The choice of L'Aquila to host this week's summit of world leaders has highlighted Italy's failure to help the victims of the quakeSilvio Berlusconi switched the location of the G8 summit to the city of L'Aquila as a way of focusing world attention on Italy's most disastrous earthquake for 30 years. But as Hu Jintao, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, touched down in Rome yesterday, the first of 40 world leaders to arrive for the summit, residents were sceptical that the presence of so many grandees on their doorstop would do them much good. More than 300 people died, 1,500 were injured and 70,000 made homeless by the quake that struck exactly three months ago. In the days that followed the disaster, Mr Berlusconi, not yet embroiled in the sex scandal that is now dogging him, took personal charge of the rescue effort, visiting the city and meeting survivors each day.
Silvio Berlusconi switched the location of the G8 summit to the city of L'Aquila as a way of focusing world attention on Italy's most disastrous earthquake for 30 years.
But as Hu Jintao, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, touched down in Rome yesterday, the first of 40 world leaders to arrive for the summit, residents were sceptical that the presence of so many grandees on their doorstop would do them much good.
More than 300 people died, 1,500 were injured and 70,000 made homeless by the quake that struck exactly three months ago. In the days that followed the disaster, Mr Berlusconi, not yet embroiled in the sex scandal that is now dogging him, took personal charge of the rescue effort, visiting the city and meeting survivors each day.
Point is, I am deeply convinced that there are some people in Europe, in the US, in the Vatican and in Italy's ruling elite who are pretty fed up with this state of affairs. Berlusconi is a non-credible leader in the international scene, too ready to sign deals on the side with russia, lybia and other dodgy friends, to be liked by most of the EU and by the US. Also, Italy's un-democratic evolution is setting too much of a dangerous precedent in a country that is amongst the founders of the EU, not to frighten the other main European partners. As for the Vatican, its honeymoon with Berlusconi has ended when they realized that his inability to manage the economic crisis and his unwillingness to tackle tax evasion is depriving the church of a lot of money (the Church gets 8 per thousand of Italian tax income, which is currently plummeting); and in Italy, if you hit the church where it hurts, ie in the wallet, you are politically dead. Finally, the industrial elite has finally cottoned on that a country that is losing international prestige, run by a self-serving PM and half a parliament composed of people who are directly employed by him is going to seriously hurt them in the long run. Small enterprises love Berlusconi's promise of less taxes and less controls, but large businesses worry about their ability to sign international deals, to attract international investments, to issue credible debt (for example, the de-penalization of accounting fraud in Italy is a major deterrent for international investors). All in all, I think that the tide has turned against Berlusconi - not in the street, but in the palaces of power.
The Church got 8 per thousand. One of the recent changes has been to let the taxpayer direct it to a charitable organization of his choice. I suspect this has upset the Church more than tax evasion, something that they have not been completely innocent of themselves.
