Veltrusconi: The Two-Headed Monster
Thursday April 10, 2008
Merge the recent mayor of Rome who is a former communist and could easily by mistaken for a rumpled professor with the center-right former prime minister of Italy who used to sing on cruise boats and has had plastic surgery that makes him look much younger than his 71 years, and the result is Veltrusconi, Italy's hybrid candidate.The amalgamation of the last names of Walter Veltroni and Silvio Berlusconi, the two major candidates in Italy's upcoming elections, was apparently coined last summer by a graffiti artist, but as the vote approaches, the media—not just in Italy—has taken the neologism a step further. According to Reuters, "...both candidates [were] horrified to see their faces physically merged in a disconcerting photo-montage on the front cover of Newsweek. "It's horrible," Veltroni told reporters in response to the hybrid created for a cover story titled "The Mayor V. The Mogul." It shows the faces of the permanently tanned 71-year-old media tycoon Berlusconi and his bespectacled, bookish 52-year-old rival blending together to the backdrop of Rome's Colosseum. "Veltrusconi? It’s an ugly word with no meaning,” said Berlusconi."
But in fact, there's a legitimate political chiaroscuro to the Veltrusconi moniker. According to Reuters: "Both candidates have constantly denied speculation in the Italian media and among politicians of a 'Grand Coalition', which would last just as long as it takes to reform electoral laws to create a two-party system, then be followed by yet another general election, though they have both acknowledged the possibility of a dead heat or very close result in the upper house or Senate and left the door open to talks on "institutional reform".
Veltrusconi. Berlutroni. Hybrid candidate, or Frankenstein's monster run amok in Palazzo Chigi?
Comments
This article is great. It is, in one word, the idea that Italians don’t really have a choice. Whatever the result of the elections, there is one thing we can be sure about: there will be no change.
No change Italians can believe in, to quote Obama. The two coalitions are closely related and include professional politicians who have are old and have active for decades, and old are their ideologies.
Italy is economically and socially in decline, and needs reform, as highhlighted by all major the international sources of information (IMF, Economist, WSJ, FT to cite a few). However, Italy is in the hands of a political class always more and more detached from the real needs of citizens. Beppe Grillo’s movement is a demonstration of the widespread malaise in every region of the country. The famous comic actor once argued that the only chance of survival for the country would have been for Germany to invade us and start administrating Italy more efficiently.
Unfortunately, it really looks to me that Italians don’t have a real choice here.