<nettime> the leopard 2.0 - nothing changes in italy and the mummy wins (again)

[Alex Foti <alex.foti@gmail.com>]

"everything must not change for everything to remain the same" the leopard
2.0 - Spaghettiland, 2013

So the electoral quake was all a fake. King George Napolitano is elected by
the Mummy into a second term for the first time in the history of the
italian republic, which effectively turns into a presidential republic (the
constitution says we're a parliamentary republic, but what the hell).
Grillo was outmaneuvered by the old foxes of the caste, the gerontocrats
who want to hold onto power in Italy and who cares if more than half of
italians have voted either for the center-left or for the 5star movement
(whose electoral influence seems on the decline after two months of
parliamentary stalemate). The former president has accepted another term on
strict conditions: a grosse koalition government pursuing EU-inspired
austerity policies backed by the PD and mr B's and Monti's clubs. It's the
triumph of stagnation over change. It's very depressing in a very
depressive socioeconomic situation. As elsewhere in Southern Europe, youth
unemployment has skyrocketed. Not a day passes without a suicide for
economic reasons. But the dimissionary leadership of the PD headed by
Bersani has succeded in the miracle of handing the country back to
berlusconi.

Let me tell you my friends, it was a political thriller with a bad ending
last week. Grillo proposed for presidential candidate Rodot?, a respected
constitutionalist, rights advocate and former president of the party that
generated the PD, that cathocommunist hybrid that has collected a string of
self-inflicted defeats since its inception in 2007. The PD made an
agreement with mr b over old christiandemocrat unionist Marini, but a
minority of the PD and its ally, Vendola-led SEL, refused to vote him. They
preferred Rodot?. At the 4th round of parliamentary voting, when just
simple majority was needed to elect the new president, Bersani pulled
Prodi, fomer head of the European Commission who twice defeated berlusconi
and is therefore hated by the right, out of the hat. SEL voted him, while
5star stuck to Rodot?, but in the secrecy of the ballot 100 PD
representatives stabbed Prodi in the back. At that point the party started
to self-dissolve, as militants started to lay raucous siege to the
capranica theater in Rome where presidential electors of the center-left
congregated to decide who to vote for. Bersani resigned, but not before
begging the 88-year old Napolitano to stay, who said "you're an amateur who
should have never tried to govern with Grillo's tacit consent; if I pull
you out of your own shit, the pd must do a presidential government with
berlusconi and monti". Napolitano was elected with the mummy rejoicing, as
Grillo cried for coup and called for people to assemble in front of
Parliament. He said he would come with his camper. Thousands of people
showed up, but he never came (police adviced him not to). It could have
been the veritable start of Italian indignad@s, but alas italians do not
seem able to transform protest in radical change and especially the drastic
actions needed to defeat the Leopard 2.0. The rage is all around but the
left is dead (as i wrote in my recently published essay "being lefty
today"). It's unclear at this stage who will lead the new government
(moderate he will be, for it will be a he, and old white males where all
the sages who drafted the future government's program on behalf of the
president). In early may what's left of the parliamentary left plus FIOM,
red metalworkers' union, will convene called by Vendola and Barca (a
technocrat son of a partisan who's recently drafted a paper on how to
reconstruct the left: "experimental democracy" and "cognitive mobilization"
are his recipes). A lefty party is in the cards, but it won't get beyond
10% (and that's optimistic in present conditions).

hope i didn't bore you with the byzantine twists of spaghetti politics,

lx


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