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http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4146 is back in power, to the chagrin of his numerous detractors and somewhat understated joy of his supporters. The 71-year-old media tycoon, who is assuming the premier’s post for the third time, said his full cabinet would take shape within a week, to include EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini as foreign minister, longtime aide Gianni Letta as deputy prime minister, as well as at least four women. But the success of Berlusconi’s center-right coalition would not have been possible without the support of his often turbulent allies, the Northern League, which doubled its vote to over 8 percent nationally and is certain to have several ministers in the new government.
“Now we need reforms,” Umberto Bossi, the party’s famously outspoken leader, declared the day after the vote. The first measure the party will press for is “fiscal federalism”, which would allow regions greater control over tax revenues. He will also demand rigorous enforcement of immigration laws, greater protection for Italy’s manufacturing industries, slower pace of European integration, and above all the curbing of the waste, inefficiency and corruption of the political establishment in the capital, “Robber Rome.”For over a decade Bossi has been an often uneasy partner with Mr. Berlusconi and his other major ally, Alleanza Nazionale (AN) led by Gianfranco Fini. The AN draws much of its support from the south, and—being the direct heir to the old Social Movement—strongly supports Italy’s national unity. Bossi brought down Berlusconi’s first administration in 1994, after less than a year in power, and repeatedly threatened to do so again after Berlusconi became prime minister for the second time in 2001.
The League asserts that it is no longer a secessionist party, however, and now it limits its demands to political and fiscal autonomy for the putative northern region of “Padania.” Over the past decade the League has evolved into a more durable and astute political force than it had been in the 1990s, and Bossi’s relationship with Berlusconi is said to be closer than ever before. “He’s not a hostage. He’s a friend,” the League leader said of the prime minister-elect. For his part Berlusconi pledged to split the country into two distinct fiscal entities: describing federalism as “modern,” he said he would be defending a “great principle of democracy and liberty.”
The new coalition is likely to be much tougher on illegal immigration and law and order issues than its leftist predecessors. On Tuesday Berlusconi said that Italy would start rounding up illegal immigrants: “One of the first things to do is to close the frontiers and set up more camps to identify foreign citizens who don’t have jobs and are forced into a life of crime.” His pledge to “increase neighbourhood police forces who would place themselves between the people of Italy and the army of evil” predictably outraged the Left.
In his previous mandate Berlusconi was considered insufficiently tough on illegals because of his links with the business community keen on cheap labor, but this time the League is determined to keep him on the straight and narrow. Its record is promising. Bossi caused a storm in 2003 when a newspaper quoted him as saying that immigrants arriving in Italy by boat should be “blown out of the water.” His aide Roberto Calderoli was forced to resign from the cabinet in 2006 after revealing a T-shirt on TV emblazoned with a cartoon of the Muhammad, originally published in Denmark, that triggered worldwide protests among Muslims.
With Berlusconi’s victory it is becoming more likely that Italy, a major path of entry for North African Muslims moving into Europe, will finally begin to tackle the problem of illegal immigration seriously. As Oriana Falacci noted shortly before her death two years ago, the country’s tolerance level was already surpassed fifteen or twenty years ago, “when the Left let the Muslims disembark on our coasts by the thousands.” In this year’s campaign, one of the League’s election posters displayed a drawing of an American Indian in a feathered headdress, accompanied by the slogan: “They suffered immigration: Now they live in reserves.”
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