Sicilian Culture: The News & Views: Ill At Ease, Italians Set for Election

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Ill At Ease, Italians Set for Election
By Steve Pagani
ROME, March 9 (Reuters) - On the surface, Italians still portray the image of a people very much at ease with life, conscious of style and enamoured of status symbols like the car and mobile phone.
Scratch the surface and there seeps out a deep malaise of a nation struggling to maintain the outward signs of well-being, and fearful of joblessness, crime and foreigners.
With a general election set for May 13, surveys show they are bored or angry with their politicians. One poll in January registered the biggest ever figure of undecided voters -- 41 percent.
Films like "La Dolce Vita" painted a picture for the outside world of a carefree people in pursuit of the good life.
But it was never really like that.
Italy was among Europe's most politicised nations from the late 1960s to the early 80s when turbulence and violence divided the Catholic traditionalist right, backed by the United States, from the militant left, for a time linked to the Soviet Union.
Political bloodshed has now largely gone -- even fist-fights in parliament are rare. Urban guerrillas of the extreme right and extreme left, who committed most of Italy's outrages in the "dark years," are in jail or preparing for retirement.
The Sicilian Mafia, who pushed Italians too far in the assassinations of two popular anti-Mafia judges in 1992, shrank from the onslaught by police.
But some observers say the lull is only due to the fact that a new generation of bosses is regrouping.
The Apulian Mafia of southeastern Italy, the Sacra Corona Unita, is getting rich ferrying illegal immigrants across the Adriatic in partnership with Albanian counterparts.
Italians, like most Europeans, hanker for the good things of life. But Pope John Paul often admonishes the people living closest to him to savour spiritual richness and not just the material.
PAMPERED YOUTHS
By far the largest portion of Italians unmoved by the forthcoming election is, unsurprisingly, the first-time voters.
A survey in Corriere della Sera daily last week showed that out of three million people aged between 18 and 25, half did not know which side to vote for or whether to vote at all.
Good news, perhaps, for the ruling centre left, which is lagging in opinion polls behind the opposition centre right led by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.
Centre-left election leader Francesco Rutelli may feel he has everything to play for during the election campaign.
Italian young people, most of whom live in the parental home way into their 30s, subsidised by their grandparents' pensions, probably like things just as they are, one report showed.
Italy is still a country visited by millions every year to view the biggest share of art treasures held by any one nation in the world, or stroll in the Tuscan hills, or savour the golden Sicilian beaches.
The style portrayed by some of world's leading fashion houses -- Gucci, Versace, Armani -- opens wallets across the globe. Italy has some of the best soccer. Many people dream of a Ferrari gracing their driveway.
Yet Italians themselves are worried -- worried about jobs, crime and immigrants.
The north of Italy is industrious and innovative, the centre is thriving, but the south is still poor and lacks employment.
Joblessness is high in Italy compared to its European Union partners at 10 percent, but most unemployment is concentrated in the south. Northern firms often have vacancies they cannot fill.
Italians are not having enough babies and a United Nations report last year said Italy's current population of 57 million would contract to 41 million by 2050. It also said Italy needs to take in nine million immigrants over the next 25 years to keep its workforce at a viable level.
Such projections play into the hands of far-right politicians happy to exploit the fear of foreigners. An ally of Berlusconi's, the Northern League, has drawn criticism for its anti-immigrant remarks.
And yet at present, immigrants make up just 2.2 percent of Italy's population, one of the lowest figures in Europe.
A study by Rome think tank Censis in December found three quarters of those polled were convinced immigration and higher crime were linked, although crime statistics have fallen. Half believed foreigners increased the risk of contagious diseases.
Immigration will, undoubtedly, figure large in the election campaign.

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