fantapolitica
humorous look at Italian politics (bilingual)Saturday, March 21, 2009
La Carica Del 101 !
I'm finally blogging about the best news I've read from Italy in years. 101 members of the majority in parliament wrote a letter to prime minister Sivlio Berlusconi asking him not to make the vote on a bill a vote of confidence (which means no amendments allowed). The issue was that the bill contains the proposizione 738 provision that Doctors have to inform on undocumented aliens who seek medical care.
But back to the parliamentary heroes and heroines. The leader of the back bench uprising against the new Legge Razziale and defender of the Constitution (the right to health and not mere health care is right there in the Italian constitution) is, of course, L'Onorevole Mussolini.
Readers of this blog, if any, will have noticed that I haven't posted recently. I'm totally outclassed. I don't have enough fantasia to match the fantapolitica in the newspapers.
Now I don't know why Berlusconi is so eager to deprive undocumented aliens of health care. The original prop 738 didn't work out so well for Republicans in California. It was blocked as unconstitutional (even though the consitution of California does *not* guarantee health or even sunny weather) non-immigrant Republican has won any top statewide office in California since it passed.
The anti health effort also got him in trouble with the Catholic Church, but he managed to get over that by outdoing Jeb Bush on the case of Eluana Englaro an Italian case vaguely like the Teresa Schiavo case, except that there was no disagreement in her family and a court order to disconnect her feeding tube. He tried an emergency decree to keep it in and was informed by the President of the Republic that emergency decrees are issued by the President of the Republic not the Prime Minister (you know like how Elisabeth is head of state of the UK). This is, of course, clearly written in the constitution and, therefore, ignored by Berlusconi (who has also claimed that Parliament didn't have the authority to vote no confidence in him the one and only time they did). Berlusconi then denounced the Italian Constitution.
So he clearly stands for mandatory health care for people in persistent vegitative states so long as they are citizens or have permessi di soggiorno. Given its firm moral principles, the one true catholic and apostolic church hasn't complained since Berlusconi made it clear that he agrees with them on the key issue.
I was going to start fantareligione but I don't think I'm up to that either.
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