”Gattopardismo” indicates the change of everything so that nothing changes. The writer Tomasi di Lampedusa coined the idea with reference to the Sicilian barons, who were suddenly Garibaldi-followers and Savoy-supporters after having been firm supporters of the Bourbons, basically unchangeable in managing their interests. 150 years later, “gattopardismo” has become the normal practice of government and opposition, the one penetrated by the other. In fact the Opposition is born by means of continual parthenogenesis of those who govern the country.
The Berlusconi government of the first five year period after 2000 included Fini and Casini, to whom we owe the active participation in all the filthy laws, from the electoral law to the Schifani law (the ancestor of the Lodo Alfano). Today, Casini and Fini suddenly are representing the Opposition, with a piked dive with double twist, they have become the alternative. The powers that are supporting them are the same that have had banquets and that will have banquets with Berlusconi. In this way, there is the demonstration of the evangelical miracle of the multiplication of the Government to the Opposition. Instead of fish, deputies. At the next elections, it’ll be possible to vote for the big list that’s “unico e bino” {unique and double}. On the one side, Berlusconi and Bossi, on the other side Casini, Fini and Bersani (D’Alema’s spokesperson). The current election law rewards the coalitions and so as not to end up like Bertinotti and carve out for themselves some zone of power, even marginal, it’s probable that many parties and tiny parties will “go to Canossa”, for the good of the country of course!
It’s a game in which the bank always wins and the Italians always lose. A bit of puppet theatre with academic insults in which the word used most frequently among them (used by citizens) is: "Vergogna”, {shame} but in which no one is ever ashamed of receiving public financing, of earning the right to a pension after two and a half years, of privatising the essential services and public property, of creating the TAV {high speed train line} and the “Dal Molin” American base, the biggest base in Europe. Or to tolerate Dell’Utri in parliament (comforted by Casini as president of the Lower House since the time of his first conviction for being close to the mafia) and Cuffaro and taking the Italians to the point of exasperation. Or of being seated in the benches of the Lower or Upper House “appointed” by their party bosses and not by the voters given the absence of direct voting for candidates. The parties are all the same. They are in reality all the same job lot of government with the same objectives.
Bersani declared this with a slip of the tongue, between the privatisation of water and the inauguration of an incinerator: “We are parties of the government, temporarily in Opposition”. The same is true for the Lega and for Fini. They too are government parties that every so often are in Opposition. It’s the gang bang of the leopards.