconi and Northern League's (Lega Nord) Roberto Maroni agreed to disagree, yesterday, since the only sure thing about the pact is that the NL does not want the Italian former prime minister and media tycoon to stand for head of government, and he (I mean the tycoon) had to agree, otherwise he would find himself without an ally, and hordes of enemies. 

So, who will be the candidate for this centre-right coalition? "I already proposed he's candidacy, and I think it will be he again, Angelino Alfano" said the former prime minister, when interviewed by Italian radio broadcaster RTL.

Why nobody likes Silvio Berlusconi?

Thursday, December 13, 2012. French President François Hollande joins droves of politicians eager to state their disapproval over Silvio Berlusconi. Whatever he does or will do, nobody likes it.

Mr Holland, while speaking publicly in Brussels (see photo), declared he saw “very low chance“ for the “chevalier” (Berlusconi is a Labour's Knight, having been awarded the Order of Merit for Labour) of winning a term and replacing Mario Monti as head of Italian government.

"Now, look at you" seems to say François Hollande

"I don't take his words saying he abandoned his candidature seriously. What he says one day is not necessarily true the day after," Hollande added, clearly stating his stance towards the Italian media magnate “re-entering the field”. In this stance Hollande does not show any improvement in the relationship with Berlusconi, compared to Nicolas Sarkozy's days (watch the video on our YouTube's Berluschannel).

Silvio Berlusconi and the really, really bad luck

Tuesday, October 11, 2011. Silvio Berlusconi's govern loses parlametary vote on 2010 budget, but it's all due to bad luck, isn't it?
Silvio Berlusconi is really, really angry, this time. And it seems that he has right to be so, because he hates to lose (by the way: he can get angry when he wins too, but this is another story).

Silvio's Anger

The Italian Parliament refused to approve the 2010 budget review, with a vote that tied at 290-290, whilst 291 votes were needed to get the “rendiconto” (a bureaucratic document reviewing last year's public finances) get through.

Only one single vote! That's incredible, should have thought Mr Berlusconi. And it's definitely an “unprecedented case” in Italy, as Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house, put it.

And it was all due just to bad luck.

It would have been sufficient to get the vote of Berlusconi's friend and ally Umberto Bossi, but – quite unluckily – he went out for a cigar, and on his way back the Northern League boss stumbled into a group of journalists, which slowed him down, so that he was not able to cast his vote. Too bad!

It would have been enough to get Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti's endorsement, but he was preparing some documents in his cabinet, and arrived just late...

A few of the Responsibles? (Scilipoti in the middle)

Neither Claudio Scajola, with whom the Prime minister had a “friendly chat” the day before, could not make it.

And the members of “responsible initiative”, a group of twenty MPs that decided to support Berlusconi's cabinet when Fini left the parliament's majority? The majority of them were there, six of them had gone missing (amongst them their leader, Scilipoti).

What a bad luck*!

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*Libero-news.it, a "Berlusconi-friendly" news site is suggesting that Scajola "stabbed Silvio in the back", but no evidence was brought to light.

Libero-news.it's cartoon (Scajola stabbing Silvio in the back)

Silvio Berlusconi pleasing the locusts?

Friday, July 15 2011. Silvio Berlusconi and his ministers manage to get an emergency budget approved, hope the “speculator locusts” will like it (certainly none of his allies will).

Silvio

Another nail in Berlusconi's (political) coffin? It surely is. Italy history's second largest emergency package (and the quickest one) won't make many people happy. If someone thought that Berlusconi was going to get rid of IRAP (a local tax on manufacturing activities), well they will be disappointed, because – so -far – the government decided to increased its rate, instead. Did North League's Umberto Bossi expect an improvement on fiscal federalism? Not this time, the Italian regions will get less money.

Did anybody expect a serious cut in MPs expenses? The topic was amended by Berlusconi's Freedom Party, so there won't be any reductions in their wages or in their multimillion euro perks.

But Berlusconi will say it'a all Giulio Tremonti's fault, the only minister who's lacking "team spirit" (as the prime minister declared in an interview a week ago).

Giulio

The rules in the package are the same old ones: getting money from the car owners (a surcharge on vehicle excise duty for cars with an engine of 225 kW or more), from the tourists (10 euro tax in Rome), from the sick men (surcharge on health services). Money from the increase of the fuel excise – another evergreen way to (at least try to) balance the books in Italy – was already collected in July to finance the costs of the emergency on immigrants and to fund the show business.

All this, made the Italian way: the package is worth 47 billion euros, but the bulk of 40 billions is going to be “collected” in 2013 and 2014, saying “who knows who will be in charge by then”.