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IN his short career in the Senate, Luigi Pallaro achieved the impossible: he brought together Italy’s ideologically irreconcilable political parties. When it came to expressing its contempt for the new senator, the Roman establishment set aside deep differences and spoke with one voice: the guy was a post-ideological buffoon, a throwback to a peasant past that most legislators assumed had been consigned to the history books. Pallaro was never able to talk the political talk, with his Italian so contaminated by Spanish that he sounded like something out of a badly dubbed Zorro movie; nor did he walk the walk, often not bothering to show up to crucial sittings. It was agreed that his election to parliament was evidence - if evidence were needed - that Italy’s new electoral system was a dud; legislators would have to unite to find a way to ensure future Pallaros remained out in the Argentinian pampas shovelling cow manure rather than be given the chance to bring down Italian governments. If Italians abroad were all like Pallaro, maybe the time had come to cut them loose ..
Photo: Marcio Silva/iStockphoto.com
