Mario Monti's Impossible Mission E-Book

Giglio Reduzzi

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

For TIME magazine picturing an Italian guy on the front cover of its international edition, with no disparaging intentions, is a rare event by itself and one of great pride for us, who are the man’s fellow citizens. Our pleasure reaches the climax when we find out the person in the picture is our Premier and the caption is: Can this man save Europe? Mind you: Europe, not Italy, as one could expect. Under the conditions, writing about him, however shortly, becomes irresistible for a man, like me, who lives on bread and politics. Too bad that I am known to being frank. In fact my frankness obliges me to write that, in my modest opinion (and, to quote Winston Churchill, I have a lot to be modest about), the answer to TIME caption is: I wish he could. And that is why I am calling this essay: Mario Monti’s Impossible Mission.

Leseprobe

Giglio Reduzzi

Mario Monti’s Impossible Mission

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Title: Mario Monti’s Impossible Mission

Author: Giglio Reduzzi

Editing and proofreading: Tony Sampson

Front cover design: Giglio Reduzzi

ISBN: 9788867511990

Prima edizione digitale 2012

Questo eBook non potrà formare oggetto di scambio, commercio, prestito e rivendita e non potrà essere in alcun modo diffuso senza il previo consenso scritto dell’autore.

Qualsiasi distribuzione o fruizione non autorizzata costituisce violazione dei diritti dell’editore e dell’autore e sarà sanzionata civilmente e penalmente secondo quanto previsto dalla legge 633/1941

Contents

ForewordThings-to-doAttachmentsBy the same author

Foreword

First of all, who is Mario Monti?

Mario Monti is Italy’s current Premier.

He is a university teacher, picked by the Chief of State (Giorgio Napolitano) to save Italy from following Greece on the road to economic disaster.

He is no politician and was never elected.

Despite it, and despite being there to dispense bitter pills rather than candies, he seems to enjoy more popularity than any of his predecessors. In Italy and abroad.

Even the Press speaks well of him.

This fact is certainly hard to understand and requires an explanation.

His very appointment by the President of the Republic needs to be explained.

In fact Prime Ministers are usually chosen among members of Parliament, who, in turn, are elected by people.

Monti was neither. Or, better, would have been neither, if Giorgio Napolitano had not hastened to name him Life Senator a couple of days before. In this way the anomaly of Monti’s nomination was halved: he was not elected by people, but, now, he was a member of Parliament.

I know all this may sound bizarre or, better still, Byzantine to you, but this is the way it goes in some Italian old people circles, to which Napolitano (86) obviously belongs.

(My opinion on Life Senators is expressed under Attachments.)

Though alien to politics, Mario Monti was not unknown in Bruxelles, seat of the European Union.

In fact, not long ago, he was a member of the European Commission.

The circumstance was of paramount importance, since, as you certainly know, for all Countries who share the same currency (Euro), economic politics is set and monitored in Bruxelles, by the European authorities, not the national ones.

(It is for this reason that the U.K. said: no, thanks, we will keep the Pound.)

Therefore it was essential that, even before getting the green light from the Italian Parliament, the Premier-to-be had the approval of Bruxelles’ dignitaries.

This was especially true at a time when Italy was experiencing a deep crisis, which was seen as a threat to the entire Euro-zone. It is not casual that TIME magazine, in picturing Mario Monti on the front page of its European edition, asks itself: “Will this man save Europe?”. Mind you: Europe, not Italy.

As strange as it may seems, the unusual method chosen by the Chief of State for Monti’s appointment was criticized in the European Parliament, not by an Italian member (as one would have expected), but by an English one, Mr. Nigel Farage, whose speech (pronounced on November 22nd, 2011) caused great sensation throughout the world, for both form and substance.

His speech went as follows:

“Here we are on the edge of a financial and social disaster and in the room today we have the four men who are supposed to be responsible.

And yet I have heard [from them] the dullest, most technocratic speeches I’ve ever heard.

You are all in denial. By any objective measure the euro is a failure. And who exactly is responsible, who is in charge of you all? The answer is: none of you, because none of you have been elected; none of you have any democratic legitimacy for the roles you currently hold in this crisis.

And into this vacuum, albeit reluctantly, has stepped Angela Merkel. And we are now living in a German-dominated Europe, something that the European project was actually supposed to stop. Something that those who went before us actually paid a heavy price in blood to prevent. I don’t want to live in a German-dominated Europe and nor do the citizens of Europe.

But you guys have played a role, because, when Mr. Papandreou got up and used the word ‘referendum’, you, Mr Rehn, described it as ‘a breach of confidence’, and your friends here got together like a pack of hyenas, rounded on Papandreou, had him removed and replaced him by a puppet Government.

What an absolutely disgusting spectacle that was!

And not satisfied with that, you decided that Berlusconi had to go too. So he was removed and replaced by Mr Monti, a former European Commissioner, a fellow architect of this Euro disaster and a man who wasn’t even a member of parliament.

It’s getting like an Agatha Christie novel, where we’re trying to work out who is the next person that’s going to be bumped off. The difference is, we know who the villains are. You should all be held accountable for what you’ve done. You should all be fired!

And I have to say, Mr Van Rompuy, that 18 months ago, when we first met, I was wrong about you. I said you would be the quiet assassin of nation states’ democracy; but not anymore, you are rather noisy about it aren’t you?

You, an unelected man, went to Italy and said: ’This is not the time for elections but the time for actions’.

What in God’s name gives you the right to say that to the Italian people? ”

Here is what Mr. Farage said after Monti’s proposed appointment.

As far as I know, no other member of the European parliament, Italian or not, stood up to say something similar.

As a matter of fact, not even inside the Italian parliament was there such a clear-cut reaction.

As for the people in the street, not only there was no tearing up of clothes, but it is fair to say that, overall, Monti’s nomination was well taken.

And certainly well orchestrated.

This is how Mario Monti was appointed and for what.

Now it is time to explain what the hell is he doing.

The mission he gave to himself and his sponsors is dual: save Italy from economic failure and, while at it, try to modernize the Country.

(As a world citizen, Monti knows that Italy is big but not modern.)

Personally, as a center-right man, I do not see this duality: to me the two things go hand in hand. If you modernize the Country, the economy will get better automatically.

But people on the Left seem to think differently. Despite their calling themselves “reformers”, they are against any reform whatsoever.