This is a short post and it isn’t my usual kind of post. But I really feel the need to say this…

Imagine that you are a voter in a country which has lots of problems – corruption, organised crime, soaring unemployment, immense fiscal pressure, a great deal of hidden poverty, extremely high cost of living and low wages, suffocating bureaucracy… the list goes on.

Then imagine that the elections are coming up. You and most of your countrymen are highly disillusioned with politics in general. Abstentionism is sky high, and you don’t know who you will vote for because they all seem “as bad as each other”. Maybe you won’t bother voting at all.

Then the foreign press starts to put the pressure on, starts to ridicule your country and patronise it, tries  not so subtly to bully the voters into electing one candidate rather than the other.

What would you do? You might, just might, vote for the candidate that the other countries don’t want you to – how dare they tell you what to do!

Of course, the country I am referring to is Italy.

The candidate is Silvio Berlusconi.

The patronising neighbours are France, Germany and, I am afraid the UK.

I would like to think that most of Italy is aware that another term of Berlusconi in power could truly crush the nation. That the people know that he is not the answer, for oh so many different reasons.

However… If Europe wants to keep Berlusconi out, it needs to do one thing and one thing only. Back off.  Only the Italians can make that decision and by trying to force their hand the impact can only be negative.

So please, rest of Europe, SHUT UP.

With love, from Italy

PS sorry to shamelessly add this in here but I have started to write in English and Italian about Italian politics and society – anyone who is interested please check out dentroitalia.wordpress.com.