If Italians lose faith with the status quo -- and just the latest mafia scandal on refuse collection is spiralling -- Beppe Grillo could form the next government. His Five-star Movement has promised a referendum on Italy remaining in the euro. Rubbish could yet secure the demise of the single currency
Tim Hedges
On 9 August 2016 07:33
The future of the Euro...
Could the future of the single currency depend on the rubbish collection in one southerly capital? As the TV series The Sopranos showed, there is nothing that attracts organised crime like rubbish collection.
And there is no one who does organised crime like the Italians.
Let us look back to the days of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s last elected Prime Minister, who was chased out of office by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy five years ago, in 2011. There was a rubbish scandal then, but it was in Naples.
Naples is different, as everyone knows. There is bound to be a scandal there, and it’s bound to be something to do with organised crime.
The rubbish built up on the Neapolitan streets and Silvio promised to do something about it. He did, but as with his other crisis at the time, Alitalia, it was a short-term, face saving fix.
The problem with rubbish is that organised crime gets hold of the dumps, renting them out to higher paying customers such as people trying to hide toxic waste, so that there is no space left for legitimate waste such as yours or mine.
Europe’s open borders are a dream come true for the various mafias. Companies in northern Germany were driving toxic chemicals down through Austria, north and central Italy to Naples without being stopped.
Now the problem is Rome, and people are beginning to wish they still had Silvio the magician’s touch to save them. What has happened is that the organised crime syndicate at the heart of the Eternal City, known as Mafia Capitale, as well as ruining the transport system, the restaurants, the refugee management and the town planning, has done a traditional job on the rubbish.
Two years ago nobody knew of the existence of Mafia Capitale. They put any failure down to the rubbish collection system, AMA. Suddenly the rubbish is building up at alarming rates and people have realised there’s nowhere to put it.
This is of enormous importance here because deep down Romans harbour a great, if well-concealed, pride in their stunningly beautiful capital. Rubbish on the streets smacks of lack of care; it tarnishes their bella figura.
In the middle of all this, last June, there was an election and, dissatisfied with the usual alternating centre-left and centre-right, the people voted as mayor the 37 year-old lawyer Virginia Raggi from Beppe Grillo’s Five-star Movement. The new mayor has been greeted, if that is the right word, by the uncollected refuse.
Where all this is significant is that Prime Minister Renzi, unlike Rome’s new mayor, is unelected. When his party only very narrowly did best in the 2013 general election, its leader, an old fashioned leftie called Bersani, could not find anyone who would form a coalition with him, so he resigned and was replaced with Enrico Letta, who was ousted in a coup by Renzi the following year.
Renzi is now seeking his own democratic legitimacy by calling a referendum on his proposed constitutional reforms in the autumn. He says he will resign if he loses and the reforms, which are not uncontentious, are opposed by the Five-star Movement, which, while Silvio sleeps, is the main opposition.
If people are fed up with the status quo, this new party, led by comedian Beppe Grillo, would form the next government. And the Five-star Movement has promised a referendum on Italy remaining in the euro.
Raggi the new mayor has not started that well. It seems her rubbish adviser (for there are such things), Paola Muraro, may have a whiff of Mafia Capitale about her. But the stage is set: if Raggi can keep a lid on the rubbish and not allow Rome’s other problems to overcome her; and if Five-star’s other mayor, Chiara Appendino in Turin, can look sensible, then the party will appear ready for government.
The people of Italy would not be adverse to something new. There has been no growth this century. A generation has grown up which, due to political ideology, has no experience of, and little hope of, a job.
With Brexit, Italy has seen that it doesn’t have to adhere to the old formula. If Five-star look as if they can do the job of government, why the hell not? And the euro would end its disastrous sixteen-year life on an Italian rubbish dump.
Tim Hedges, The Commentator's Italy Correspondent, had a career in corporate finance before moving to Rome where he works as a freelancewriter, novelist, and farmer. You can read more of his articles about Italy here
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/6388/the_euro_and_complete_rubbish
