Breaking into the summer holiday lull, Austrian politics has gotten into a lather over a far-right populist’s call for a referendum on whether a mainly German-speaking region of northern Italy should rejoin Austria.

No matter how far-fetched, his proposal raised a hue and cry by challenging the taboo of old unreconstructed nationalism in a country restlessly determined to live down its Nazi past.

South Tyrol - Alto Adige in Italian - is an autonomous, Alpine province of Italy bordering Austria. It was annexed by Italy from defeated Austria-Hungary at the end of World War One.

Italy granted increasing self-government to South Tyrol in the decades after World War Two, defusing separatist unrest by Austro-German speakers. It is now among Italy’s richest regions, with an open border to Austria thanks to EU integration.

But Martin Graf, a rightist deputy speaker of Austria’s parliament, declared on Sunday that South Tyrol was actually “part of overall Tyrol”, and only “currently” within Italy.

The universal right of self-determination should apply for all “the German people” in Europe - just as those in old Communist East Germany got their wish to merge into one Germany at the end of the Cold War in 1990. “It’s time to ask the people if there should be one Tyrol,” Graf said.

Graf owes his parliamentary post due to the fact that his far-right Freedom Party replaced the Greens as Austria’s No. 3 party in last year’s parliamentary election.

Some Freedom members have called into question an Austrian law that prohibits neo-Nazi activities. Graf has links to a rightist fraternity, Olympia, that nurses old German nationalist causes and has acted as a platform for Holocaust deniers.

So his South Tyrol remarks were unsettling and drew swift fire from mainstream conservative and centre-left politicians protective of Austria’s delicate democratic reputation.

Some pointed out what they deemed the absurdity and danger of redrawing borders or re-championing national differences in a 21st century European Union that has largely done away with frontier barriers in a spirit of common peace and prosperity.

“(Graf) should avoid such ill-considered and unrealistic statements,” said Guenther Platter, conservative People’s Party governor of Austria’s (North) Tyrol province. “Borders have long since fallen and we live today in the heart of a common Europe. Cooperation between (the two Tyrols) is better than ever.”

Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said Graf’s “radical, unrealistic” comments were at odds with good neighbourly relations with Italy and invited misunderstanding.

Social Democratic party general secretary Laura Rudas accused Graf of “political pyromania”.

A defiant Graf retorted: “None of my attackers are in the position to explain why there should be a self-determination right for Tibetans and Kurds, but it is still being withheld from South Tyroleans after 90 years.”

The solid front of criticism was briefly punctured by a statement of support for Graf from the South Tyrol Freedom faction in the provincial assembly in Bolzano (Bozen in German).

Unconvinced, Austrian media sought out the ethnically German governor of South Tyrol, Luis Durnwalder. He said he was convinced that if a vote were held tomorrow, most South Tyroleans would choose to stay as they are now within Italy.

 ”If parties had six months to campaign on this, you might see a small majority for ‘Anschluss’ with Austria,” he told Austrian state television, using the discredited word for Austria’s enthusiastic accession to Nazi Germany in 1938.

“But it wouldn’t be realistic. Italy would never consent. Violence or terror naturally would be no option. And, given existing treaties, we would never get a majority (for rejoining Austria) in the United Nations.”

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said he would try again to have parliament dismiss the rightist from the speaker job over what he called behaviour damaging to Austrian interests.

But Finance Minister Josef Proell said that while Graf’s remarks were “totally unacceptable and scurrilous”, his conservatives would not contribute votes crucial for a two-thirds majority needed to topple Graf.

He said it would be wrong to turn Graf into “a martyr via parliamentary manoeuvre” and he should resign himself.

Graf ruled that out, saying he could not be punished for exercising his right to free speech.

(Photo: Martin Graf drinks beer during a Fraternity Group meeting in Innsbruck June 20, 2009.  REUTERS/Dominic Ebenbichler)

Just imagine the outcry if Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain had suddenly gone off on their own separate two-week vacations to, say, Mexico, just two months before the November election? Irresponsible! Reckless! Shirkers! Those and as well as other unprintable terms might be among the comments hurled their way.

Yet as unfathomable as it may be for candidates in the United States or many other countries to take a long holiday break so close to an election, in Germany it is just as inconceivable for politicians to continue to campaign actively during the summer holiday season — even if the election is just around the corner. Begging for votes while their countrymen are relaxing on the beach is simply verboten for Germans.

That is why Chancellor Angela Merkel will be disappearing on holiday to a secretive location for the next 2-1/2 weeks while her challenger, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has already left the country, spending several weeks away from the campaign trail on holiday in the Italian Alps. Campaigning during the summer holiday would only be counter-productive, political strategists and analysts say, even if the outcome of the Sept. 27 election is wide open.

Germans do indeed take their holidays seriously — just think of the cliche about all those Germans rising before dawn in Mediterranean holiday resorts to reserve the deck chairs by the pool with their towels. Many Germans only laugh at you when you ask what happened to the “German work ethic”? There is even a federal law, the Bundesurlaubsgesetz, that governs every imagineable aspect of leave eligibility and duration. Most Germans get at least six weeks leave each year, which is one of the reasons they they sometimes call themselves Weltmeister (world champions) when it comes to travel — 64 percent take their holidays abroad each year.

Over the years I’ve watched some candidates, such as Helmut Kohl, try to beat the conventional wisdom of “Thou Shalt Not Campaign During Holidays in Germany”. In 1998 Kohl was far behind his challenger Gerhard Schroeder. Seemingly out of desperation, Kohl held some low-key campaign rallies on Baltic beaches. The sight of Kohl in a suit and tie giving a stump speech to holidaymakers sporting bikinis and speedos is something that I’ll never forget, and  interrupting peoples’ vacations didn’t help Kohl any – he lost the election two months later.

However, while Merkel and Steinmeier will be out of the country, they will certainly not be out of touch. Both will give a few relaxed-sounding interviews from their holiday cottages to selected German networks, as well as leading newspapers and magazines. Both will also make sure there are enough photo ops of relaxed-looking political leaders on holiday, although Merkel will be careful to avoid another photo op mishap like in 2006 when the British tabloid the Sun published paparazzi pictures of Merkel changing into her swimsuit in Italy.

PHOTO - Angela Merkel and her husband Joachim Sauer arrive for the Wagner opera festival in the northern Bavarian town of Bayreuth during her holiday in this July 25, 2005 file photo.

Attacks on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in the British press have hit an especially raw nerve as he hosts this year’s G8 summit and some Italian newspapers have had enough.

The summit has come at a particularly sensitive time for the beleaguered Italian leader, who has been dogged for weeks by salacious scandals involving allegations he has a soft spot for underage women and has entertained escort girls.

Britain’s irreverent media have had a field day, delving into his exotic personal life and publishing lurid cartoons of the veteran Berlusconi cavorting with naked women.

Adding insult to injury, the British press have also led the charge in accusing Berlusconi of chaotic organisation of the annual G8 knees-up, with a fanciful story in the Guardian suggesting Italy might be ejected from the rich nations club.

In an image-conscious country where looking bad is a unpardonable sin, that was the final straw for some Italians and a counter-offensive is underway.
   
Unsurprisingly, Il Giornale newspaper, owned by Berlusconi’s family, has led the charge.

“The attack on Italy? These English are still racist,” the paper wrote on its front page on Friday, taking umbrage at a cartoon showing a grinning Berlusconi holding up a bra.

But other papers have also decided to put their foot down.

Rome’s Il Messaggero daily, taking aim at the “spoilt Anglo-Saxons”, dedicated a whole page on Friday to criticism of the British economy.

“One must say, once and for all, that on the real economy you can’t give lessons to anyone, least of all Italy,” it wrote.

Italy’s television, which has paid little attention to the Berlusconi scandals, has meanwhile presented the l’Aquila summit as an international triumph of heroic proportions.

Italian diplomats have also been drafted to the cause, with embassies abroad phoning up major media companies to pass on praise from U.S. President Barack Obama for the meeting.

Certainly Berlusconi has defied his critics in putting on a smooth, sleek show amidst the rubble of the April earthquake.

But while the Italian style is, as ever, impressive, the substance is perhaps less striking.

Unlike previous G8 hosts, Berlusconi seems to have focused his attention more on logistics than the issues, leaving other leaders to take charge of the toughest dossiers.

Obama chaired the crucial global warming talks, French President Nicolas Sarkozy led discussion on Iran and when it came to discussion on Africa, Italy was in the embarrassing position of being the meanest aid provider at the table.

But don’t expect to see such diplomatic details to get prominence in the Italian press!

And while many analysts have questioned the outcome of the talks, suggesting for example that the climate accord fell far short of what was needed, the Italian press is once again accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative.

And of course, it is all thanks to Italy. “Tired but satisfied, Berlusconi showed once again how he can achieve the best results in these occasions,” Il Messaggero said.

Photo: POOL New/Reuters

Pope Benedict issued an ambitious call to reform the way the world works on Tuesday shortly before its most powerful leaders meet at the G8 summit in Italy. His latest encyclical, entitled "Charity in Truth," presents a long list of steps he thinks are needed to overcome the financial crisis and shift economic activity from the profit motive to a goal of solidarity of all people.

Following are some of his proposals. The italics are from the original text. Do you think they are realistic food for thought or idealistic notions with no hope of being put into practice?

• "There is urgent need of a true world political authority. .. to manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration... such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights."
• The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly - not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centred..."
• "Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity, so as not to abuse the sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of savers. Right intention, transparency, and the search for positive results are mutually compatible and must never be detached from one another."
• "Without doubt, one of the greatest risks for businesses is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby limiting their social value... there is nevertheless a growing conviction that business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference... What should be avoided is a speculative use of financial resources that yields to the temptation of seeking only short-term profit, without regard for the long-term sustainability of the enterprise, its benefit to the real economy and attention to the advancement, in suitable and appropriate ways, of further economic initiatives in countries in need of development."
• "One possible approach to development aid would be to apply effectively what is known as fiscal subsidiarity, allowing citizens to decide how to allocate a portion of the taxes they pay to the State."

(Photo: Pope Bendict, 1 July 2009/Tony Gentile)

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- Luke Baker is a political and general news correspondent at Reuters. -

The mountains and deserts of southern Afghanistan are far removed from the elegant charms of Trieste in northern Italy, but there will be a link between the two this weekend.

Foreign ministers from the Group of Eight nations meet in the Italian city on the Adriatic on Thursday for three days of talks, with the state of play in Afghanistan, as well as developments in Iran and the Middle East, front and centre of their agenda.

Nearly eight years and tens of billions of dollars on from the U.S.-led invasion that overthrew the Taliban, the United States and its allies appear no closer to bringing long-term stability to the country, with the Taliban resurgent throughout the south and west and the instability expanding across the border into Pakistan.

One of the major areas of unrest is Helmand, a vast desert and mountain province in the far south where around 8,000 British troops have been deployed for 3-1/2 years and 10,000 U.S. Marines are steadily being sent in as reinforcements.

While 18,000 troops backed by helicopters, jets, Predator drones, armoured vehicles and endless advanced weaponry may sound like more than enough of a match for bands of bearded militants who usually aren't armed with much more than a Kalashnikov rifle, it's not always the case.

Helmand, split down the middle by the Helmand river, is larger than Switzerland and has a daunting mix of terrain that the Taliban and their followers are far more familiar with than foreign troops sweating in heavy, cumbersome combat gear. And it's not just the challenges of the topography, it's the sheer size of the area that stretches any army's capability.

When I was in Helmand late last year, British troops at a Forward Operating Base in the far north of the province told me that they didn't have enough troops or back-up to venture any further than three kilometres from their small fortified camp to take on the enemy.

"The Taliban know it. If we attack them, they go just over three kilometres away and we have to come back to base," an officer at the remote outpost told me.

The absurdity of that situation partly explains why Britain and the United States have acknowledged that Helmand is currently in a "stalemate", a position they hope will be broken with a new strategy and the increase in troops in the coming months.

But the deadlock in fighting and the need for more manpower-- there are 90,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, 50 percent less than in now relatively more stable  Iraq -- is not the only concern on the agenda for the G8 foreign ministers.

As well as trying to agree amongst themselves how they can best support the U.S.- and NATO-driven effort, they need to assess the implications of non-cooperation from Iran, on Afghanistan's western border, and the widening instability in the Pakistan tribal areas on Afghanistan's eastern border. Iran was due to send a delegation to the G8 meeting, but in the wake of international condemnation of the fallout from its disputed presidential election, it has cancelled its participation.

Afghanistan's election in August, when President Hamid Karzai will seek reelection despite broad unpopularity in the country and among some of his Western backers, will also be a focus of discussion. Karzai's high-profile makes him stand out among the 41candidates registered for the Aug. 20 poll. That greater degree of visibility is likely to secure him enough votes for reelection, according to some opinion polls, even if many Afghans express frustration at the scare progress made during his past 5 years in power.

Politically, socially and militarily, Afghanistan remains hugely in flux nearly eight years on from the Taliban's overthrow. While army commanders admit there can be no military solution to the conflict, diplomats and development experts are struggling to find a political way forward either.

Three days of talks among eight foreign ministers in Trieste is unlikely to go very far in resolving what is becoming an ever more intractable conflict 5,000 kilometres away.

Climate health costs: bug-borne ills, killer heat
Tree-munching beetles, malaria-carrying mosquitoes and deer ticks that spread Lyme disease are three living signs that climate change is likely to exact a heavy toll on human health. These pests and others are expanding their ranges in a warming world, which means people who never had to worry about them will have to start.

Spain rearranges furniture as economy sinks

Moving a 17-metre high monument to Christopher Columbus 100 metres down the road is how the Spanish government is interpreting the advice of John Maynard Keynes. The economist once argued it would be preferable to pay workers to dig holes and fill them in again, rather than allowing them to stand idle and deprive the economy of the multiplier effect of their wages.

Picking up the pieces from Afghanistan’s war

U.S. gunners scanned a lush Afghan valley from their helicopter, as a  white van containing a badly burned baby inched toward another Black Hawk waiting at the army outpost. Eight soldiers had flown into the heart of hostile eastern Afghanistan, in a convoy of one air ambulance and one “chase” helicopter for protection, to collect 18-month-old Amanullah who knocked a pot of scalding water over his legs, penis and scrotum.

In Brazil, extreme weather stokes climate worries

No one could say they hadn’t seen it coming. The sand dunes had been advancing for decades before they swallowed the houses of families in Ilha Grande, an island in Brazil’s Parnaiba river delta. Standing on a dune that covers his old home, one man describes the landscape of his childhood — cashew trees as far as he could see. Not a dune in sight.

Angola’s hard-hitting beat electrifies the poor

It’s not break-dance, it isn’t rap either. The name is kuduro and its beat is electrifying dancers from Luanda to Lisbon and New York City. In Angola’s capital city, men and women are often seen performing robotic moves, bouncing off walls or pretending to drop dead once kuduro’s hard-hitting beat stops. The creator of kuduro, which means “hard-ass” in Portuguese, said he came up with the sound while watching martial arts expert Jean Claude Van Damme dance in a 1994 movie.

Cattle rustling on the rise as U.S. recession bites

Cattle theft is a growing problem as thieves realize that stealing cows is a relatively easy way to raise a quick buck. Stolen cattle are often taken straight from their farm or ranch to auction at a stockyard.  “When people think cattle rustling they think John Wayne. But it’s not like that. Cattle thieves are … technologically savvy. “

Fiat expansion stirs resentment in Italy’s south

Staring at the locked gates of a Fiat car factory, Mimmo Vacchiano says many families in this poor corner of southern Italy face a stark choice unless its turnstiles reopen. “If they close this plant, there’s nothing else here, only unemployment or the mafia.” Pomigliano d’Arco, a town of 40,000 people in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, relies on Fiat for its lifeblood. Residents now fear they may pay the price for cash-strapped Fiat’s high-stakes strategy to survive the recession by expanding to become the world’s second largest car maker.

Signs of recovery appear in Zimbabwe hospitals

The odors of death and decay are gone from the corridors of Zimbabwe’s biggest hospital, replaced by the smells of medicines and food for the patients who are once again coming for treatment. Nowhere is the change in Zimbabwe more evident than in the hospitals that just months ago failed so woefully to cope with a cholera epidemic that killed more than 4,000 people. Doctors and nurses have returned to Harare’s Parirenyatwa General Hospital. UNICEF has been helping to pay allowances to some doctors and nurses while the government is now paying them $100 a month like other state employees.

Boom-and-bust corner of California sees new hope

If the U.S. recession has an epicenter in California, it may be the  working-class neighborhoods called the “Inland Empire,” full of boarded-up homes, vacant storefronts, jobless workers. It faces years coping with foreclosed homes, jobless rates over 10 percent, a poorly educated workforce and empty warehouses.

Slain leaders’ heirs vie for Lebanon votes

The memory of assassinated Lebanese leaders lives in symbols and slogans of their heirs who are battling for Christian votes crucial to deciding the parliamentary election. Nayla Tueni and Nadim Gemayel are young, even by the standards of Lebanon’s dynastic politics. Running as allies in the June election, both evoke memories of fathers killed for their views.

Everglades swamped with invading pythons

The population of Burmese pythons in Florida’s Everglades may have grown to as many as 150,000 as the non-native snakes breed in the fragile wetlands. Wildlife biologists say they have been dumped by  owners who no longer want them and pose a threat to endangered species like the wood stork and Key Largo woodrat. “They eat things that we care about,” said an Everglades National Park biologist.

Fresh from his success on the TV show Dancing with the Stars, Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, grandson of the last king of Italy, is campaigning in June’s European elections for Italy’s small centrist party, the Union of Christian Democrats (UDC).

“I had offers from other parties but I feel culturally close to the UDC and its leader Pier Ferdinando Casini,” Filiberto told Reuters on the campaign trail in the small northwestern Piedmont town of Crescentino. “I feel close to its family values, its Christian roots, its ties with the homeland, which I have supported since I’ve been in Italy.”

Emanuele Filiberto, born in Switzerland in 1972, is a member of the House of Savoy, the Italian ruling dynasty whose male heirs were exiled in 1948 because of its relations with the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. The family was allowed back into Italy in 2002.

“I did Dancing with the Stars to get myself better known by Italians,” said Filiberto, who won the competition and is standing in the European elections for the northwestern region of Italy, where the Savoy dynasty has its origins. “First and foremost, however, I feel Italian and since my return to Italy I’ve always wanted to do what I can to help my country.” In Crescentino, he was mobbed by locals at the town fair.

Filiberto, married to French actress Clotilde Courau, is not new to politics and stood for election with his “Valori e Futuro” party in Italian parliamentary elections last year. That foray into politics ended unsuccessfully but many think the backing of Casini’s UDC will give him more appeal and visibility this time round.

The UDC, heir to the once powerful Christian Democrat party, won about 5.6 percent of the vote in Italy’s 2008 elections. According to the polls, it is expected to get 6-7 percent of the vote in the European elections compared with almost 40 percent for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party.

Filiberto bemoans recent controversy over the fielding of attractive young women  as candidates for  Berlusconi’s ruling centre-right party in the European elections. He said more needed to be done to promote the image of Italy overseas.

“I’ve travelled the world and I’m afraid Italy has never been taken seriously. That’s a pity since the country deserves much more with its wealth of craftsmen, its small- and medium-sized companies, its inventors, its artists,” he said.

Filiberto — who intends to do his campaigning on the road as well as on the Internet through Facebook — is keen to help his constituency by promoting tourism and ecology, fighting the cause of the disabled and supporting the region’s small businesses.

“Hearing about Fiat (the Italian auto maker based in the northwest’s biggest city, Turin) and what’s happening there is great but let’s not forget there are hundreds of small enterprises suffering as we speak and they need help.”

PHOTO: Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia (FILE PICTURE)

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the consummate campaigner. No matter where he finds himself, the indefatigable 72-year-old always makes sure the cameras are squarely on him.

Although he is quick to flash a smile to his supporters, Berlusconi can be just as fast in delivering barbed words to his critics. And when he does not have the time to do it, his supporters are more than happy to oblige.

The newspaper Il Libero, for instance, uses its front page to wage war against his adversaries, old and new.

When his wife called for a divorce after criticising his party for considering former actresses and TV showgirls to run in the European elections, it lashed out. It published old photos of her baring her breasts on a theatrical stage and ran a headline telling her that she was of the same ilk.

Il Libero also uses inserts to great effect. Last week, it started publishing a serial recounting the life of Berlusconi.

Reminiscent of the booklet about his life that Berlusconi sent to voters’ homes ahead of the 2006 election, the serial highlights in glowing terms his transformation from cruise ship crooner to real estate mogul to media magnate to prime minister.

“He is not a common man,” Vittorio Feltri, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, tells Reuters.

The timing of its publication could not be better.

Not only does it come ahead of the European elections in June, but also at a time when Italy’s left-wing press is focusing on one of the reasons for his wife wanting a divorce: her accusation that he had an affair with a teenaged girl, something which Berlusconi denies.

Entitled “Berlusconi, as he is: (The) life, conquests, battles and passions of a political man unique in the world,” the serial is replete with photos of Berlusconi as well as articles illustrating every aspect of his life. There is one about him choosing the flowers for the garden at his villa, especially the crocus, which he cherishes for its “delicate colours and particular scent”.

One of the 16 inserts in the serial speaks of his admiration for Barack Obama despite the “privileged” relationship he enjoyed with former U.S. President George W. Bush. It nevertheless publishes his joke about Obama being “suntanned”, dismissing the outrage that it caused by criticising the scandalised “radical chic” for not being able to take a joke.

Il Giornale is even more fervent in its defence of Berlusconi, especially since the newspaper is owned by his brother, Paolo.

In its latest issue, it dedicates two pages to criticising foreign journalists for giving just as much attention to the wife’s accusation as the left-wing press.

As for the serial on Berlusconi, Il Libero’s Feltri says the newspaper decided to produce it because the upcoming European elections had heightened its readers’ interest in politics.

Its publication had already led to a 17 percent jump in sales, he says.

“Silvio is one of the biggest sellers,” he says.

Although the divorce from his wife has taken a few points away from his popularity, Berlusconi still finds favour among 53 percent of Italians surveyed in the latest independent poll.

Feltri says he would be willing to put out a serial about a left-wing politician but he had difficulty finding someone as compelling as Berlusconi.

“They don’t sell,” he says.

PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi smiles to photographers after meeting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Moscow May 16, 2009. REUTERS/Maxim Shipenikov

The shockwaves reverberating through Westminster as the MPs' expenses scandal unfolds have been compared with the "Clean Hands" bribery scandal that effectively demolished Italy's post-war political establishment in the space of a couple of years in the early 1990s.

If things are going to get that bad, the guilty politicians are going to have an uncomfortable time.

As a reporter in Rome at the time, I remember how surprise turned to anger then just as it has now as the public began to realise the sheer extent of the corruption that was helping to line the pockets of the country's leading politicians and their parties.

The morning newspapers brought fresh revelations almost daily of how the main political parties routinely demanded kickbacks in return for government contracts. There were the "golden sheets" for example in which invoices for linen and bedding were inflated to thousands of pounds, and the exorbitant demands placed on suppliers to hospitals, which caused particular anger.

People used to demonstrate in the streets wearing white gloves to show they had clean hands. They would try to scare MPs they felt were corrupt by sending them spoof versions of the "avviso," the official notice that warned potential offenders they were under investigation. The avviso itself became one of the enduring symbols of the scandal, almost like the guillotine in revolutionary France. Reproductions of it used to sell well as birthday and Christmas cards.

Another favourite amng the angry public, if any disgraced politician dared show his face his public, was to mockingly shower them with coins.

Such was the fate of one of those held to have been most deeply involved in the corruption, Socialist leader Bettino Craxi, who was forced to flee to his second home in Tunisia to escape jail in Italy. Other disgraced politicians and businessmen even took their own lives.

What was going on in Italy at that time was undoubtedly far more serious than the exploitation of MPs' expenses, but because the British have tended to be less cynical about their elected representatives, the sense of outrage has been much the same.

But before the calls for a complete shake-out of the British political establishment become so loud as to be unstoppable, it might be worth remembering, as former Labour minister Michael Meacher points out in his blog, that political vaccuums often produce surprise results.

Fringe parties, for example, can make big gains, as seems to be happening already in Britain.

And in the case of Italy, the net result of the collapse of its main parties was -- Silvio Berlusconi.

A month after an earthquake killed nearly 300 people in Italy, the initial goodwill towards authorities for their swift handling of the disaster appears to be giving way to anger as survivors face an uncertain wait for promised funds and the prospect of a long summer in tents.

Italy’s government is promising to start providing the thousands made homeless in the central Italian region of Abruzzo with new, furnished houses by September — in what would be record speed anywhere. But continued aftershocks, rain and chilly temperatures have made life increasingly difficult for survivors in tents, which left-leaning newspapers have seized upon to issue long accounts of the “nightmare” of life in the 170 tent camps.

“I feel like I’ve already spent an entire lifetime inside here but only 30 days have passed,” one tent-dweller, Claudio, told La Repubblica newspaper, which said the arrival of reconstruction funds in installments meant some people might have to wait nearly two years for a house.

    A government decree promising 8 billion euros ($10.7 billion) to rebuild the areas devastated by the earthquake has also fallen under a cloud of controversy. Mayors in quake-hit towns complain it undermines their role in rebuilding efforts and the opposition say it is inadequate. 

   Even normally pro-government bodies like the business lobby Confindustria are beginning to question how much money will actually arrive, and when.

   “The first thing that must be done is to understand well how much money is really and immediately available for spending, because businessmen have told us that operations related to re-opening businesses need to be done quickly,” Emma Marcegaglia, the head of Confindustria, said on a tour around the hard-hit town of L’Aquila this week.

   The opposition Democratic Party’s Pier Luigi Bersani, meanwhile, is accusing the government of treating the disaster like a “second division earthquake”.

    All this criticism is a far cry from the initial hours and days following the quake, when glowing praise flowed in from home and abroad for a swift and seamless relief effort that appeared to highlight a side of Italy that belies its reputation for chaos and slow-moving bureaucracy.

    At least seven different units – the police, the elite military police, the forest corps, the army, firefighters, the financial police and the civil protection agency – rolled into L’Aquila hours after the pre-dawn quake. The first tents for the newly homeless were up barely 12 hours after disaster struck.

    By then, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had already cancelled a trip to Moscow and held a midday press conference in L’Aquila, where he didn’t skip a beat as an aftershock rocked the building while he was speaking.

    The next morning, a long row of portable toilets had been set up in the main tent camp outside the town center, and relief workers were already going from tent to tent offering diapers and sanitary napkins.

    Bathrooms for the disabled with running water were next to appear, followed by more tents, each furnished with beds, new mattresses, linen and blankets, prompting praise from survivors, including one woman who called relief workers “angels”.

    The 170 tent camps that were rapidly set up house more than 33,000 people today, while the remaining 32,000 left homeless have been put up in hotels requisitioned by the government or in private homes.

    The efficient roll-out of relief efforts quickly boosted Berlusconi’s popularity, allowing him to declare last week that he is the world’s most popular leader and move a Group of Eight summit in July, long-planned for a Sardinian island, to the quake zone.

    But the premier, who is also having to handle an ugly public spat with his wife, who wants a divorce, will need to make good on his promise to rebuild the quake zone quickly and find homes for survivors in months, or risk losing the goodwill he has built up.