Rainbow red

Rainbow red, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Today, the Italian parliament voted in a new President. His name is Giorgo Napolitano. He was born in Naple, quite appropriately and was not-so-long-ago made a life-long senator and used to be a member of the Communist Party. Before that he worked in the resitance movement. One very good thing which Napolitano has going for him is that Berlusconi does not apparently like himand he urged his faction not to vote for him in this election, stillup[set at having lost the Parliamentary elections last month. A bad loser..

The Italian system is good in the way that the President does not have too many powers and is elected only by an electoral college of Members of Parliament and regional representatives, such that he does not get involved in day-to-day politics, leaving that to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet and the Parliament. A much better situation than in France and the US which both have directly elected Presidents with far too much power. Berlusconi has tried to change the Italian system to be more like these two, thinking, of course, that the people would vote HIM President. First, there needs to be a referendum to change the Constitution and it seems very unlikely that this will be passed when voting takes place in June.