Italian political turmoil having impacts beyond politics
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With the Italian government embroiled its most drawn out political crisis in nearly a generation, experts say the day-to-day work of the government is starting to suffer.
From high profile issues like the protracted trash crisis in Naples and the collapse of an ancient wall in the archeological site of Pompeii, along with less obvious issues like pending internal tax and environmental reforms or Italy's participation in multilateral negotiations, the perception by many is that Italy's government may be distracted by a political turmoil.
"In many ways, the country has become like a doctor trying to keep its most terminal patients alive for another day rather than focusing on prevention of problems before they become critical," Alessandro Lombardo, an author and political scientist with Roma Tre University, told Xinhua.
The crisis has been simmering since at least early summer, when Gianfranco Fini, a former ally of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, announced he would no longer support the government in all cases, and it reached its boiling point earlier this month when Fini called on Berlusconi to step down.
The latest development is that a confidence vote on Berlusconi's government is scheduled to take place on Dec. 14, soon after the expected passage of the country's 2011 budget.
Political crisis is not unusual in Italy, where there have been 60 governments over the last 64 years. What is unusual about the current crisis is its duration.
The last time there was so much uncertainly swirling around the Italian government for so long was in 1994 and 1995, in the final months of Berlusconi's first tenure as Italian prime minister and leading into a non-partisan technical government led by economist Lamberto Dini, which held power for 16 months as the government pushed through a series of electoral reforms.
While the most visible problems like the ongoing trash crisis and the collapsed wall in Pompeii that will result in a parliamentary confidence vote for the minister of culture have hit headlines, experts say other issues may have more long-lasting effects.
Each year, the country's budget is normally passed by parliament around Dec. 31, and the quick passage of the 2011 budget, for example -- it is scheduled to pass this year no later than Dec. 10 -- has required the elimination of dozens of reform proposals, including at least three aimed at sparking much needed economic growth through the use of tax incentives, and another that would refund residents more than half of the money spent on environmentally friendly construction projects.
Italian media reports indicate that Italian delegates at the current NATO summit in Portugal have barely been visible in high-level talks, and experts say that a similar tact is expected at the United Nations climate change summit set to conclude in Mexico Dec. 10, just four days before the confidence vote in parliament.
"Officials in Mexico will be worried about how they can try to assure the government will survive the confidence vote, not on environmental issues," Mauro Albrizio, the head of European operations for environmental lobby group Legambiente, said in an interview.
The timing of the political turmoil in Italy is particularly unlucky, as the government battles to help the economy pull out of its long malaise, play an active role in a fast-changing European Union, and restore the confidence of its citizens.
"Italy is at a cross roads," Aldo Iacomelli, CEO of Rome-based sustainable development group E-Cube, told Xinhua. It's not the time to have a kind of faux government that is technically still breathing but not really doing anything."
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