ANALYSIS:Conspiring cardinals, jailbird politicians and violent mobsters are not new to Italians. But crooked footballers? Oh no
PERHAPS ITALIANS have finally rebelled and said No to corruption. Or have they?
The incident in question concerns the coach of the Italian football team, Cesare Prandelli, who in a moment of exasperation uttered the ultimate blasphemy.
Okay, if things are really this bad, he suggested, then we will withdraw from the European Championships in Poland and Ukraine (where one of Italy’s scheduled first-round opponents is Ireland).
Prandelli’s provocation was stated in the wake of a turbulent week of football-related polemics prompted by the eruption of a not so dormant football scandal that saw 19 people arrested last Monday, forcing him to drop one player, Mimmo Criscito, from his squad.
Among the many to comment on this latest Italian football scandal was prime minister Mario Monti, who even came up with the most heretical suggestion of all.
Namely, why not just close down football in Italy for three years? This was not a serious proposal – but it gives some indication of the national mood.
Italians have learned to live with political corruption and “bunga bungas”, with organised crime and staggering business fraud such as the Parmalat food multinational collapse in 2003.
Even the most recent flurry of arrests, media leaks and stolen documents in the Holy See corresponds to the expectations of a cynical public that sees the church as a temporal power, always poking its mitre into Italian politics.
To some extent, and with huge reluctance, public opinion will live with much of the above.
However, this week it would seem that a Rubicon was crossed.
Opinion polls showed that Italian fans were so disgusted by the dimensions of the football match-fixing scandal that they agreed with Prandelli.
More than 63 per cent of fans on a Sky Italia interactive opinion poll said it would be better if Italy did not participate at Euro 2012.
Conspiring cardinals, jailbird politicians, crooked businessmen and violent mobsters, that we can accept. But footballers too? Oh no, that goes against the grain.
Are Italian fans not being just a little, all too willingly naive?
The point was made by Monti when he called for the three-year suspension. Too often, he suggested, Italians like to point at the political classes as the cradle of everything corrupt in Italian society.
In reality, he suggested, is it not true that corrupt Italian politicians and indeed Italian footballers are merely expressions of a corrupt society?
There are many areas of stunning excellence in Italian society today, from Enzo Ferrari’s motor cars through to Giorgio Armani’s suits and on to to Umberto Eco’s novels and Renzo Piano’s architecture, to name but the most obvious.
Yet this is also a society that long ago learned to navigate those grey waters where the lines between legal and illegal, right and wrong become blurred.
We are not talking here of public figures. We are talking about the blurred lines down which millions of Italians walk and drive every day.
From a reluctance to use seatbelts in a car to the non-payment of income tax (the Monti government estimates tax evasion at about €250 billion a year), Italy goes its own “inventive” way.
Many Italians, however, are more than weary of a state that on the one hand exacts (or attempts to exact) a heavy tax burden yet at the same time indulges not only the highest-paid politicians in the EU but, more importantly, widespread public authority corruption.
According to the Corte Dei Conti (state accountancy office), kickbacks, clientelism and raccomandazione (pull) cost Italy approximately €60 billion a year.
And all of this happens in a country with some of the lowest salaries in Europe, according the OECD.
It does not much sweeten the public mood that the political classes are involved in a seemingly daily series of corruption scandals. Parliament includes an estimated 90 deputies and senators who have been sentenced for a variety of crimes ranging from fraud and corruption to abuse of office.
In such a context, many Italians simply feel entitled to be “inventive” about their tax declarations.
Why else would the average restaurant declare annual earnings in 2010 of €14,330, the average bar €16,800 and the average jeweller €17,000, according to figures released last week by the ministry of finance?
Why, because it is simply part of the “culture”.
Neither international nor Italian opinion can hardly claim to be surprised that this particular “culture” has found its way into the inner sanctum of both football and the church, as has been amply demonstrated by events of recent days.
That Italian football should be open to exploitation by “betting syndicates” and organised crime gangs (not all of them Italian either) keen to launder their drugs money is logical, if deplorable.
According to business lobby Confesercenti, organised crime “earns” €180 billion per year, or a tax-free 7 per cent of Italian GDP. Much of that money has to be laundered somewhere, and online betting offers a perfect “legal” loophole.
That might seem “logical”, but corruption in the Holy See?
Here, too, the culture remains very Italian in a quintessentially Italian institution which one German cardinal this week described as having returned to “medieval times”.
Even if the Vatican Bank is again making negative headlines, Holy See “corruption” is generally much more about temporal power than about money.
The remarkable thing about the Holy See shenanigans is that the more the various Italian and curia factions squabble and jockey for position in view of the next conclave – for this is really what it all is about – the less international Catholic opinion may welcome an Italian curia cardinal as the next pope. Are Catholics, like football fans, getting ready to say No, too?
Paddy Agnew is The Irish Times correspondent in Rome