Expatriate backlash (Italian expats give victory to leftist Prodi over Berlusconi)

Italo-Australians may have helped topple Silvio Berlusconi's government, Natasha Bita reports from Rome.

CELEBRATING his election to the Italian Senate this week, Melbourne journalist Nino Randazzo fielded a phone call from party headquarters in Rome, worried whether he could be counted to support the centre-left Unione, the winner by a very small margin in a disputed tally. "Can we count on you?" the Italian politician grilled him. "Are you sure you will remain faithful to your commitment to support the Unione?"

Randazzo was appalled. "I took it as an offence," he tells Inquirer. "I told him that Italians living overseas are a different breed from certain Italian politicians. There is not a chance in the world we overseas electors would cross the floor. We have given our word of honour."

One of six expatriate Italians voted into the Italian Senate in this week's photo-finish election under new rules creating expatriate seats, Randazzo's support for the Unione coalition is crucial to its slippery grip on the upper house.

As centre-right Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi clings to power pending a recount of disputed ballot papers, Unione leader Romano Prodi, a former prime minister, has Italo-Australian voters to thank for his knife-edge win.

Before the votes of expatriate Italians were counted on Tuesday, Berlusconi looked to have secured a one-seat majority in the Senate, which would have allowed him to force a new election if Unione gained the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.

Then, to his fury, the votes of immigrant Italians swung the election outcome the other way. Four of the six expatriate Senate seats (Randazzo's included) and seven of the 12 expatriate lower house seats (including one held by Melbourne social worker Marco Fedi) went to the Unione. This was enough to give Prodi control of the lower house and a two-seat margin in the Senate over Berlusconi's Casa delle Liberta (House of Freedoms) coalition, led by Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia (Go Italy).

Perhaps tired of his bullying and buffoonery, most Italians voted to boot Berlusconi out of office on Monday. But the billionaire media tycoon, who has led Italy's longest serving post-war government, is refusing to concede defeat until the court of appeal has counted 43,000 disputed voting papers. He even declared the vote had been rigged.

"The election result has to change because there was widespread fraud," he complained on Wednesday. "There are innumerable irregularities in the voting."

The recount is unlikely to affect the outcome, preliminary results showed yesterday, with disputed votes being divided equally among the parties. Berlusconi proposed on Thursday to introduce an ad hoc law that would permit the recount of another two million spoiled ballot papers, an idea shot down by Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who said he would block it.

Prodi, an economics professor who finished a five-year term as European Commission president last year, is set to be sworn in as prime minister next month. "We have won," he declared. "Berlusconi has to go home now."

A constitutional quirk means Prodi will have to wait weeks for his prize. Ciampi is due to retire on May 18 and wants his successor to appoint the new prime minister. The new parliament will open on April 28 and must vote for a new Italian president by May 13.

Prodi beat Berlusconi once before, a decade ago, but his term lasted only 18 months, when the reformed Communist Party withdrew its support and toppled the government. This time, Prodi is planning to meld his 12-party coalition into a single Democratic Party within a year. Refusing to guarantee ministries to the party leaders, he is insisting that he will hand-pick his cabinet, appointing women to one-third of the posts.

Controlling a broad-spectrum coalition of interests that range from the Catholic-leaning Democrats of the Left, through to the Greens, the radicals and the communists will be a challenge for Prodi.

His most urgent challenge is to kick-start the economy, which stalled at zero-growth last year. Berlusconi created a million jobs by freeing up the labour market and making it easier for employers to hire workers on short-term contracts. One of Prodi's most popular promises is to create more secure, permanent full-time jobs, a more daunting task.

Most worryingly for Berlusconi is Prodi's plan - "not a vendetta," Prodi insists - to introduce a conflict-of-interest law that would force Italy's richest man to choose between politics and his vast business interests. Berlusconi is reportedly planning to hand control of his media empire to his five children, but Prodi's law would force him to put his holdings into a blind trust instead.

Prodi plans to withdraw Italian troops from Iraq by the year's end - a policy similar to Berlusconi's - and to take a more European approach to policy-making - not good news for George W. Bush. The leaders of France, Spain, Germany and the European Union have already called to congratulate Prodi, but two of Berlusconi's closest allies - the US and Britain - seem to be waiting for their old amico to concede defeat. Prodi holds a comfortable majority in the lower house, thanks to new electoral laws that Berlusconi's government rammed through the parliament in December.

The laws, attacked at the time by the Centre-Left as made to measure for Berlusconi, automatically give bonus seats to the side with the most votes so the winner can govern with stability.

Italy has changed governments 57 times in the past 57 years, not always after new elections, due to a proliferation of small parties that routinely topple governments by switching sides. Despite winning by fewer than 25,000 votes out of the 38million cast - a margin of less than 0.1per cent - Prodi's Unione now enjoys 348 seats in the Camera of Deputies, compared with Berlusconi's 281.

The new electoral laws also changed the way Italians vote. The old system let voters choose between regional candidates who fought on local issues, an advantage to the Left due to its stronger grassroots campaigning.

The new proportional system lets voters choose a political party rather than a candidate, better suited to Berlusconi's presidential-style campaign.

"The law was tailor-made for Berlusconi, but it came back to bite him," says Berlusconi biographer Paul Ginsborg, a professor of history at the University of Florence. "Berlusconi had everything to gain by the new laws, so the result is quite a heroic effort by the Left. But the majority in the Senate is much too narrow for comfort."

Technically, Prodi will govern in a hung Senate. Seven senators for life - appointed, not elected, for their contribution to Italy - and an independent elected from Argentina who has pledged to support the majority, will hold the balance of power. The senators for life include Rita Levi-Montalcini, who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1986, and seven-time prime minister Giulio Andreotti, who was cleared on appeal in 2003 of having ordered a mafia hit on a journalist killed in 1979.

Retired presidents of the Italian republic are automatically made senators for life. One of them, Francesco Cossiga, says he will not take part in any votes of confidence and plans to introduce legislation stripping the senators of their right to vote. The precarious outcome puts the six expatriate senators - elected from the diaspora of four million Italians living overseas - in a powerful position to extract concessions from parties desperate to keep them in line.

In Australia, Randazzo and Fedi have a wish list that includes restoring Italian citizenship to Italo-Australians, improving consular services, promoting Italian language and culture, an amnesty on the repayment of Italian pensions overpaid due to miscalculations by the Italian pension service and Italian government assistance for elderly Italians living overseas.

"The remittance of Italian migrants was the lifeline for entire regions of Italy after World War II," says Randazzo, 73, a Sicilian migrant. "Yet there are very few nursing homes for Italian-speaking people in Australia. We need to have Italians in nursing homes where there are Italian-speaking nurses and doctors. And attention needs to be given to their eating habits. You could not give an elderly Italian an ordinary big steak."

Fedi, 48, who emigrated from the Marches region of northern Italy in 1983, wants the expatriate MPs to meet Prodi and present an agenda with "some issues that should be dealt with immediately".

But Randazzo rules out playing political hard ball to win government support for expatriate demands in return for his loyalty on other votes. "I would never use that kind of blackmail," he says. "I know the program of the Unione is wide enough to contain a response to these demands. I'm quite happy to contribute all I can to make sure the Prodi government lasts for the next five years."

Ironically, it was Berlusconi's government that gave Italians living overseas the right to vote.

"That was a boomerang for him," says Randazzo, an author and playwright who for the past 28 years has edited Australia's Italian-language newspaper Il Globo. "They had an idea that all Italians living overseas are right-wing. They have no idea how well-informed Italians in Australia are. They have two Italian-language newspapers, a 24-hour radio station, Rete Italia, covering the whole of the country, access to Italian TV through RAI International and Italian newspapers online."

The expatriate seats are divided globally. Fedi and Randazzo represent the world's biggest electorate, spanning Oceania, Asia, Africa and Antarctica. Australia hosts about two-thirds of the region's 161,022 qualified expatriate voters. Of these, only 40 per cent bothered to vote in the Italian election and, of those, 10,000 were declared invalid. In the end, the votes of 30,000 Italo-Australians have helped change the course of Italian politics. "The outcome was really unexpected," says the vice-consul of the Italian embassy in Australia, Roberto Mengoni. "You [Australians] should be proud you have a direct influence on Italian politics now."

Randazzo received 52 per cent of the Senate votes cast from Australia. His nearest rival, Forza Italia's Luigi Casagrande, a Brisbane engineer, polled 33 per cent. In the Deputies, Fedi snared 56 per cent of the vote, against 35 per cent taken by Forza Italia's Teresa Restifa, a Sydney shopping centre developer.

While the left-wing candidates ran on a single ticket for the Unione, the conservative vote was split between five parties, including one set up in the name of Italy's minister for expatriates, Mirko Tremaglia. In Australia, more people voted for the Unione than for all the conservative parties put together. But when votes are added from Africa and Asia, Berlusconi's team would have beaten the Unione had it run on a single ticket.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE:

"As centre-right Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi clings to power pending a recount of disputed ballot papers, Unione leader Romano Prodi, a former prime minister, has Italo-Australian voters to thank for his knife-edge win.

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What is significant here, is that Berlusconi is a true capitalist, someone who understands how to fight the war on terror, and has been our staunch ally.

The left, besides wanting power in general, targeted him for defeat precisely because he supported the US.

Note that the Italian people in Italy DID reelect Berlusconi, but the left managed to get the Italian expats to vote for them and swing the election in their favor.

The reason we should care, is that the left defeated the Spanish PM, who was our strong ally, now they have just about defeated our ally in Italy. They are working on all fronts.

Another important lesson for ALL CONSERVATIVES (especially the third party, and stay-at-home-to-punish-the-Republicans types):

"While the left-wing candidates ran on a single ticket for the Unione, the conservative vote was split between five parties, including one set up in the name of Italy's minister for expatriates, Mirko Tremaglia. In Australia, more people voted for the Unione than for all the conservative parties put together. But when votes are added from Africa and Asia, Berlusconi's team would have beaten the Unione had it run on a single ticket."

UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL.

"We hang together, all we all hang separately", while the Dems take power.

This is why I'm somewhat dismayed to see some conservatives saying that if this vote or another vote (all of them important, by the way--not diminishing the issues here) doesn't go the right way, they'll vote for a third party candidate or even stay home. Yes, it's tempting, but it's also cutting off our own noses to spite our faces.

I'm not in favor of everything this administration has done (immigration problems being my major gripe), but all I have to do is look at the current Supreme Court--I have to realize that they are doing many of the important things this country needed to have done.

I happen to think Iraq is another--Clinton put it off and left it for the grown-ups to handle, and I pray we don't go all wobbly before it gets done.

"I'm surprised this story is not getting more play"

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This is from an Australian paper. I bet the US and the rest of the world MSM won't even mention it, they'll just report that Berlusconi has been defeated, to their great delight, without mentioning the important details.

That's why I put it into FrontPage news, because people need to know the truth.

Fortunately the US Congress doesn't assign any seats in the House of Representatives to expatriates. Of course, Americans living abroad can vote by absentee ballot if they maintain a legal residence in one of the states. (Absentee ballots coming from Israel were a factor in the 2000 Florida results.) If there were extra seats for Americans living abroad, probably most of them would go to the Democrats.

True about the lessons, however, Prodi won't sit for longer than 6 months - tops!

Already some of the minor parties in the Unione are starting to grumble - and then we have the hopeless situation of the Italian economy. The best thing Prodi could do would be to give up on the Euro, and reinstate a new Lira. But as former EU Commission president, he won't do that - so we will have to sit back and watch the total implosion of the Italian econoomy - poor Italians.

Italian debt rings alarm bells at EU

by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Another thing to look at is the alternatives.

Could any conservative really think that Al Gore or John Kerry would be better for the country and conservative causes, not to mention the War on Terror? And the difference between President Bush and the Dems is NOT minor -- it may well mean the survival of the US, as we know it.

Carter is responsible for the Ayatollahs taking over Iran -- things would be very different, if we had a modern secular government in Iran today, as the Shah wanted.

And Clinton is responsible for Al Qaeda growing and Iraq spurning the UN resolutions.

I don't think we can afford another Dem in these critical times.

This is getting WORSE:

Apparently not only did the Italian expats vote, but they actually elected people who live in Australia, NOT Italy, to the Italian Senate.

This should not be allowed. If someone wants to be part of the Italian government, one would think they should actually LIVE in Italy.

Of course these are actual COMMUNISTS.

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Berlusconi contests election of two Australians

http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,18799660%5E421,00.html

Senators elected from Italy's global expatriate community - including Melbourne journalist Nino Randazzo - decided the outcome of Italy's photo-finish election on Monday.

The victory of four left-wing senators pushed Romano Prodi's Union opposition over the line, handing him a two-seat majority in the Italian Senate.

A communist social worker from Melbourne, Marco Fedi, was elected to the lower house Chamber of Deputies, where Mr Prodi holds a comfortable majority. But Mr Berlusconi is contesting the result on the grounds of "irregularities" in the expatriate vote.

I think this is mostly about the left trying to manipulate elections.

Do you remember that in the 2000 elections, the Dems were sending out absentee ballots to US expats living in Europe, all of whom were voting for the Dems, but most likely wouldn't have bothered to vote, except that the Dems were soliciting them. And in the meantime the same Dems didn't want to count the votes of our troops.

Yes, I agree. The left does try to manipulate elections. But have a look at how some 400,000 Italians in North, Central and South America voted--collectively, pretty much the way those in Italy voted.

There's too much anti-American sentiment in all of Europe, except that most of Poland is on our side. And the most pro-American country on the planet that I know of is India. That info is from various surveys over the past few years.

The ransoms paid for the Simonas and that other chick were disgusting, too. The money went to the terrorists in Iraq!

Hopefully, western Europe will get closer to us while working on the Iran problem.

What sort of idiotic country allows expatriates to vote? My understanding (though it may be flawed) is that these people are now citizens of other countries (in this case - Australia). So, are they allowed to maintain dual-citizenship? How stupid is that?

I wonder how many nationalized US citizens from Mexico actually maintain citizenship of Mexico too.... I thought the naturalization oath made you forsake all other citizenship, but I could be wrong.

I also know that Jewish people are allowed to maintain dual citizenship US/Israel.....

And I still don't see a legitimate purpose...

I wonder if McCain and Kerry have dual citizenship - Chi-Com/US citizens.

nice stretch in trying to apply Italy's situation to the one here.

at least there they have any number of choices and sadly like here few of any really good ones,,,

here we also have few and it seems worse choices this year, basically none that is for the people , all seem to be self absorbed and ego driven and highly monied with disdain for conservative principles as their foundations..

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