LONDON - While in Italy the "first republic" is over with Tangentopoli, Ireland ended last weekend with a snap election called to turn the page after the worst financial crash in the history of the Emerald Isle. Fianna Fail, has always been the ruling party, has almost disappeared: it had 77 seats in the outgoing legislature, have left him just 17.
Took advantage of all the others, who are now negotiating to form a coalition. The new majority party on, Fine Gael, has risen from 51 to 68 members, but is not enough to govern alone. Ireland, therefore, that changes everything, but what does it mean and how will change remains to be seen.
He lost a party moderate, centrist, the Fianna Fail, of course, but has not won a party in the opposite direction: the Fine Gael party is in fact a center-right. Its traditional ally and the most likely partner in a coalition government, however, is a leftist party, the Labour Party, also increased, almost doubled from 20 to 35 seats.
The challenge, moreover, was not between left and right but between those who could offer the Irish a recipe for ending the crisis and who's not. Paradoxically, it is the losers that the winners of the Fianna Fail Fine Gael have similar positions from the economic point of view: to reduce government spending, get help from the international community, boost production.
If there is one difference is that the Fine Gael, had he stayed all'oppozione during the boom years in which Ireland had been dubbed the "Celtic Tiger" and following the collapse, it was not dirty his hands, he can say have no direct responsibility in the collapse that put the country on its knees.
E 'is this enough to win him (albeit without romp) permiership the elections and hand over its leader, Enda Kenny. A bit more credibility in the Fine Gael has also invested in confidence to be able to renegotiate terms less unfavorable in the package of 85 billion euro in aid approved last year by the European Union, a loan with an interest rate of 5, 8 percent that many in Dublin, is considered "punitive" and can cause a new crisis, and even of national bankruptcy, rather than a stimulus for recovery.
The new Prime Minister Kenny wasted no time to ask precisely to re-discuss everything with Brussels and the International Monetary Fund: "This is a bad deal for Ireland and for Europe, we must change it," he said. The EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Olli Rehn, has said that the commitments undertaken must be respected and that any fall in interest rates on loans granted to Dublin will be discussed only in the context of an overall strategy of the EU.
Translated in simple terms: we shall see, but do not be too many illusions. The moral winner of the Irish vote is perhaps Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the Catholic party struggling for decades for independence from Britain in Northern Ireland and its reunification with Ireland. Adams has decided to abandon the policy in Ulster that gave fame and success, to try to strengthen his party in Dublin: he has succeeded, not only winning a seat for itself, but three for Sinn Fein, from 4 to 13 Members.
He said now to have a "long-term plan for the reunification of the island. But it is the short and medium term that now worries the Irish. What has been for a decade, the most prosperous country in Europe is back at once to be as poor as in the thirties of the Great Depression when the alternative, for the Irish, was to live in hardship and emigrate to America.
No coincidence that the consumption of Guinness, the dark beer national symbol of Ireland, fell by 8 percent last year and has halved over the past decade. Nobody, not even the winners of the elections, now wants to drink.
Took advantage of all the others, who are now negotiating to form a coalition. The new majority party on, Fine Gael, has risen from 51 to 68 members, but is not enough to govern alone. Ireland, therefore, that changes everything, but what does it mean and how will change remains to be seen.
He lost a party moderate, centrist, the Fianna Fail, of course, but has not won a party in the opposite direction: the Fine Gael party is in fact a center-right. Its traditional ally and the most likely partner in a coalition government, however, is a leftist party, the Labour Party, also increased, almost doubled from 20 to 35 seats.
The challenge, moreover, was not between left and right but between those who could offer the Irish a recipe for ending the crisis and who's not. Paradoxically, it is the losers that the winners of the Fianna Fail Fine Gael have similar positions from the economic point of view: to reduce government spending, get help from the international community, boost production.
If there is one difference is that the Fine Gael, had he stayed all'oppozione during the boom years in which Ireland had been dubbed the "Celtic Tiger" and following the collapse, it was not dirty his hands, he can say have no direct responsibility in the collapse that put the country on its knees.
E 'is this enough to win him (albeit without romp) permiership the elections and hand over its leader, Enda Kenny. A bit more credibility in the Fine Gael has also invested in confidence to be able to renegotiate terms less unfavorable in the package of 85 billion euro in aid approved last year by the European Union, a loan with an interest rate of 5, 8 percent that many in Dublin, is considered "punitive" and can cause a new crisis, and even of national bankruptcy, rather than a stimulus for recovery.
The new Prime Minister Kenny wasted no time to ask precisely to re-discuss everything with Brussels and the International Monetary Fund: "This is a bad deal for Ireland and for Europe, we must change it," he said. The EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Olli Rehn, has said that the commitments undertaken must be respected and that any fall in interest rates on loans granted to Dublin will be discussed only in the context of an overall strategy of the EU.
Translated in simple terms: we shall see, but do not be too many illusions. The moral winner of the Irish vote is perhaps Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the Catholic party struggling for decades for independence from Britain in Northern Ireland and its reunification with Ireland. Adams has decided to abandon the policy in Ulster that gave fame and success, to try to strengthen his party in Dublin: he has succeeded, not only winning a seat for itself, but three for Sinn Fein, from 4 to 13 Members.
He said now to have a "long-term plan for the reunification of the island. But it is the short and medium term that now worries the Irish. What has been for a decade, the most prosperous country in Europe is back at once to be as poor as in the thirties of the Great Depression when the alternative, for the Irish, was to live in hardship and emigrate to America.
No coincidence that the consumption of Guinness, the dark beer national symbol of Ireland, fell by 8 percent last year and has halved over the past decade. Nobody, not even the winners of the elections, now wants to drink.
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