"Those who had warned Prodi that a vote of confidence in the Senate had every element of a political suicide were right", explains the daily. "The president Giorgio Napolitano had suggested to Prodi that he should throw in the towel without submitting himself to a second vote of confidence (The deputies voted their confidence on January 24th). Prodi did not listen to this advice ... . His calculations were wrong. ... With or without Prodi, Italy is in need of radical reforms. The fundamental problems are economic anaemia, a rather uncompetitive energy sector, public services that are hostage to trade unions and the weakest birth rate in Europe. ... If Italians finally go back to the ballot box, Italy will have to confront an economic crisis with a provisional government and a demoralised society that barely trusts political leaders at all anymore." (25/01/2008)

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Ezio Mauro, the daily's editor in chief, comments on the resignation of Romano Prodi. "This is a strange and unfair fate for a man who twice defeated [Silvio] Berlusconi and who twice had to leave power because of the dissolution of his majority. This is not just the end of a government and a period in power; it is a whole political culture, the centre-left, which is coming to an end. ... Prodi died on the right, but he suffered two years on the left. His dream of uniting Italy's two left-wings -reformists and radicals- of combining justice, solidarity and innovation did work at times, but was never a real political culture, recognised and recognisable. ... Prodi had to deal with interior conflicts -threats, blackmail, and vetoes -instead of governing. We heard a thousand voices, but never that of the centre-left." (25/01/2008)

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Tomasz Bielecki finds the Catholic Church is partly to blame for the end of Prodi's government: "One of the more important arguments in the fight against Prodi's administration was the defence of the Church and 'Christian civilization.' Some Bishops and right-wing politicians blame Prodi for the scandal over Pope Benedict XVI's cancelled plan to visit Sapienza University of Rome. They charge Prodi with tolerating 'deviant laicism.'... The Bishops suggest that the Interior Ministry warned the Vatican against causing a major uproar. The government defended itself, saying it had advised Benedict not to visit the university. The Vatican accused the government of lying and withdrew its confidence. In addition, Catholic media have charged Prodi with promoting a left-wing 'moral revolution' – with the aim of accepting legal partnerships for homosexuals, or legalizing assisted suicide." (25/01/2008)

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Jürg Bischoff thinks Prodi is not to blame for the crisis in Italy: "Neither the clever media czar Berlusconi nor the serious professor Prodi has proven willing or able to overcome the inertia of the political caste, so as to give the Second Republic a functioning form. Thus the parliament, government, administration and justice have sunk deeper each day into the same old party squabbles and the lethargy of the status quo. People have lost all respect for state institutions; frustration about politics has led to utter disdain for politicians. Pessimists already are warning that Italian bitterness toward their politicians also undermines their faith in democracy, and could reawaken the longing for a strong man, a 'Duce,' as in the political turmoil of the 1920s." (25/01/2008)

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Romanian-Jewish writer Norman Manea, who today lives in the USA, talks with Rocica Palade about how the past is handled: "It had already been difficult for us to accept responsibility for the partisan period and communism. In 1944, Romania had a negligible number of about 1,000 communists. And by 1989, with four million members, its Communist Party was the largest in Eastern Europe. ... Two days after the death of the 'people's favourite son,' [dictator] Nikolae Ceausescu, the delighted public re-awoke as innocent and anti-communist. Whoever had written odes, danced and sung the obedient masquerade, appreciated the few handouts from the parvenus of power. Whoever had gotten along with the political hierarchy and entities of the repressive regime, conveniently forgot it all. Only a few were determined to examine their own guilt and entanglement." (25/01/2008)

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Alain Supiot, professor of social studies, considers that the European Union is tending towards a 'communist market economy'. "Built on the basis of what capitalism and communism had in common (abstract economy and universalism), this hybrid system borrows from the market dog eat dog competition, free trade and the maximising of individual utilities, while from communism, it borrows 'limited democracy', the manipulation of the law, an obsession with quantification and total separation of the fate of leaders from that of those governed. It offers the ruling classes the possibility to get immensely rich ... while continuing to disunite themselves from the middle and working classes ... . A new 'nomenklatura' that owes a lot of its sudden fortune to the privatisation of public sectors is thus using the liberalisation of markets to be exonerated of the financing of national solidarity systems." (25/01/2008)

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American sociologist Randall Collins explains why it's conventional citizens who are particularly cut out to be suicide bombers. "People who usually feed on typical macho types of violence are not good at it; gang members would be terrible suicide bombers. But mild-mannered, middle-class people are the ideal candidates. Not interested in confrontation itself, they don't have to cover up any noticeable or threatening aspect of themselves that could serve as a warning to their victims. A self-determined, introverted person does not need a cheering audience when he takes off in pursuit of his prey. In middle-class culture, it is common to present an unobtrusive outward appearance. Whatever we may feel inside, we have learned to hide those feelings from the general public - whether in the workplace or in other social contexts." (25/01/2008)

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The UK Work and Pension Secretary Peter Hain resigned on January 24th after the police opened an inquest. He had failed to declare to the Electoral Commission very large donations he had received to fund his Labour deputy leadership campaign last year. The daily comments. "In calling in the police, the commission has sent a clear signal that it regards something serious as having gone wrong. Mr Hain had no option but to quit office, the first forced resignation of Gordon Brown's premiership. ... The spotlight was firmly back on cash for favours. For a Prime Minister [Gordon Brown] who came into office on a promise of breaking from the past of a cash-for-peerages investigation that dogged Tony Blair in the final months of his premiership, and doing politics in a squeaky-clean, honest and transparent way, this is very bad news." (25/01/2008)

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Jan Švejnar, who lived for a long time in the USA and has both American and Czech citizenship, is challenging incumbent Václav Klaus in the upcoming Czech presidential elections. Czech commentator Luboš Palata writes: "Emigrants will never earn our respect. Since they left the country, they had it better than those who stayed behind. Even if they say that they were unbearably homesick and missed their friends, we are jealous of them. Whether their pockets were lined with deutschmarks or dollars. When they returned after 1989, they wanted their old apartments and houses back. But Professor Švejnar didn't come back in search of former property. On the contrary, he opened a training centre in Prague for Czech managers. Still, we don't like the fact that he still has American citizenship. … That said, it's absolutely common to have emigrants as presidents in the Baltic countries. A half-American in Prague Castle would also make us Czechs a bit more worldly." (25/01/2008)

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The daily informs us that the European Court of Human Rights' annual survey has revealed that it is "facing a huge case backlog and at its current pace would need 46 years to rule on all complaints. ... The court, underfunded and lacking judges, is struggling with almost 80,000 cases, some of them pending from the mid-1990s ... . Four countries, Russia, Turkey, Romania and Ukraine, accounted for more than half of the court's outstanding cases reflecting their citizens' lack of trust in national courts. As a final appeals court for European citizens, the Strasbourg-based court hears cases challenging national courts' decisions that plaintiffs claim infringe on the 1949 European Charter of Human Rights, which applies in all European countries but Belarus. ... The court ... has become popular with citizens of Eastern European and Balkan countries, where judicial systems are still influenced by politicians and prone to corruption." (24/01/2008)

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Societe Generale, revealed on January 24th that it has lost 5 billion euros because of a fraud committed by one of its brokers. "The Societe Generale's executive director is well aware, deep down, that what is being presented as fraud is actually highlighting a dangerously fallible risk control system", comments the editorialist Gaétan Capèle. "This unbelievable affair, that we would like to hope is exceptional and isolated, further discredits a profession that is already in the spotlight. Beyond the setbacks faced by the Societe Generale, it carries the seed of a far more pernicious evil, reinforcing the prevalent distrust that, since the beginning of the high-risk subprime crisis has been ruining the reputation of the financial universe. ... The current torment is showing how the machine is gradually escaping the grasp of those in charge of operating it." (25/01/2008)

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Eric Frey takes the side of Jean-Claude-Trichet, director of the European Central Bank, who was criticized by politicians and economists for maintaining the average interest rates of the euro zone, while the US Federal Reserve Bank dropped interest rates this week in reaction to the plunging stock market. "Since last summer, both central banks have done everything they could in the current crisis to soften the effect of the threatening interbank liquidity squeeze. ... When the extent of the downturn became clear, they [the Fed] acted fast. It's still unclear whether the move will trigger a change, because not even central banks can work miracles. And it's certainly not their job to prevent losses on the stock exchange. But Europe is not facing an immediate recession. At worst, slower growth is foreseen. That is why prices are rising faster than they have in ages. The investment plans of companies today depend more on their market appraisal than on the cost of loans. For us, unlike in the USA, there is no reason to lower interest rates." (25/01/2008)

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The Portuguese daily ponders the situation of the country's pensioners. "A study carried out by the insurance company AXA divulged this week the fact that the Portuguese are one of the populations who consider retirement in the most negative light associating it with 'death, ageing, illness and financial difficulty'. ... There are several reasons for this: because the pensions are low, but also because the Portuguese do not plan ahead very much. ... The rises promised by the José Socrates government [around a 2 % average] have been called ridiculous by the opposition [and part of the Socialist Party]. Portugal is one the three European countries where retirement pensions are lowest (after Hungary and the Czech Republic) ... . This impression of injustice, combined with ignorance, explains why the prospect of retirement is considered a nightmare. Before such a scenario, the government's desire to increase the retirement age from 65 to 68 has ironically come about like a wonderful balm, albeit illusory." (25/01/2008)

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Simon Jenkins welcomes 'From Russia', an exhibition of international art from Russian collections opening in London's Royal Academy on January 26th after a diplomatic dispute with Russia was resolved with a last-minute change in English law. "The works on display come from four museums, the Hermitage and the Russian in St Petersburg, and Moscow's Pushkin and Tretyakov. They offer merely a taste of the treasures buried in their vaults, which few people alive will ever see. About 90 % of the Hermitage's collection is not on view, including works that any other museum, city or nation would give a fortune to exhibit. Yet, at the same time, these museums are chronically short of funds for showing or conserving what they have, let alone for acquiring or commissioning new work. ... The crude chauvinism that says that a work of art must be 'saved for the nation', even if then buried by the nation, is the most arrogant of imperial leftovers. Art should be displayed." (25/01/2008)

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Saturday marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, who was executed in 1989. This prompts Costi Rogozanu to ask: "Why not open a museum about the Ceausescu clan? It would be Romania's most profitable cultural attraction. Why not show the costumes from the communist song competition, why not collect film documents and eyewitness reports? This would be a challenge for historians and artists; it would bring to life a commercial museum with an accurate presentation of history, which visitors will leave laughing or crying. It would not be an institution paying homage to dictators, but rather a dissection of the Ceauşescu myth that obsessed millions of people. Such a museum would be a wonderful place to discover the ridiculous." (25/01/2008)

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