In the election competition the minor parties often don’t participate and they “give support” to the candidate of one of the two poles. It’s called “realpolitik". Basically the minor party does a deal with the PDL or the PDminusL, two regional councillors, four town councillors, a cabinet member. They decide not to present any candidate or to just pretend to do so, so that those votes flow into the others at the ballot. In practice, it’s the splitting up of the goods of the citizen voter without his knowing anything.
In Turin, just as an example, there’s Fassino who’s running (but where is he running to poor soul?) with the support of all the regular Centre Left parties who have thus not presented their own lists, but they already have their councillors in the “Sala Rossa” {location of the city council meetings in Turin}. The minor party can even support one pole or the other without bother. Ms Bresso was supported as a candidate for the Region of Piedmont by Casini’s UDC party. The price of renunciation to an independent list is the allocation of a conspicuous number of councillors to those who play the game. The minor party is not interested in the percentage of votes that they’ll get, but the number of armchairs that they negotiate beforehand. It’s the "captive" model as opposed to the free market. A "captive” company has only one company to which it issues invoices. If the client changes their procedures or if they have a crisis, the "captive" company goes bust. That’s happened to hundreds of companies that worked for Fiat or Telecom. The "realpolitik" to sell your arse for a third party keeps you out of the realm of the free market, of the judgment of the citizens, you win even if you lose; you have no barrier to overcome to get into the council. The "captive" companies are not interested in competition, the improvement of their product, the voters, the respect for the programme; they live for their single client. The "captive" parties have got Bersani and Berlusconi as clients. Some are faithful to a single pole, others like the Radicals, wander around, so as to raise the stakes. For the "captive" parties there’s no entrepreneurial risk. They don’t invest in the citizens or in respect for the programme, but only in those that they call “ally”. But in fact it’s an alms-giver that keeps them alive. A great life. The negotiating power of the "captive" parties diminishes over time together with their votes (after a bit the voter prefers to vote for the original) up until the moment that they disappear. In that case, the survivors, usually the top brass, join the major party and they enjoy the fruits of the "realpolitik". They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

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