There Is No Cat

Unaware of my civic duty no longer

I’m disappointed: thanks to an initiative instituted by soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Berlusconi and his government, I was eligible to vote in the just-ended Italian elections and I didn’t even know:

Italians yesterday were just beginning to realize that their fate had been determined by people who have mostly entered their country only as tourists.

"It seems impossible," the Italian newspaper L’Unita writes in an editorial to appear today, "but the fate of this 2006 election has been decided by Italian émigrés of the second and third generation rather than by any people in Italy -- by men and women who were not born in their native land and, in the great majority of cases, have never lived there."

The "Italians abroad" voting scheme was designed by Mirko Tremaglia, the 80-year-old Minister of Italians in the World. An unapologetic defender of the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, Mr. Tremaglia is said to have modelled the scheme after a Fascist scheme that defined Italians as a race.

Under Mr. Tremaglia’s new electoral law, eligible voters are defined as anyone with a continuous line of male descendants going back to a man born in Italy. The voter needs only to register with an Italian consulate, and does not have to speak Italian, have visited Italy or even have parents who were born in Italy.

Note that the election was decided by these "Italians abroad".

I’m going to have to contact the Italian consulate here. As a fourth generation descendent through a continuous line of male descendents going back to Italy, it’s my right to have a say in who governs a country my great-grandfather left in 1885. Laura’s grandfather left Italy in the 1920s, so she’s eligible too.

How do you say "hoist by his own petard" in Italian?

Tags: italians abroad berlusconi election italy prodi

Posted at 7:20 AM