Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Florida in Italy
Final results in the lower house showed Prodi's coalition winning 49.8 percent of the vote compared to 49.7 percent for Berlusconi's conservatives. The winning coalition is automatically awarded 340 seats, 55 percent of the total.
Right now, the Senate looks like it will go Berlusconi's way. Bizarrely, the framers of Italy's constitution apparently did not think of this problem:
There is no clear provision in the Italian constitution to deal with a split parliament, and there are no precedents.
There must be something about the Italian system that makes a split parliament highly unlikely. Perhaps our friend Fabio will explain what it is for us parochial Americans.
If you are looking for a difference between the global perception of Italy, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other, consider why Italy's Culture Minister felt the need to reassure the world:
Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione and several other politicians said early Tuesday that both sides must pull together, if only to handle urgent economic matters and the election of a new president after Ciampi's mandate expires in May.
"We have to immediately send a message to the markets, to whomever wants to invest in Italy that the country is not going to fall apart," he said.
However stressful and hilarious Florida was in 2000, no American of cabinet rank (or any rank, for that matter) thought that the United States was going to fall apart.
11 Comments:
By 
Fabio, at
Tue Apr 11, 10:00:00 AM:
I wrote a post on the elections - just a few minutes before I noticed your link. You're welcome to come over and see, but I don't know enough of the Italian electoral system to explain it properly.
By 
, at
Tue Apr 11, 02:12:00 PM:
"I know nothing of Italian politics..."
That is just the problem with the wingnutters. They do not know anything about anything but they have an opinion on everything.
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Apr 11, 03:11:00 PM:
At least we perceive our own ignorance.
By , at
Tue Apr 11, 04:25:00 PM:
No you don't.
If you do not know anything about Italian politics, why do you proceed to give your uninformed and ignorant opinion?
Not only are you ignorant, you are also stupid.
By Sirkowski, at
Tue Apr 11, 05:08:00 PM:
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Apr 11, 09:39:00 PM:
Anonymous, you gotta relax when you hurl the insults. I'm struggling even to locate the opinion in this post, other than my simple statement that I was rooting against Romano Prodi because he opposes American policies.
Chill.
By , at
Tue Apr 11, 11:04:00 PM:
My point, Tiger hawk, is that if you do not know anything about a topic, you should not write up an opinion piece since you have neither the knowledge nor the desire to acquire the knowledge to write said opinion piece.
In other words, your post is absolutely worthless. You admit to being an ignoramus and then proceed to write a piece based on hear-say and personal prejudice.
That is definitely an ominous sign of stupidity.
By , at
Tue Apr 11, 11:38:00 PM:
Why even compare this situation to the 2000 elections? Italy isnt the super power the US is, and the Italian economy is in a rut (as opposed to the US economy in 2000).
Maybe the world was reassured because Parliamentary governments can be far more unstable than the current US model
By , at
Wed Apr 12, 06:51:00 AM:
I do know about Italian politics, and I was quite surprised to read that an "uninformed" American would understand something much better (and explain it clearer) than many Italians. Feeling always not-perfectly-informed, as for Tiger Hawk, is good because we never know the whole story...but still I can confirm he knows what happened.
That was the situation on Monday night. Tuesday morning we had also the foreign Italians counted, so Prodi got both houses (Senate and Representative)...that was sort of a luck (because the two houses assigned to different coalitions are a serious problem in Italy). At the moment they are re-counting votes because numbers were too close (much closer than the average number of counting errors), in fact we don't know who won. Prodi cut a very bad figure deciding to jump up the floor and tell the world he won, when he simply could not know.
Night Hawk: the reason why this sort of "50/50 situation" between the two coalition worries Italian politics (threatening some kind of economic fall) is that each coalition is made of many parties, and these parties sometimes don't agree (on the left-side, too many times) so, if you have a really poor majority, parliament never makes to pass a bill and do important reforms.
Phil.
By , at
Wed Apr 12, 09:39:00 AM:
ERRATA: In my previous comment, when I wrote "Night Hawk" I (obviously) meant "TigerHawk".
"Anonymous": It's right to say that Italian elections are not to be compared with Florida case (even if all journalists and politicians in Italy did it). Anyway that's not for the reason you say (economics?), but for the simple fact that Americans were voting for their president while Italians were voting for the parliament. The "weight" of parliament in people's daily life is much more felt than the importance of president.
Phil.
By , at
Wed Apr 12, 08:31:00 PM:
I know nothing about Italian politics.
You got that right.
I think there's something on fox you'd find entertaining ... just go back to swallowing it, rather than spouting it.
