Corruption takes a back seat
By Eric J Lyman for ISN
Visitors to many of Italy's most important cities this summer were greeted by the site of machine gun-toting soldiers on street corners and in front of key buildings. In some parts of the world, this could be a sign of a powerful domestic insurgency, the threat of a terrorist attack, or a population with a history of riots or violent demonstrations.
In Italy, it's a kind of public relations campaign.
Ostensibly, most of the 3,300 soldiers deployed to the streets of Rome, Milan, Florence, Turin and other cities were sent to assist the local police forces in maintaining public order. Silvio Berlusconi ran for a fourth stint in the prime minister's sash with a campaign vowing to crack down on crime, and the public display of force is clearly a nod to that promise.
The problem is that the move may be little more than an empty gesture. In August, the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera interviewed General Mario Buscemi, the officer who in the 1990s led a deployment of military troops to combat the Mafia in Sicily. He noted that that operation required more than 20,000 troops just for Sicily - more than six times the number now deployed for Italy as a whole. Buscemi called the current deployment "symbolic."
Furthermore, the soldiers are trained to fight in modern wars, not search for pickpockets in Rome's Piazza Navona. Even if soldiers catch a petty offender, they do not have the power to arrest - they must call on local law enforcement for that. In some cases, military communications systems are not compatible with those of the police, meaning that the even simplest of messages must be patched through a central switchboard and relayed out again to the field, a process that can take several minutes, an eternity in law enforcement terms.
In at least two cities, mayors have fought to keep the soldiers out based on fears they could hurt their city's image as tourist attractions. Rome's right-wing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, has lobbied with some success to keep the troops from Rome's historical center, while Massimo Cacciari, the left-wing mayor of Venice, refused the offer of troop support in his city when it appeared as if police there might go on strike during the just-completed Venice Film Festival.
It's not even clear if the problem the soldiers are meant to be fighting really exists. Though government figures show crime in Italy rising at an average pace of around 6 percent per year, the majority of the increase comes from petty crimes such as vandalism or the theft of scooters or bicycles. Italy continues to have a lower murder rate than Britain, France or Germany, for example. And in terms of serious crime, Rome and Milan continue to rank among the safest big cities in Europe.
But the most worrisome notion of all is that entire situation - the symbolic military presence facing off against a crime problem that may not exist - is happening while the government fosters what can only be considered a systematic problem of corruption in the business sector and within its own ranks.
More than 16 years after Italy's famous "clean hands" scandal set the political establishment on its heels, polls show that Italians have grown tired of the topic. Cronyism and bribery, meanwhile, remain part of the country's DNA: It is still difficult to get a good job in Italy without being "recommended" by powerful connections, while Transparency International's Bribe Payers' Index of the 30 largest economies ranks Italy 20th on the list, lower than any other EU member-state and behind even the United Arab Emirates and Mexico.
The situation is getting worse. Since 1994, when Berlusconi, a billionaire media tycoon, first entered politics, he has fought off more than 30 corruption-based lawsuits and sidestepped several efforts to create a meaningful conflict of interest law that would prevent him from using his political office to enrich his media empire.
In May, he became the head of government that has some three-dozen felons in parliament, and among its first initiatives was to close the office of the government's high commissioner against corruption and to pass a law making Berlusconi immune from charges of influence peddling and bribery.
It's not difficult to see how someone high up decided a military-themed public relations campaign might be just what the government needed.
In Italy, it's a kind of public relations campaign.
Ostensibly, most of the 3,300 soldiers deployed to the streets of Rome, Milan, Florence, Turin and other cities were sent to assist the local police forces in maintaining public order. Silvio Berlusconi ran for a fourth stint in the prime minister's sash with a campaign vowing to crack down on crime, and the public display of force is clearly a nod to that promise.
The problem is that the move may be little more than an empty gesture. In August, the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera interviewed General Mario Buscemi, the officer who in the 1990s led a deployment of military troops to combat the Mafia in Sicily. He noted that that operation required more than 20,000 troops just for Sicily - more than six times the number now deployed for Italy as a whole. Buscemi called the current deployment "symbolic."
Furthermore, the soldiers are trained to fight in modern wars, not search for pickpockets in Rome's Piazza Navona. Even if soldiers catch a petty offender, they do not have the power to arrest - they must call on local law enforcement for that. In some cases, military communications systems are not compatible with those of the police, meaning that the even simplest of messages must be patched through a central switchboard and relayed out again to the field, a process that can take several minutes, an eternity in law enforcement terms.
In at least two cities, mayors have fought to keep the soldiers out based on fears they could hurt their city's image as tourist attractions. Rome's right-wing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, has lobbied with some success to keep the troops from Rome's historical center, while Massimo Cacciari, the left-wing mayor of Venice, refused the offer of troop support in his city when it appeared as if police there might go on strike during the just-completed Venice Film Festival.
It's not even clear if the problem the soldiers are meant to be fighting really exists. Though government figures show crime in Italy rising at an average pace of around 6 percent per year, the majority of the increase comes from petty crimes such as vandalism or the theft of scooters or bicycles. Italy continues to have a lower murder rate than Britain, France or Germany, for example. And in terms of serious crime, Rome and Milan continue to rank among the safest big cities in Europe.
But the most worrisome notion of all is that entire situation - the symbolic military presence facing off against a crime problem that may not exist - is happening while the government fosters what can only be considered a systematic problem of corruption in the business sector and within its own ranks.
More than 16 years after Italy's famous "clean hands" scandal set the political establishment on its heels, polls show that Italians have grown tired of the topic. Cronyism and bribery, meanwhile, remain part of the country's DNA: It is still difficult to get a good job in Italy without being "recommended" by powerful connections, while Transparency International's Bribe Payers' Index of the 30 largest economies ranks Italy 20th on the list, lower than any other EU member-state and behind even the United Arab Emirates and Mexico.
The situation is getting worse. Since 1994, when Berlusconi, a billionaire media tycoon, first entered politics, he has fought off more than 30 corruption-based lawsuits and sidestepped several efforts to create a meaningful conflict of interest law that would prevent him from using his political office to enrich his media empire.
In May, he became the head of government that has some three-dozen felons in parliament, and among its first initiatives was to close the office of the government's high commissioner against corruption and to pass a law making Berlusconi immune from charges of influence peddling and bribery.
It's not difficult to see how someone high up decided a military-themed public relations campaign might be just what the government needed.