It’s that time . . again! The most recent government has fallen (meaning the leading coalition cumulatively no longer held a 50.1% minimum majority in parliament). It would take far too many mega-bytes of web-pages to fully explain Italian politics, assuming of course that someone out there actually comprehends how it works (or doesn’t). A quote by Giolitti, a 19th and early 20th century politician, sums things up. Governare l’Italia non é impossibile, é inutile. (It is not impossible to govern Italy, it is useless.)
Nonetheless, over the past couple of months (elections this weekend), Italy and Italians have once again embraced and engaged in the full-on performance and pageantry of elections, despite everyone knowing that in a way it is all a bit of an act. (Understandable belief when the average duration of all your governments since 1946 has been 352 days.)
The photos show one aspect of this pageantry. Temporary election billboards go up (a nuisance and an eyesore) and an army of poster-pasters descends on the country, broom-sponge, bucket of glue, and stack of posters in hand. Paid by political parties per total posters pasted, they paste up new posters as quickly as possible. This means you’ll often see three or more poster-pasters working down a line of billboards one after another, posting right over the previous poster-pasters’ pasted posters. (Apologies, but that was just too tempting!) The result is what is affectionately called lasagne elettorali, electoral lasagne . . . layer upon layer of posters, stacked like lasagne one on top of another.
– Contributed by GB (see bio), Editor, Italian Notebook.
