di Sandra
Giovanna
Giacomazzi
One
of the qualities of the Wall Street Journal that has distinguished it
from most
of the other major newspapers in the United States is the unbiased way
with
which it has always presented news from Italy. When you read many of
the other
major American papers you can tell that the journalists have been wined
and
dined and brainwashed by the Orwellian reversal of reality of their
left-wing
Italian comrades in Rome. What you read is a rehashed version of what
you read
the day before in “La Repubblica” or “L’Unità”.
You can
imagine then, my surprise, several weeks ago, when, during the first
prime time
television debate for the candidacy of the premiership between the
incumbent
Silvio Berlusconi and the would-be Romano Prodi, the latter claimed
that his
economic proposals had received endorsement from the Wall Street
Journal.
Unfortunately,
he was right. In a piece entitled “Italian Candidates Offer Dueling
Tax-Cut
Plans” (March 14, 2006), Luca Di Leo claimed, among other things, that,
“Many
economists see Mr. Prodi's recipe…as more likely to achieve its goal.”
Fortunately, the WSJ made amends for the vagueness and falsehoods of
that piece
by publishing Stefano Di Bosio’s rebuttal (“Prodi’s Plan is No Tax
Cut”, March
23, 2006).
However,
the WSJ has continued to publish articles on the Italian elections that
in
their attempt at equanimity often fail to paint a totally accurate
picture. For
example, Berlusconi is often depicted as the “conservative” candidate,
when, if
there’s one thing that Berlusconi isn’t, it’s conservative!
If
anything that appellation is more appropriate for his opponent, Romano
Prodi.
Berlusconi may not have been able to apply his liberalizing economic
policies
to the limits he had hoped for, but Prodi’s policies would undo the too
little
that was done, bringing the country back to an antiquated
state-controlled
status quo that would put the economy in a straight jacket when the
cure calls
for more flexibility.
Far
from being a conservative, Berlusconi is a true revolutionary, the
epitome of
the self-made man, not a common model in Italy. He created his media
empire
from nothing, or from his earnings in real estate, fighting an uphill
battle
against the state monopoly of the television airways. It took an
incredible
amount to chutzpah to stay the course of that challenge.
There is
no single Italian entrepreneur who has generated more wealth,
who has created more jobs, who has produced more capital gains for
minority
investors, who has contributed more tax dollars to the state coffers
and who
has never asked for state favors to pay for his loses.
Other
famous Italian entrepreneurs, many of them long-time comrades of
Prodi, those seated in the highest echelons of the industrial
organization
Confindustria, have survived by privatizing their profits and
socializing their
losses. Not only have they been bloodsucking the resources of society
for years
by expecting the state to solve their problems of excess labor, but
they’ve
also been dumping their obsolete products on the public administration,
both of
which served to postpone Italy’s appointment with the essentials of
sound and
sensible competition needed to compete in modern markets. They’ve been
the ruin
of minority investors who had the ill fate to have faith in their
big-name
companies. Those same capitalists with no capital are likely to pretend
more
favors from the left-wing contender to the premiership, with the costs
being
picked up by the collectivity.
Prodi’s
comradeship with the spoiled class of Italian capitalism began
in the 1980s when he was president of the state holding company, IRI.
He was
the man charged with privatizing the state-owned industries. He is the
one who
sat for two years at the negotiating table with Ford when the American
company
was willing to pay fair market price for the state racing-stable, Alfa
Romeo.
He’s the man who tipped-off Gianni Agnelli at the 11th hour,
signing
a deal for a price well below market price, a price that Fiat never
even paid.
During
Prodi’s stint at IRI, he also tried to sell the state-owned food
conglomerate SME to another one of his high profile bosom buddies, the
industrialist Carlo De Benedetti. Only a few months earlier Heinz had
tried to
pay three times the amount that De Benedetti was offering, but had been
told my
Prodi that SME wasn’t for sale. When the then Prime Minister Bettino
Craxi got
word of the deal with De Benedetti, he asked his friend, Silvio
Berlusconi, to
make an offer. Berlusconi didn’t even want to buy SME, but Craxi
convinced him
to make an offer because the prime minister couldn’t bear to stand by
and watch
as Prodi sold off all the state assets to his friends at bargain
basement
prices. SME was eventually dismantled and sold to other buyers,
However, the
case ended up in the courts and irony would have it that instead of De
Benedetti and Prodi occupying the seat of the accused, that seat was
assigned
to Silvio Berlusconi. Mr. Berlusconi
was, of course, eventually acquitted, but that was just one of the many
cases
of persecution brought against him, the purpose of which was to
discourage his
participation in politics.
Nonetheless, the skeletons in
Romano Prodi’s closet go well beyond bad
business practices. During the 1970s Prodi admitted to spending an
evening with
friends consulting a Ouiji board. During the séance the board
“revealed” that
kidnapped Prime Minister Aldo Moro was being held in a place called
Gradoli. It
was later discovered, after Moro’s death, that he had been held, not in
the
town of Gradoli, but in an apartment in a Roman street called Via
Gradoli.
Unless you believe in the power of Ouiji boards, this means that the
former
president of the European Union and the candidate for the premiership
of Italy
not only knew where the Red Brigades were hiding Aldo Moro, but with
his
action, he was actually tipping off the terrorists to the fact that
their
hiding place was no longer secret!
Romano Prodi’s red comradeship
took him to even higher places. During the
coup d’état in the Soviet Union in 1991, in an interview with
“Il Corriere
della Sera”, Prodi boasted that he wasn’t at all surprised since the
author of
the coup, Vladimir Kriutshiev, was a personal friend of his. The coup
fortunately failed, but had it succeeded, it would have meant the
squashing of
the democratic forces that were just beginning to blossom.
For the record, Mr. Kriutshiev was the last
leader of the Soviet KGB from 1988 to 1991.
What’s more, Prodi is still
chumming around with Communists. Three of
the parties in his coalition are Communist. The PDS, the largest party
in his
coalition, is what remains of the PCI, the old Italian Communist Party.
They
changed their name and symbol when Communism went out of fashion, but
they have
never done any soul-searching about their dark past. The Refound
Communist
Party, had gone with the PDS in the beginning, but then decided that
they were
still Communists at heart after all. And last but not least, the
Italian
Communists are the diehards who have never renounced their past.
Last month Berlusconi stood
before a joint session of Congress to offer
his testimony of gratitude toward the United States. While he was
thanking
Americans 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 leader of
the
Italian Communists, Oliviero Diliberto, was admonishing him for having
shaken
the “blood-drenched” hand of President Bush the day before. That’s more
than
enough for me to decide who’s fit or unfit to govern the country.
Sandra
Giovanna Giacomazzi is a regular contributor to the Roman daily,
L’Opinione
delle Libertà. She also teaches Government and
Economics in Turin.
giogia@giogia.com
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