Silvio Berlusconi and the chat among friends

Sunday, October 23, 2011. After meeting Silvio Berlusconi on Italy's commitments, Germany's Merkel and France's Sarkozy are asked about how reassuring was the threesome.

Are they talking about him?

On October 15 Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi won a confidence vote by a very narrow majority.

On October 23, eight days later, he had to inspire some confidence in the Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, who summoned him (needing a true commitment from Italy, in order to try and solve the euro zone crisis), just before a European Council summit in Brussels.

Merkel, Sarkozy and Berlusconi

«I was convincing», declared afterwards Silvio Berlusconi «I have never failed to make the grade», showing how he considered the whole thing as just getting a reproach from the headmaster.

During the following press conference, a French-speaking journalist asked the duo about their level of trust in the Italian politician by putting a question on how much they have been reassured by him.

«How to put it?» answered Nicolas Sarkozy, «We do have confidence in the sense of responsibility of Italy's political, financial and economic authorities as a whole.» whilst Mrs Merkel underscores that «It was a meeting among friends.». They just couldn't help giggling, revealing how funny they found Silvio Berlusconi.

But the video (in French) about the funny scene is revealing more than the mere words.

For Silvio Berlusconi, exams never end.

Silvio Berlusconi and the confidence vote that doesn’t give much confidence

Friday, October 15, 2011. Silvio Berlusconi's government wins a confidence vote by a narrow majority, amongst horse-trading and fans rooting for the Pirro victor.

Forza Italia!

The Italian Prime Minister survived yesterday a confidence vote, but it really looked like as the fulcrum of the question was a bleak horse-trading instead than a in-depth discussion over the economical situation of the Italian Republic.

Amongst the latest trades, Catia Polidori – formerly one of the heads of Gianfranco Fini's Future and Freedom – became vice-minister for Economical Development.

Out of the 630 members of the Lower Chamber, 316 voted in favour.

Not a lively speech from the usually very funny Berlusconi

The opposition main strategy was quite simple: (aiming to prevent the reaching of the quorum of 315 members) the they did not show up. Simple and... ineffective. The leftist would blame the Radical Party, whose members did show up, in order to vote against the confidence (as they probably thought this is how it works in democracy).

«There are not alternatives to this government» is the main point of Silvio Berlusconi, which is quite a gloomy view of the current situation in some people's mind (and quite a boring point, Umberto Bossi might have thought, since he just yawned his head off during the declaration of the Prime Minister).

Today 200 thousand people are awaited in Rome, for a larger Italian “indignados” protest.

After the huge applause that welcomed the vote's results, the finale comments came from Maurizio Lupi (a Chamber of Deputies' vice-president) and Rosy Bindi (who is also a vice-president to the Lower Chamber). Lupi said “Votes are votes”, and Bindi replied: “Assholes are assholes”.

Opposition's strategy

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)