The way the Italian people voted has displeased their majesties and their excellencies all over Europe. Reaction has been from scathing to to scornful. German politicians in their “we know best” arrogance have dismissed it with a shrug and the assertion that even though Monti may have bombed out, Italy must continue to impose his reform programme! In other words, hang what the Italian people want. They must continue to do what we tell them.
The EC president Barroso, who may be excused for not really knowing what it is he said, was quoted as follows:
“The question we have to ask ourselves is the following: should we determine our policy, our economic policy, by short-term electoral considerations or by what has to be done to put Europe back on the path to sustainable growth? For me the answer is clear.”
And the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who always knows best when it comes to sticking it to the little guys:
“Italians must elect who they want to elect and must bear the consequences when they elect clowns.”.
Neglecting the fact that it’s one thing to bear the consequences of whom you elect and quite another to bear the unbearable consequences of a destructive policy imposed on you by a bunch of… clowns? whom you never elected.
To cut a long story short, the reaction to the Italian elections has made even more obvious the current EU leadership’s disdain for democracy, their arrogance in the belief that they are the only ones who know what to do and everybody else should just shut up an do as they are told. Or else!
But the obvious fact is that the current European leadership simply does not want democracy at all. So far they have made peoples vote on the same thing again and again till they get it right. Now they are resorting to outright interference in other people’s democratic processes, as happened in the Greek elections too.
So here we are. Possibly at a cross roads. And the peoples of Europe must decide. What is to be? A German dominated dictatorship (which happens to insist on economically unsound -to say the least- policies creating recession and unemployment) or a return to the core values and principles of Europe. The rights of man, liberte, egalite, fraternite, democracy.
We mustn’t let the pernicious economic dogma now dominating the European north, throw Europe into deep misery and catastrophe yet again, for the third time in a hundred years.