Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[andrea]

Psyberianhusky, in Italy the country is ruled by the parliament, not the party which wins elections. Whoever gets the support of a majority in the parliament can be PM.
After a PM resigns, the president of the republic meets with representatives of all parties currently in parliament. He proposes a course of action ( nominate a new PM, renominate the old PM, or, if all options fail, he "closes" the parliament(what is the right word?) and starts new elections) and then see if it has enough support.

In this case, he decided for a technical government instead of a political one. In a quite good political move, he nominated Monti senator for life, which is an effective way of telling the parliament his choice, before Berlusconi even resigned. This allowed the head of parties to consider support of Monti's government and to convince their own parties. Berlusconi for example, met some resistance in his own party. If Napolitano's decision had been more vague, then it might have been impossible to create a new government before the stock exchange opens on Monday.


Scriver, he may want to run for presidency, but unless he changes the constitution, it is not going to happen. At the moment, the president of the republic is elected by a very large majority in the parliament, one which it would be very hard to reach without support of other parties, and traditionally it is a person agreed by everybody to be impartial.
He would never be elected in such a system.
People said he wanted to change Italy into a presidential republic, so that he could be elected directly. But now he isn't in a position where he can do such changes.

[scriver]

Great news, I guess. Just leaves the issue of him being such a media mogul. Though honestly I don't know how big one he is and how much is exaggeration by our media.

[andrea]

that might be a problem, but now that he has lost control of public TV channels, the situation will improve. In this last period, the public TV news were changed into an unwatchable mess. Whenever something happened about Berlusconi, they would speak about Italian's favorite taste of ice cream or similar things (sadly, not an exaggeration).

I don't know much about Berlusconi's news programmes, besides the news on 4th channel which are so blatantly biased that only people who are more berlusconian than Berlusconi itself or people looking for comedy watch it. They don't focus on news much. Although there are other, and maybe more powerful, to shape the thoughts of a population.
and considering that he owns 3 TV channels out of 7 -9 main national ones , plus 2 newspapers, he has quite a bit of power.

( structure and grammar may be lacking, due to morning and flu)

[RedKing]

Italy still has the "senator for life" thing? Old habits die hard...

[andrea]

yes, we still have senators for life.
Former presidents of the republic are automatically offered to be senators for life ( I don't think it is mandatory, but I am not aware of any who refused. I am still young however, so there are lots of things that happened before my time)
Also, the president in office has the power to nominate some senators among italian people who did great things. For example, nobel prizes ( Rita Levi Montalcini is senator for life, as short as her life may be now that she is 102), but there can be other reasons.

[mainiac]

The Liberal-Democrats are in power in the UK?  Well what has that power sharing gotten them?  A referendum that failed (thanks to the conservatives).  What else?

Mostly it's just blunting whatever the Conservatives wanted (on most issues) - the nature of a junior partner in a coalition is generally gonna be blocking some things rather than proposing a lot of their own stuff.  Although there is the gay marriage stuff going through.

You mean the stuff that the Conservatives wouldn't be able to enact if the Liberal-democrats hadn't agreed to the power sharing with them?  So they're accomplishments are getting a bunch of half measures passed that they didn't want.  What a plan!

[Leafsnail]

You mean the stuff that the Conservatives wouldn't be able to enact if the Liberal-democrats hadn't agreed to the power sharing with them?  So they're accomplishments are getting a bunch of half measures passed that they didn't want.  What a plan!

Well, if the Lib Dems did steadfastly refuse to go into a coalition with anyone (Labour + Lib Dems would not have had enough seats, and getting all the other parties on board with them would've been stupidly difficult), then there'd be a constitutional crisis and probably a reelection.  Which, well, the Conservatives would probably have won.  So yes, reducing the damage caused by legislation that would almost certainly have gone through anyway is an achievement and does show they have some power.

[mainiac]

They would have only needed 11 seats from the minor parties.  There were plenty of seats for a coalition.

But more to the point, they could have actually gotten something out of the Tories before entering into this agreement.  They traded away the family shop and got nothing in return.  The Tories could not have formed a coalition without Lib-Dems or Labour.  Lib-Dems and Labour could have formed a coalition without the Tories.  To hand the Tories control of government in such a situation and fail to extract any policy concerns is unforgivable.

What's really worse though is that the Lib Dems continue to vote for Tory policy, even now when they see what it has gotten them.  Even with control of government, Tories still need the votes to pass their ideas.  Lib Dems are capable of vetoing anything that the Tories call for vote.