During the night between April 13th and 14th, 2008 Italy knew its destiny: Silvio Berlusconi won the Politic Elections with his Party of People of Freedoms, with large majority both at the Chamber of Deputies and at the Senate.
This is the third time for the right wing in power with Mr Berlusconi, this year also thanks to the strong alliance with the Northern League, which received relevant votes.
In opposition, Walter Veltroni with the Democratic Party, connected with the Italy of Values of Mr Di Pietro; together they obtained a good result and promise an active and available to dialogue role.
In the same way the coalition of the Centre of Mr Casini presented itself, as it gained some seats of government as well.
With these Elections, due to the current Italian voting system, which was modified by a referendum in 2005, the smaller parties, which put in alone in the political campaign, and some historical faces have not been included into this new government.
Mr Berlusconi’s promises to raise again the Italian Country already appeared quite unrealistic.
According to calculations made by Banca Intesa, one of the major Italian banking-houses, and other qualified entities, critics found his intentions as unworkable and undemocratic.
During the political campaign, some influential Italian journalists who stand out of the crowd, such as Marco Travaglio, Pino Corrias and Peter Gomez, who own and write a blog together, expressed themselves against the right wing.
They highlighted the facts that the leader, Silvio Berlusconi, for example is currently under investigation in Italy and abroad for several crimes, where one of them is about mafia, that he insults voters and even judges, trying to relieve them from power, that he wants to reform the first part of the Italian Constitution which contains the base of the values and of the democracy of our Country, that he intends to subdue judicial system to the one to politics, assigning each year the priority for crimes to prosecute by law, that his Party promised public works which should be financed at least partially by the public debt, risking to take Italy straight outside Europe.
Moreover, everybody remember that Mr Berlusconi had and still has several conflicts of interest, due to his strong presence in all the communications mediums, owning tv broadcasts and newspapers and assigning relevant roles to confident friends and family members into powerful companies.
In the bargain, we do not have to forget the justified prejudicial points of view voiced by different foreign magazines, such as The New York Times and The Economist, against a probable victory of the right wing in Italy; in fact, they recalled the bad result after his previous government and predicted a big wrack for Italy under the management of Mr Berlusconi.
Personally, as young Italian woman of the left wing, I had and still have feelings of skepticism and apathy towards politicians. A lot of citizens here, in the last months of political campaign, expressed the same sour sensations, proved especially by the growing continuosly abstaining during the last years of Elections.
My impression, after these result about the Berlusconi’s victory, are the one of a return to the past, or worse, of a point of no return and of a lack of a real renewal into the Country.
I suspect that the history will repeat itself or rather will be worse than in the past, citizens lost orientation and confidence into politics, forgetting the big mistakes of the past.
We are only at the beginning of the Berlusconi’s third mandate, we will see if the new Premier will be able to keep his word and to raise again the Country.