Silvio Berlusconi took the reins of power in Italy for the third time in early May, after winning Italy’s elections. The Italian elections that took place in April revolutionised the national political geography as small parties such as two communist parties and the Greens, which stood as the “Rainbow Alliance”, failed to gain a single seat, leading to a streamlined parliament of rival blocs.

 

But this wasn’t the only revolution that took place in Italy: the new Berlusconi Government can indeed boast of being one of the most right-wing in Italy since the Second World War. It contains some of Mr Berlusconi’s most longstanding allies such as head of the anti-immigration Northern League – the party that running in coalition with Berlusconi’s People of Freedoms, doubled its strength in Parliament to eight percent - Umberto Bossi, current minister of institutional reforms and federalism, and Roberto Calderoli, a Northern League senator who resigned in 2006 after appearing on television wearing a T-shirt bearing a Danish cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.

Mr Berlusconi, who used his previous government to protect his own interests, based his campaign on promises to crack down on crime and immigration and tackling Naples’s rubbish crisis. A week after the Government vowed, Italian police announced the arrest of hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants. In Rome, police raided the biggest Roma (nomads who come mainly from Romania and other Eastern European countries) camp settlement.

 

The Italian government’s policies on immigration have already sparked criticisms across Europe. Amnesty International urged in a recent report all EU institutions to condemn and take action against the anti-Romani speech. The report stated: “Italy, a European Union member state is blatantly disregarding the values and principles of the Union as enshrined in Article 6 of the treaty establishing the European Union, by conducting arbitrary detentions with a view to facilitate expulsions making provisions for discriminatory anti-Romani and anti-Romanian laws and measures and by fuelling racism through anti-Romani hate speech.”

 

Fears that Italy’s crackdown on immigratio could cause “xenophobia” and intolerance towards migrants in the country, seemed to have turned into reality. On May 24, a masked group armed with sticks went on the rampage in a multi-ethnic Rome neighbourhood, carrying out what was defined by the Italian press as a “Neo-Nazi raid”, attacking a food shop owned by an Indian migrant and two stores operated by Bangladeshis. The assault came only a few days after a mob firebombed Gypsy camps in Naples.

On May 27, clashes erupted between left-wing students and supporters of extreme right-wing party Forza Nuova at Rome’s La Sapienza University, after a lecture on the Foibe massacres with controversial guest Roberto Fiore, national secretary of Forza Nuova, was cancelled. Rome’s newly-elected mayor Gianni Alemanno, a former neo-fascist voted in after promising to expel 20,000 migrants from the Italian capital, condemned the episode, but claimed rumours of a violent climate of intolerance in Rome were false.

 

In the meantime, on May 23 street battles raged in Naples between police and protesters only days after Silvio Berlusconi’s government announced opening new dumps and new incinerators in and around the city. A garbage crisis left piles of rotting rubbish piling up in Naples since December as dumps run out because of stumbling local government, protests against new dumps and suspected infiltration of the collection business by the local Mafia, known as the Camorra, of inserting toxic waste into municipal garbage. Under the new law, landfills will be considered military zones, giving the army powers to stop residents from blocking roads and rail lines.

Time will tell if 71-year-old media mogul Berlusconi, can really boost Italian economy, sort out immigration issues and solve the trash situation. At the moment, though, all these issues are shadowing the still-existing conflict of interest: Berlusconi owns three television channels, a leading Italian advertising and publicity agency and the largest Italian publishing house. Besides, the Italian Prime Minister is once again using the government to deal with his own affairs as he is currently trying to pass a new save-law to protect one of his networks, Rete 4, illegally broadcasting on the Europa 7 frequencies. Apart from racism and the Neapolitan rubbish crisis, Italians will soon have to deal again with the power of their Big Brother.   

 

Anna Battista