How do you like your rigged elections?
"Comic’s protest movement shakes up Italy election" by Colleen Barry | Associated Press, February 23, 2013
MILAN — The burly man with a shock of silver curls and a scruffy beard gesticulates wildly on Milan’s Piazza del Duomo, unleashing a sprawling diatribe against the political establishment.
‘‘Send them home, send them home!’’ Beppe Grillo cries as tens of thousands of supporters send up a deafening cheer.
Crisis-hit Italians are fed up. And no one is tapping that vein of outrage better than comic-turned-political agitator Grillo and his antiestablishment 5 Star Movement.
Grillo fills piazzas from Palermo deep in the south to Verona up north with Italians who seem to get some catharsis from his rants against the politicians who drove the country to the brink of financial ruin, the captains of industry whose alleged illegal shenanigans are tarnishing prized companies — and the bankers who aided and abetted both.
Grillo’s campaign is significant not only because he shows strong chances of being the third — some project even the second — party in Parliament after the Sunday and Monday vote.
The 5 Star Movement is the strongest protest party ever seen in Italy, creating a fluid and unpredictable electorate at a time when the nation needs a clear direction to fight its economic woes.
A strong election showing for Grillo could hinder coalition-building efforts among mainstream parties, leading to a period of political paralysis....
I already don't like the sound of this.
The most recent polls of voter sentiment show Grillo in third place, with 17 percent of the vote, behind Pier Luigi Bersani, the center left candidate for premier, who enjoys 33 percent of the vote and Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right coalition with the Northern League in second with 28 percent. Premier Mario Monti’s centrist coalition is preferred by 13 percent of voters in the COESIS poll of 6,212 respondents, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.2 percent.
This is very instructive because you see this all across the continent. Europeans are gravitating to left-wing parties in response to governments serving finance and banks. The banker's party is polling last.
Critics say that Grillo is good at tapping into voter anger — getting to the heart of everything that’s wrong with the ruling class — but has few constructive ideas of his own for helping Italy emerge from crisis.
Some would say the same about this blog, but I think it's bull. I've been typing the answers and solutions for over six years now; the problem is they are not what you want to hear.
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Ready to get flipped?
"EU nations, investors keep watch on elections in Italy; Parliamentary results seen as key to economy" by Victor L. Simpson | Associated Press, February 25, 2013
ROME — Will Italy stay the course with painful economic reform? Or fall back into the old habit of profligacy and inertia? These are, broadly, the choices as Italians vote in a watershed parliamentary election Sunday and Monday that could shape the future of one of Europe’s biggest economies.
Fellow European Union countries and investors are watching closely, as the decisions that Italy makes over the next several months promise to have a profound impact on whether Europe can decisively put out the flames of its financial crisis.
Greece’s troubles in recent years sparked a series of market panics. With an economy almost 10 times the size of Greece’s, Italy is simply too big a country for Europe, and the world, to see fail.
Leading the electoral pack is Pier Luigi Bersani, a former communist who has shown a pragmatic streak in supporting tough economic reforms spearheaded by incumbent Mario Monti.
Uh-oh.
On Bersani’s heels is Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media mogul seeking an unlikely political comeback after being forced from the premiership by Italy’s debt crisis.
Related: Another Berlusconi Comeback
Monti, while widely credited with saving Italy from financial ruin, is trailing badly as he pays the price for the suffering caused by austerity measures.
Then there’s the wild card: comic-turned-politician Beppe Grillo, whose protest movement against the entrenched political class has been drawing tens of thousands to rallies in piazzas across Italy. If his self-styled political ‘‘tsunami’’ sweeps into Parliament with a big chunk of seats, Italy could be in store for a prolonged period of political confusion that would spook the markets.
Translation: The FIX is IN!
Voting was generally calm. But when Berlusconi showed up at a Milan polling place to cast his ballot, three women, shouting ‘‘Enough of Berlusconi,’’ pulled off their sweaters to bare their chests and display the slogan ‘‘Basta Silvio!’’ (Enough of Silvio) scrawled on their flesh.
Italian news reports said the three were members of the Femen protest group.
After voting, Berlusconi said of the topless protesters, “There are situations that are outside the bounds of reason, and we can’t do anything about them.’’
Elections are so much more fun in foreign lands.
While a man of the left, Bersani has shown himself to have a surprising amount in common with the center-right Monti — and the two have hinted at the possibility of teaming up in a coalition.
You JUST GO BURNED, Italians, same as the Greeks and the French when they thought they elected leftists.
Bersani was Monti’s most loyal backer in Parliament during the respected economist’s tenure at the head of a technocratic government. And in ministerial posts in previous center-left governments, Bersani fought hard to free up such areas of the economy as energy, insurance, and banking services.
But he's a man of the left? Does that politically-charged word even mean anything anymore?
But it’s uncertain that Monti will be able muster the votes needed to give Bersani’s Democratic Party a solid majority in both houses of Parliament.
‘‘Forming a government with a stable parliamentary alliance may prove tricky after elections,’’ said Eoin Ryan, an analyst with IHS Global Insight. ‘‘A surge in support for anti-austerity parties is raising chances of an indecisive election result and post-vote political instability.’’
Another factor is turnout. Usually some 80 percent of the 50 million eligible voters go to the polls, but experts are predicting many will stay away in anger, hurting mainstream parties....
No, you are more likely to get to the poll then. Damn media is already setting the stage for the rigged vote.
Italian elections are usually held in spring, and this balloting came amid bad weather in much of the country, including snow in the north. Rain was forecast for much of the country Monday.
It's snowing in.... Italy?
Why isn't my fart-mi$ting agenda-pu$her featuring such things, 'eh?
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UPDATE: BERLUSCONI BLOC MAY WIN ALL SWING REGIONS IN SENATE!!!
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Inconclusive election results roil Italy’s politics, economy; Voters stridently reject emphasis on austerity" by Rachel Donadio | New York Times, February 26, 2013
ROME — Italian voters delivered a rousing antiausterity message and a rebuke to the political order in national elections Monday that threatened to plunge the country into political paralysis after early results failed to produce a clear winner.
Analysts said the best-case scenario would be a shaky coalition government, which would once again expose Italy and the eurozone to turmoil if markets question its commitment to measures that have kept the budget deficit within a tolerable 3 percent of gross domestic product.
You can see here who the really important voter$ are to my agenda-pushing, monied mouthpiece media.
News of the stalemate sent tremors through the financial world, sending the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 200 points.
Oh, is that what they are blaming? Not Bernanke and his printing press propping up the banks of Europe?
Although analysts blamed the large protest vote on Italy’s political morass and troubled electoral system, the results were also seen as a rejection of the rapid deficit-reduction strategy set by the European Commission and European Central Bank — from a country too big to fail and too big to bail out.
So what does that mean?
“No doubt Italy has an imperfect political culture, but this election I think is the logical consequence of pursuing policies that have dramatically worsened the economic and social picture in Italy,’’ said Simon Tilford, chief economist of the Center for European Reform, a London research institute.
And as I stated above previously, it can be shown in the votes across Europe.
Yes, some conservatives have taken power in change votes (not much change when even "leftist" governments are in the thrall of bankers), but in most places the answer to right-wing free-market policies that have failed is to tack left. It's the natural, peaceful instinct of people. Then it's usually warped by those that take control.
‘‘People have been warning that if they adhere to this policy there will be a political cost, there will be backlash,’’ he added. ‘‘It couldn’t have taken place in a more pivotal country.’’
In an election marked by voter anger and low turnout, the center-left Democratic Party appeared to be leading in the Lower House with 29.6 percent, with 99 percent of the votes counted, and in the Senate with one-third of the votes counted by midnight local time.
I don't know about the low turnout, but....
But that outcome did not give the Democrats a clear victory because the center-right People of Liberty Party of Silvio Berlusconi, former prime minister, was leading in several populous regions that carry more Senate seats, potentially giving him veto power and raising the prospect of political gridlock.
Okay, something about a hung Parliament was cut from the printed pos, probably because the paper didn't want to give irate Italians any ideas.
Even before the final result, the election was a clear victory for the Five Star Movement of the former comedian Beppe Grillo, which in its first-ever national elections appeared to win about 25 percent of the vote in the Lower House. Italians from right and left — and the wealthier north and poorer south — were drawn to Grillo’s opposition to austerity measures and cries to oust the political order.
Well, it looks like you had a pretty fair poll over there, probably the best you could have hoped.
And it was a stinging defeat for the caretaker prime minister, Mario Monti, a newly minted politician whose lackluster civic movement appeared to win around 10 percent in both houses.
In other words, the banker's party finished worse than expected.
“Grillo had a devastating success; the rest of the situation is very unclear,’’ said Stefano Folli, a political columnist for the daily business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.
Either the Democratic Party and the People of Liberty Party ‘‘will form a grand coalition committed to reforms and changing the electoral law, which would be very difficult, or Italy will be ungovernable,’’ Folli added.
Because as you saw above -- but what is now obscured and obfuscated -- the "former" Communist is behind the bankers(?)!
Monti’s caretaker government remains in place with full powers until a new government is formed. Appearing on television Monday evening, Monti said he felt ‘‘tremendous regret’’ that during his tenure the political parties were not able to change Italy’s electoral law so as to guarantee more political stability. ‘‘It is a great responsibility of the political forces, and one of the reasons for the disaffection and distance from and the revindication of the political class,’’ he added.
Under Italy’s complex electoral laws, it is extremely hard for any one party to gain a strong ruling majority needed to manage an economy with rising unemployment and a credit crunch.
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Related:
The results of this election would appear to represent new depths of gridlock, and few experts expected any party to form a governing coalition strong enough to prevail for long. Nicolas Véron, an economist and a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based research institute, said that regardless of who ultimately controls the levers of government, “the key question is whether we can have serious structural reform.”
Italy “was a work in progress before the elections,” Mr. Véron added, “and I think investors understand that it will remain a work in progress for some time.”
$o you $ee who the important voter$ are, right?
When he came to power in November 2011, after Mr. Berlusconi stepped down amid intense market turmoil, Mr. Monti was praised for restoring international confidence in Italy.
If you checked my links you will find Berlusconi was run out because he wasn't going to go along with the austerity plans. They think we forget s*** out here. And again, the truly important voters.
Although he won plaudits from European leaders and President Obama, Italians disliked him for raising the retirement age and taxes.
Proving that Obama and the leaders of Europe are simply front men (and women) for the banking interests.
“Taxes, taxes and more taxes, that’s what voters remember the most from Monti,” said Stefano Sacchi, a professor of political science at the University of Milan....
To be Obama's legacy when he's all through.
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Cut from the web version? Hmmmmmmm.
And a paragraph cut from the Times itself?
An aide to Bersani, a former communist and the Democratic candidate for prime minister, suggested that a new vote might be needed to break the deadlock, the Associated Press reported. An alternative would be for the country's president, Giorgio Napalitano, to install another interim government, which would try to write a new election law.
Someone better get you Italians off the grill because you are getting burned.
