Veltroni...

[Jan Hus]

eh bravo, fai finta di non capire: perchè di ex PSI in Forza Italia nemmeno l'ombra bisogna andare a ricercarli col lumicino in un micropartito, tra l'altro succursale di FI...

Fammi capire.

Io dovrei schifare gli SDI nonostante ne condivida le posizioni perché molti ex compagni di partito degli attuali dirigenti degli SDI militano in Forza Italia?

Ma che argomento è?


PS Io aspetto sempre che qualcuno mi spieghi le differenze di linea politica tra Veltroni e Bersani.

[Augusta Lucilla]

La dolce vita revisited: Rome's new emperor
Walter Veltroni, the Mayor of Rome, is Italy's Mr Nice, happy to welcome Hollywood stars and organise festivals. But the prospective prime minister's mastery of spin has failed to plaster over the cracks of urban degradation.

By Peter Popham

Published: 28 June 2007

Italy's new emperor is being fitted with a fine new suit of clothes. For the past five years, Walter Veltroni has been a dynamic, hyperactive mayor of Rome. Yesterday he prepared himself for a leap to the highest level in Italian politics, offering himself as leader of the new Democratic Party which is predicted to become the biggest power in the land. If everything goes according to plan, he could become Italy's next prime minister.

Yet it takes a willing suspension of disbelief; a happy surrender to the flood of hype, to see Veltroni's years in charge of Rome as a success.

This week, with few exceptions, Italy's media have swallowed their doubts and come out in praise of the man who may soon head Italy's new centrist party. High-profile critics - including a prominent lawyer who six months ago lobbied to get his complaints against Veltroni into the foreign press - were suddenly unavailable. A professor at Rome's top university who recently published a damning book on his policies refused to be interviewed. "It's a very delicate moment," he wailed. "There's a campaign of denigration under way against anyone who speaks out against him."

Ordinary Romans, however, have no such inhibitions. "Look at the state of the roads!" exclaimed a taxi driver, bouncing along the Via del Teatro di Marcello, the stunning stretch between Veltroni's office in Michelangelo's Campidoglio and the Campus Maximus.

Like all of the roads in central Rome, there has been no maintenance during Veltroni's five years in charge, and the old cobbles have been hammered by the traffic into pits and folds. It was recently reported that Honda comes to Rome to test its motorcycles' shock absorbers - there is no tougher place to do so.

"Veltroni's always getting his picture in the paper, opening festivals, welcoming important foreigners," the driver went on. "But what's he ever done about the basics of life in the city?" The complaint is echoed in some of the prettiest corners of the city.

Twenty years ago, Trastevere, on the far side of the Tiber south of the Vatican, and the picturesque piazza known as Campo de' Fiori, were quiet residential areas, beloved by Romans and a few foreigners for their tranquility and charm. Today during daylight the charm is still discernible; Campo de' Fiori still has its morning fruit and veg market, and Trastevere's winding lanes are untouched by time.

But five years of Veltroni have transformed their character. In the drive to boost tourism, pubs, late-night shot bars, discotheques and night clubs have sprouted. Trastevere's lanes are lined with Africans touting counterfeit designer bags on the pavement, Chinese traders selling knick-knacks and the main piazza is host to circus performers. Package tourists pour through to eat in the increasingly mediocre trattorias, but long after they troop back to their coaches the lanes are still packed with Italian and foreign youths committed to drinking themselves into the ground. Whatever licensing restrictions the bars face are widely ignored, and the boozing goes on all night.

Campo de' Fiori is the setting for vast nightly Bacchanalias, with police backed up at one end of the piazza looking on. Sometimes hundreds of drunks engage in games of medieval style-football, staggering after the ball in swaying, roaring throngs. Portable megaphones have become a trendy alternative to cell phones for drinkers who want to talk to their mates on the far side of the Campo. Life for the residents, packed into ancient tenements where the carousers' screams bounce between the walls, is intolerable unless you are stone deaf. The squalor and degradation that confronts them on the streets in the morning is beyond words.

"It is unbelievable," fumed Flaminia Borghese, president of a residents' association in an interviewith The New York Times. "There is a total lack of control. The foreigners come here because they know they can do whatever they want. Nobody says anything."

Four years ago Veltroni set up an Office of Urban Decorum to tackle the growing menace of graffiti in the city. The result? Rome must be the only city in the world where practically all the subway trains are entirely covered in graffiti. The ruins of ancient Rome and the masterpieces of the Renaissance have somehow been kept relatively clean, but venture a couple of kilometres beyond and nearly every building bears the stigmata of sprayed scribble.

No one, least of all the Office of Urban Decorum, does anything about it.

It's the way the city is now. After four years of total official neglect, to deal with the problem now would take a huge effort and a great deal of money - if anybody could summon the political will.

If Walter Veltroni's legacy in Rome is urban degradation of the starkest, most dramatic kind, on what basis is he hailed, in Turin yesterday and in the Italian media, right, left and centre, all this week, as the nation's possible saviour?

One would have to call it the Italian version of Blairism. They call it "buonismo", literally "good-ism", and Veltroni was described by La Repubblica newspaper yesterday as its founder. It is defined by a contemporary Italian dictionary as "the ostentatious display of good feelings, tolerance and benevolence towards one's adversaries", and Veltroni is its acknowledged virtuoso.

Walter Veltroni is Italy's Mr Nice. He has been nice to everybody, and he is now reaping the rewards. He has been polite and accommodating to the right, and this week one of Silvio Berlusconi's most senior cronies, Fedele Confalonieri, waxed eloquent about Veltroni the "great communicator" with "an attitude of dialogue" but also "great firmness".

A former communist who exchanged sharp words with Pope John Paul II on the subject of condoms and Aids, Veltroni subsequently endeared himself to the Vatican by the ruthless efficiency with which he prepared the city to greet the millions who turned up for the Pope's funeral: he simply ordered the city to shut down for the duration.

His mildness and his diplomatic skills won him the support this week of Fausto Bertinotti, the powerful head of the Rifondazione Comunista, and the Prime Minister, Romano Prodi.

He has utterly failed to do the things by which one would expect a big city mayor to be judged - but this Roman leader has done wonders with the circuses. He took an idea that was already in play, that of using the city's unrivalled ancient settings for public events, and developed it as a way to reposition Rome on the European stage as a cultural rival to Paris, London, Berlin and Barcelona. The Colosseum has seen concerts by Paul McCartney, Simon and Garfunkel and Elton John, and his friend Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert played in Campus Maximus.

He liberalised the opening hours and the administration of many of the city's hidebound museums, encouraged festivals of every description, including mathematics and philosophy. He decreed that Rome should stay open all night for a Notte Bianca, a "White Night", to the delight of the city's shopkeepers who could not believe ex-communists came in such a business-friendly form. He oversaw the commissioning of new buildings for the city by Zaha Hadid, Santiago Calatrava and Rem Koolhaas.

The former journalist also showed an instinct for smart self-publicity every bit as sharp as Tony Blair's. If there is an African orphan in town, Walter Veltroni will hold his hand. If there is a poignant cause to be endorsed or a road to be named, Veltroni will find the time to do it. If Woody Allen, Robert de Niro or George Clooney comes to Rome, a beaming Veltroni will be photographed at their side.

The crowning achievement of this mayor of festivals was last year's first Roman Film Festival, which brought Sean Connery and Nicole Kidman to the city, among other glitterati. Local film-makers were furious at what they saw as the snubbing of the city's homegrown greats in favour of the Hollywood crowd - but Veltroni's ambition was to revive memories of Rome's dolce vita years, when the likes of Cary Grant and Charlton Heston were making films at the city's Cinecitta studios.

Veltroni's achievement in Rome - analogous to Blair's in Britain - has been to seduce the business interests of the city with booming real estate prices and ever-rising tourist numbers, while keeping the media complaisant with a steady diet of happy stories of cultural conquests and warm intentions. He has a keen sense for the public's fancies, being sufficiently pro-American to catch the attention of the public, without ever going over the top into sycophancy or mindless adulation. He has a journalist's instinct for stories he can safely ignore.

Despite Veltroni's efforts, Rome is not really on a par with the great European capitals. When earlier this month the legendary fashion designer Valentino, who got his start here during the 1950s, announced that he was to show his haute couture collection in the city to mark his 50 years in the business, it was a major concession, and the first time in 17 years that he had done so. The film industry likewise is a shadow of what it once was. Rome has a vibrant art gallery scene - but no one would claim world status for the city's artists.

Veltroni's achievement, in short, has been in that Italian speciality known as bella figura. He has made Rome look great on television - just don't ask harsh questions about the substance. And take care to dodge the potholes.

Veltroni paragonato a Blair... disdicevole, che ne direbbero le autorevoli voci intervistate per l'occasione, la principessa Flaminia Borghese e i quei gentiluomini di tassisti?
Ma vattel'a pija' 'n der culo, con imperiale affetto

[anonimovenexian]

Fammi capire.

Io dovrei schifare gli SDI nonostante ne condivida le posizioni perché molti ex compagni di partito degli attuali dirigenti degli SDI militano in Forza Italia?

Ma che argomento è?


PS Io aspetto sempre che qualcuno mi spieghi le differenze di linea politica tra Veltroni e Bersani.

non stai capendo nulla: nessuno ti chiede di schifare gli SDI.
Ti sto solo cercando di dire che la vostra "costituente socialista" si propone di comprendere TUTTI i socialisti della diaspora, pena il suo fallimento. E io ti ho ricordato che molti di quei socialisti a cui voi voi volete unirvi DOMANI, sono soci di maggioranza di Forza Italia OGGI.
visto che ti scandalizzi perchè Follini è nel PD...

credo di aver scritto in italiano, se non la capisci stavolta, ci rinuncio

[benfy]

non è proprio così molti sono nell'astensione

[anonimovenexian]

intendo come classe dirigente

[Lampo]

PS Io aspetto sempre che qualcuno mi spieghi le differenze di linea politica tra Veltroni e Bersani.

1) Bersani si è candidato ?
2) Se si candida sicuramente avrà un programma e una SUA idea di PD per cui....bisogna aspettare
3) Mancano ancora Regole CERTE per cui nessun risulta candidato

P.S.: devi ancora chiarire una cosa: nel PD tutti la pensiamo uguale o è un calderone ? perchè un giorno si dice una cosa il giorno dopo un'altra...almeno la coerenza....

[Enrico1987]

intendo come classe dirigente

la costituente socialista non intende recuperare la classe dirigente ex psi che milita in forza italia da 15 anni. credo che se questa fosse la finalità l'utilità di qsta costituente sarebbe inutile,anke xke i vari cicchitto, sartori, sacconi, stefania craxi, ecc... non si muoverebbero mai x un partito socialista chiaramente schierato a sinistra quale sarà il ps che nascerà da questa costituente.

come elettorato conosco diverse persone che votavano FI eche sarebbero disposte a votare PSI, anche tra i giovani. E' assurdo, ma è cosi'.

[Willy]

non ci trovo nulla di male nell'intercettare elettori di forza italia ex psi. molti di loro sono meglio di tanti dl, sicuramente più laici e più liberali

[anonimovenexian]

non ci trovo nulla di male nell'intercettare elettori di forza italia ex psi. molti di loro sono meglio di tanti dl, sicuramente più laici e più liberali

diciamo che potevi risparmiartela

in ogni caso, vi auguro molta fortuna per la vostra costituente e, ripeto il concetto che non riuscirò mai a percepirvi come avversari, nè tantomeno come "nemici"....quello che non vedo in voi quando vi ponete di fronte al PD

[Alberich]

[/b]

diciamo che potevi risparmiartela

E' una verità incontestabile...confondere i dirigenti/notabili dei partiti con gli elettori è uno sbaglio grossolano.