Berlusconi Talks Trash. And Immigration.
Thursday, May 22, 2008 3:13 PM
By Newsweek
By Barbie Nadeau

What does it take to get someone to clean the stinking streets of Naples? This week, what it took was a visit from Italy's new-old prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. True to his pre-election promises, Berlusconi held his first cabinet meeting in his nation's most troubled city. Thanks to an ongoing garbage crisis, the trash has gone uncollected in parts of this city, raising tensions both locally and as far afield as the European Union headquarters in Brussels. Four days before Berlusconi's arrival, angry residents again took matters into their own hands and burned the garbage themselves. But city authorities did their bit too: on the eve of the cabinet meeting, they cleaned the streets in the historic center and along Berlusconi's route into the city. Elsewhere, the city remained buried.

Berlusconi has promised to deal with the crisis. At a press conference after the meeting, he pledged to turn landfills and incinerators in the region around Naples into military zones, protected by armed guards to keep protestors and the Neapolitan Camorra out. He appointed a new trash tsar, the head of the civil protection authority who is tasked to tackle the crisis "as if we are dealing with the aftermath of an earthquake or volcanic eruption". He also promised to restart work on an incinerator that has been halted pending investigation for Mafia collusion. And he says he can clean up the streets of Naples and surrounding cities within a few months by using a handful of temporary landfills to be kept secret to avoid protests. To combat Neapolitans' "not in my backyard" mentality, he says anyone caught organizing protests to block waste removal will face up to five years in jail.

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However, his meeting with the media didn't only involve trash talk. Delivering on his campaign promise to deal with rising criminality in the country, he delivered a comprehensive, heavy-handed security package ranging from making clandestine immigration punishable by up to a four-year jail sentence, and to detain them for up to 18 months instead of just 60 days while documents are being processed. He also promised to use DNA tests to prove whether immigrants are actually joining legal family members already based in the country, and he wants to cut through much of the red tape it now takes to deport legal immigrants.

While many of the new initiatives sound like solid solutions to the country's staggering problems, there is no question that some of are heavy handed. Last week, sweeps across the country netted over 500 immigrants legal and illegal- who were suspected of crimes. Those not arrested were deported, more than half were sent home to European Union member state Romania. In Naples, four camps housing Roma, also known as gypsies were burned to the ground, allegedly by the Camorra as the police looked away, scaring away many of the remaining Roma. And ahead of Berlusconi's cabinet meeting, nine protest groups ranging from garbage collectors and health care workers to immigrants and unemployed youth groups were given permission to hold demonstrations and promised there would be no "red zone" separating them from the cabinet meeting. But the police presence was so aggressive, liberally firing tear gas as a warning, the groups barely made it to within a kilometer of Piazza Plebiscito where the cabinet meeting was held.

Posters calling for immediate sainthood ("Berlusconi Santo Subito") were plastered around Naples ahead the one-day cabinet meeting on Wednesday. But far from an endorsement, the posters actually carried a threat. The sainthood applies only if the four-time prime minister can eliminate the garbage and curb the criminality that suffocate Italy's third city. The posters show a composite photo of garbage bags, guns and the blurry face of what is unquestionably meant to represent an illegal immigrant. As he closed the press conference, Berlusconi promised to return to Naples to personally make sure the problems in this city are being addressed. But whether Neapolitans will give him sainthood on this score will have to wait for another judgment day.
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