Political Dialogue
Political dialogue
The yellow box in the web site pictured above – that of Ryan Air, an extremely successful Irish low-cost airline that flies into Italy – shows a Minister in the present Italian Government making a unpleasant gesture with his middle finger and is headlined: “Minister Bossi to Italian passengers.” The body copy then points out that: “The Government supports Alitalia’s high fares, supports Alitalia’s frequent strikes and doesn’t give a damn about Italian passengers.”
On the whole, these things appear to be perfectly true, but that is of course not the issue. The issue, at least formally, is that the image of a Minister of the Republic of Italy is being used without his permission for commercial promotion. The Government has formally asked the country’s civil aviation authority, called “ENAC,” to find a way to make life difficult for the Irish even though, embarassingly, it does not appear they have actually committed any crime.
The snap itself is a recent and widely available news photo – a “photo opportunity” if you will, covered by every agency – which does not actually appear to belong to anyone and for its news value and for the nature of the “public personage” – a Minister – is presumably in the Italian equivalent of the public domain.
The other difficulty is that the politician in question, Mr. Umberto Bossi, the leader of the country’s mildly xenophobic “Northern League – see (here) and (here) – was at the moment the shot was taken giving the finger to the Italian National Anthem rather than to Alitalia’s long-suffering passengers. He does things like that periodically – usually when he is about to sell out the principles of his followers in some way – so that he can appear as an opposition politician even when he is instead in office.
Though the gesture did not excite as much comment in Italy as it would have in most other Western countries, it still makes the photograph difficult to talk about politically.
As for Ryan Air, aside from the considerable free publicity – and of a kind that strikes a chord with many Italian travelers – the company is very likely trying to dare the Government into even stupider behavior regarding the lengths it will go to to keep the cadaver of its national airline stumbling along by causing as many regulatory problems as possible for its competitors.
The Irish, as things stand, have little to lose and are already well-placed to take their case/cases to the European Court of Justice in Brussels. So why the hell not?
We’ve written about the sad tale of Alitalia’s place among the living dead so often by now that we really don’t want to bother giving you all the links. This one will probably do: (here). If you are genuinely excited by the carrier’s saga, you could also use the search box to find much more.
Maybe we should point out before you look at that note that it was written a year and a half ago and things have only gotten worse since.