Day 1925: Italian Elections

Tuesday:


This is a story about the Italian Elections which have just taken place between a friend of Mr Blair’s called SILVIO BERLUSCONI and someone rather less dangerously exciting called ROMANO PRODI whose name is funny enough that I will leave it up to you to make up your own joke.

It seems that Mr Prodi won the election by a very narrow margin. However, since Mr Berlusconi made the rules this means that Mr Prodi gets lots of bonus seats. This is NOT called Proportional Representation, it is called HOIST by your own PETARD.

Unfortunately, Mr Berlusconi is NOT a very good loser and has said that he has heard what the people have to say and he does not believe a word of it. He is therefore going to stay Prime Minister and has locked himself into the loo in the Prime Minister of Italy’s house and isn’t coming out.

To be FAIR, he has said that he does not believe the election because he thinks that there were “irregularities” in the election proceedings. The BBC asked the observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and they said “YES, Mr Berlusconi is RIGHT! There WERE irregularities!”

The first thing was that the change to the electoral system was only introduced by the governing party in December last year and that is not enough time for the opposition parties to get ready to fight an election under the new system, so that favours the governing FORZA ITALIA party!

And then, the changes were only passed by a simple majority in the Italian legislature, when it would be preferred to be passed with a two-thirds majority to indicate that opposition parties are in proper agreement with the changes that the governing FORZA ITALIA party want to make.

Thirdly, there was the matter of television coverage, that although the free television adverts for all the parties were fair and as agreed under the new system, the current affairs and news coverage of the major Italian broadcasters (prop. Sr Silvio Berlusconi, no relation. Well, not quite no relation.) might have favoured the governing FORZA ITALIA party rather a bit.

So it is hardly fair that Mr Berlusconi should lose just because FORZA ITALIA were trying to cheat!

What?