Haunting Words
Words are stones
We here at “Upper Italy” have reached the point of not wanting to write about the wobbly Italian airline Alitalia in roughly the same way we don’t want to write about the Pope – there is too much of it and of him.
But then these things just keep happening…
First we need to get you up to speed. For what follows, you must be aware there is an election campaign on in Italy. Very approximately, in a few weeks electors will be allowed to choose between party lists backing, on the Center-Left, the candidate premier and pretty much loser Walter Veltroni and, on the Center-Right, Silvio Berlusconi, a media magnate and something of a jerk.
Secondly, Alitalia has been in practice bankrupt for many years and now has become too absurd a luxury for any public administration to maintain, much less one as broke as Italy’s. Quite a while back (we went over it around a year and a half ago), the now-outgoing Prodi government made a “not entirely above board” deal to persuade the French to take this very, very white elephant off its hands.
We have written about Alitalia all over the place, but mostly (here), (here) and (here), if you want some background.
At any rate, this is a promise that must be kept and Mr. Prodi and his lame-duck minions are working desperately to make that happen. They tried, and nearly managed, to shove the deal through a couple of weeks ago, but then Berlusconi woke up and decided for no very good reason to try to block it. Probably he just wanted to make trouble for his opponents as a matter of principal, since his sudden and nationalistic “save this jewel from the French” is in fact not much of a vote-getter in Italy where many people would prefer to see the carrier razed to the ground and plowed with salt.
Mr. Berlusconi is an extremely wealthy man, and so logically decided to try to use words rather than money to block the sale – if that is the correct term – of Alitalia to Air France/KLM. He did this by announcing that he would personally organize a group of investors to keep the carrier in Italian hands.
Berlusconi however has by now the personal credibility of a busted aluminum siding salesman and no-one believed him. The habit of speaking bullshit can sometimes catch up to you like that. People (“journalists”) kept asking, “just who are all these other investors who are prepared (“dumb enough”) to go into this with you?” When he didn’t answer, there were gales of ironic laughter, so finally the former Prime Minister did pull out some names.
He told the Turin newspaper “La Stampa” that they were: ENI, the State-controlled hydrocarbons monopoly (controlled that is at present by the Prodi government); Mediobanca, the largest Italian merchant bank; Bennetton, the cheap sweater king; and Mr. Salvatore Ligresti, a big building contractor who, because of his powerful Sicilian accent, is sometimes thought to be in business with the wrong kind of powerful Sicilians.
Unfortunately, all of these people then immediately and formally denied not only that they were involved, but also that they were even looking at the deal. This of course caused some amusement, but surprised people who bother to think about these things far less than had Belusconi’s original news that they were supposed to be his partners…
There remained of course only the tiny issue of Mr.Berlusconi looking like a complete fool. He fixed this today in an interview given to a minor Rome daily called “Il Tempo”. The former and possible future Prime Minister has now explained – please hold onto your chairs or anything else stable, a good solid grip – that he had himself told his partners to deny interest: “I was the one who asked investors not to reveal themselves. I advised them to say that in this moment there is nothing on the table.” He did this, he said, since “this is not a situation of objective guarantees,” whatever that means.
Not to worry though because, “When I am elected I will call the entrepreneurs together and I don’t think there is even one who can’t lay a chip on this, who can say no.”
Kind of takes our collective breath away…
The nice illustration above this note eccentrically illustrates an interesting Italian figure of speech: “Le parole sono pietre”, literally that “Words are stones.” The sense is that thoughtless things once said can come back and haunt you.