Berlusoni
addresses Congress
di Sandra Giovanna Giacomazzi
Last week
Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi appeared before a joint
session of
Congress, an honor that has been reserved to only three previous prime
ministers of Italy: De Gaspari, Craxi and Andreotti. Berlusconi
began his speech with a testimony of gratitude toward
the United States for saving Italy and Europe from the throngs of three
totalitarianisms: Nazism, Fascism and Communism and for lifting the
destroyed
continent from the ashes of war with the Marshall Plan. The heart
of his discourse was dedicated to
recalling the shared values of Europe and the United States and the
importance
of remembering an honoring that unity, not only with words but with
deeds. He
closed his speech with an anecdote in which he recounted how a young
man who
had just graduated from high school was taken by his father to visit
one of the
cemeteries in Italy where American soldiers are buried who died during
the
Second World War. He related how the
father had made his son promise not to forget the generous human
sacrifice made
by so many young Americans to restore freedom to thier country.
He concluded by revealing that “that father
was my father and that young man was me.
He then shouted over the standing ovation and resounding applause, “I
have never forgotten and I never will.”
I had goose bumps as I watched and listened to the Italian Prime Minister deliver his speech in what he called the most important temple of democracy. Judging from the eighteen rounds of applause and the three standing ovations evidently the members of Congress were equally moved by his words. If they could, I believe they would have offered to grant him honorary citizenship. If the institution existed, which it doesn’t because for Americans it would be undemocratic, I’m sure they would have offered him a place by their side as Senator for Life. His words took his listeners on a magic carpet ride of the very highest of shared values.
Unfortunately, it was impossible not to remember and contrast the jeered reception he had received the week before at the beginning of the closing ceremony of the Olympics. And it was a regretful to have to come back to the reality of the squalor of the Italian television studios with all the usual contemptuous comments depreciating the value of such an historic moment. It’s amazing, but after Berlusconi’s overwhelming success in the United States, the leftist press and politicians have been making every effort minimize or nullify the prime minister’s undeniable triumph, using any means and any argument. For example, the economy. Taking advantage of some unhappy economic figures that have just been released, they say that Berlusconi’s grand transatlantic theatrical performance in the American Congress doesn’t change the reality of life for Italian voters nor the fact that Italy’s growth rate is at zero, a drop of one and a half points.
Pulling that rabbit out of their hat is the dirtiest trick they could pull. Italy has been plagued by strikes for the last five years like never before and the ones who are pointing their fingers at the government are the very conductors and choreographers of all the disorder. Did they really think that they could drag workers into the streets every other week without it having any effect on the country’s GDP? Or are they pretending they don’t know that that what has been whittling away at that one and half points is: five years of incessant strikes, the boycott of any effort to make the labor market more competitive and the persistence of categories of privileged untouchables? They can pretend all they like, but the fact is that Italy’s drop in gross domestic product is the result of five years of constant sabotage whose precise purpose was to blame the Berlusoni government for the ugly results of their very own ill-omened opera.
Sandra Giovanna Giacomazzi writes for the Roman daily, L’Opinione delle Libertà. She also teaches political science and Economics in Torino.
giogia@giogia.com
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