Angela and Silvio

Well, I kept myself from writing about this for a long time as I don’t like the idea to mix religion and politics in any form but I think now it’s time.

I want to tell you a story, a sort of Plutarch’s style story of two parallel lives: the ones of Angela and Silvio.

Angela is 51 and lives in Montemileto, a small village near Avellino, in the South of Italy; Silvio is 76, lives between Arcore, a small village near Milan, in Northern Italy, and Rome, with some tranferts to one of his villas in Sardinia or in Bahamas or to Moscow, where he has a very good friend.

Angela was a factory worker earning more or less 1100 euros per month but now, with the crisis, her factory had to reduce its staff and Angela is unemployed. Silvio is a tycoon, owning many televisions, newspapers, magazines, a football team, firms and so on, and he is also a politician, a senator of the Italian republic and the leader of an Italian party.

Angela has two young sons and lives with an unemployment salary of less than 600 euros per month; Silvio has four sons and in last tax return (2012) declared a yearly income of 48.180.792 euros.

Last month Angela went to a supermarket and stole a piece of cheese as she had nothing to eat for her children. The value of the stollen piece of cheese was 4 euros and 75 cents. Last month Silvio was condemned definitly (this means in Italy after three different trials) for a tax fraud in the years 2002-2003 for the amount of 7,3 million euros.

Angela had never been arrested in her life before her theft of cheese. Silvio has undergone to 31 trials: in 6 cases he has been saved by a prescription of crime, in 2 cases by an amnesty and 4 trials (one of which for induction to child prostitution) are still in progress.

When arrested, Angela immediately confessed her crime, justifying it with the fact her children were hungry. When condamned Silvio (and all the members of his party) accused the magistrates to be politically engaged, to carry out an attack against freedom and to have the will to favour the left parties.

Angela in now under arrest. Silvio is free, sits in the Italian Senate, holds rallies to defend himself.

Nobody ever spoke about Angela nor defended her publicly. After the final judgment against Silvio, his party organized a oceanic gathering (which, actually, was quite a flop) of supporters to protest agaist the verdict, claimed that you can’t expel from the Senate a person who leads a party voted by 15 milions of Italians and are now asking to the leftist party they govern in coalition with not to vote for the expulsion (the implication is that, in case they would vote for the expulsion, the party of Silvio will get out of the coalition, leaving the country in total anarchy and close to a financial collapse).

These is only one thing to add: in 1932 Adolf Hitler got something like 13 million votes in Germany and around 37,5% of the seats in the parliament. Does this mean he was not a criminal? Is there any relation between votes obtained in an election and personal proved criminality of a political leader?
I don’t think I need to give an answer to this question.

All I want to say is that this story of parallel lives is absolutly true, that this thing is happening in Italy now.
It’s up to you to judge.

PS:
Ooops sorry, I was forgetting a thing. There is an article of the Italian Constitution, the third one, saying: “All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions. It is the duty of the Republic to remove those obstacles of an economic or social nature which constrain the freedom and equality of citizens, thereby impeding the full development of the human person and the effective participation of all workers in the political, economic and social organisation of the country”

Funny, isn’t it?