Who’s afraid of reforms? (by Alessio Aldini, an Olive Tree voter)
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Italy has just lost its chance to get out of the crisis it’s going through. I also think it was its last opportunity to get out of it. And the reasons why we won’t succeed in the next five years (after which it may be even too late) are two and they are very simple .
First of all the tiny majority in Parliament will never let the coalition work. There are too many big issues the Union doesn’t have a common view about. I’m thinking, for example, about one of the core issues for the Italian economy that is, the job market law. Yesterday (April 18th 2006) the two Olive Tree leaders, Rutelli and Fassino, stated that the Biagi law must be changed, not abolished. I’m wondering what Mr Bertinotti said when he heard that sentence. Moving to another hot topic, I’m not sure that moderate leaders like Mastella may share the same views as the radical Diliberto about the precise timing to bring our troops back from Iraq as well as for sending our troops to Iran “in event of fire”.
The second reason why Italy is destined to decline (which is deeply connected to the previous one) is that 10% of the seats in Parliament will be occupied by communist parties. We don’t need communists now. The whole world doesn’t need them any longer. And not because they “boil children”, but because there’s not much wealth to be delivered. Not in Europe, for sure not in 2006’s Italy, which has grown by 0% in the last five years.
With a public debt around 108% of GDP and a budget deficit above 4% and the threats to be kicked off Euroland going on by fifteen years according to FT, Italy is still wondering if it’s the case to spend or save.
Raising taxes from those who have never paid them is not a credible argument in support of the credibility of the future Italian public finance and the reason is quite simple: because they have never paid them. What should convince these people to change their attitudes? Maybe the frightening expression on Romano Prodi’s face? Those who have paid so far are those who will keep the burden of public finance forever. I’m talking about civil servants, the working class, teachers and the retired people. They have no way to cheat and so they won’t.
What has come out of the polls last week is a frightened Italy. It’s time for reforms. It’s time to give up privileges (and I’m thinking about the untouchable sectors of our country, first of all university), it’s time to live a poorer life than our parents did. But we still prefer thinking that there’s a costless way towards prosperity in this slow-paced, old continent.
After five years of concentrated markets and personalised laws, what we are in dire need of is liberalisations. Everywhere.
First of all we should realise that our Public Health Care system costs too much and gives almost nothing back to the Italian citizens. In other words, it’s not efficient. Is it so foolish to reform it in such a way to keep it completely free only for the poor? Let’s take a look at what’s going on in low-cost flight sector: we have the evidence that when players are really let free to compete, quality and low prices can live together without being antithetical and, above all together with profits (On the other hand we are experiencing the decline of Alitalia, after billions of Euros coming from the public finance). We need that money. Italy’s public debt should be at 60% of GDP or show a reasonably fast approaching trend to such level. Last year’s trend was opposite, instead (from 106 to 108%).
Liberalisation means internationalisation when we talk about banking industry in Italy. After changing the governor we have to make sure that no foreign investor is sent away for the simple fact that it’s not Italian. And the same goes for immigration. The Bossi-Fini law is shameful not only for humanitarian reasons. Italy doesn’t just need some nurses to look after its increasingly old society. Our country needs professors, managers, artists, engineers and whatever good we can import from abroad. We mustn’t close our gates to immigrants, both ignorant and cultivated. We mustn’t fear them, for they could enrich our country of talents and passion.
I’m also wondering what the Union will do when it’s time to decide how to turn on the lights in our country. In a coalition where every single MP is necessary, what will happen when we have to face the endemic lack of energy in Italy? The natural answer to this question should be one and inevitable: nuclear, now! It’s true that we have to enhance other forms of clean energy. But once again, just like in many other scientific fields (stem-cell research e.g.), we have chosen not to move a finger and we have decided to leave our engineers and technicians too many steps behind their colleagues from all over the world. We’re also neglecting the power of biomass, solar, wind ( which especially in my city would solve the energy problem forever), we are not recycling. But although nuclear is a priority, it will be ruled out because the 2% of the country, that is the Greens, doesn’t want it.
Another key-issue is R&D. How can we think of competing with our universities? We’re giving up our future on that. First of all it’s time to stop with the admission of anyone at the university. Do you want to know why? Well, I had to pass a test to enter my university (a test that was abolished a year later) and then I was forced to attend lessons together with maybe 400 people in classrooms that can tolerate 100 people. Universities with dynastic rights to become a part of the teaching personnel are apparently not competitive. I don’t disagree with the rose of university taxes imposed by Tony Blair, under the condition that more taxes mean more quality, though. More quality means the capability for our universities to compete internationally among and to create competitive workers. The alternative is reality just like it is now: letting unemployment go up or maybe bringing it down in the way Berlusconi is doing, by the allowance of slavery and legal exploitation of workers (his real meaning of the word “flexibility”) and by hiding, behind that unemployment rate below 8%, the number of all those who have lost all the hopes to ever find a job, especially in Southern Italy, where jobless people are far above the national mean. But such a reform would mean a clash inside the centre-left coalition, a real implosion.
Italy needs reforms and the results of these election are showing it’s not yet ready for them. These results are telling the world something more: that we are afraid and we think that postponing problems is a way to solve them. That’s actually how we have managed to make such a disaster in our public finance. Our AA rating assessment of the public debt is in serious danger. I wish Mr Prodi had the strength to make these changes which, I’m sure, he deeply believes in too, take place. A finance minister like Mario Monti would maybe help us proceed in this direction. But once again, I don’t think the balances inside the coalition would make this possible. Once I heard Mr Bertinotti say that “Monti should be the economic expression of a centre-right, liberal government”. Such a sentence won’t let us go far in the last five years.
