Lo scandalo travolge Rudolph Francis

stluciastar.com Rick Wayne

For those who fantasized, despite the overwhelming contrary evidence, that not all politicians are suited-up vampires addicted to the blood of naifs, Saint Lucia’s latest fiasco provides yet another eye opener. Here again is indisputable proof that even in environments most holy—and you know I’m talking Vatican country—the political bed bugs remain a major scourge second only to the killer disease hypocrisy.

Remember the Italian MP Ilona Staller, aka La Ciccolina? Of course the blinkered faithful may wish to remind me at this point that no one is perfect, that most politicians, male and female, are prostitutes anyway. But then I hasten to point out that “the small cuddly one” was the first stripper to successfully campaign for a parliamentary seat with her bits on public display.            The big surprise is that in the era of Silvio Berlusconi dirt remains the Italian politician’s main preoccupation—if only as entertainment for the electorate.

By all the news coming out of Italy these days, it would appear the notorious prime minister’s scandalous peccadilloes is ho-hum, yesterday’s headlines. It seems what everyone—especially newspaper baron Berlusconi—wants to read about is the connection between “the third most important figure in Italian politics,” the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Gianfranco Fini, and off-shore companies registered in no-account little Saint Lucia.

Candidly, I have little interest in Berlusconi’s on-going war with his former friend turned harshest critic Gianfranco Fini. Hey, after you’ve covered the Odlum-Louisy leadership struggle, the Hunte-Kenny betrayals, the Compton-Lewis feuds, Mario Michel’s sudden disappearance, everything else is downhill right?

Oh, but I want badly to know how a classified letter related to off-shore companies involving Giafranco Fini ended up in a foreign newspaper and on the Internet? I want to know, too, what might be the fallout from the mysterious leak, confidentiality being at the very heart of the off-shore business. And most important of all, I want to know what the prime minister of this country plans to do about the whole fiasco, bearing in mind the cost to the nation should he be thinking it’ll all blow over by the time Saint Lucians go to the next polls.

The truth is that this latest dingaling is bigger than Stephenson King, bigger than Kenny and Rose Marie Anthony and their political aspirations. Saint Lucia could suffer irrecoverable harm if registered off-shore companies should, at the worst of times, pack up and leave en masse, in the process turning our already handicapped country into an off-shore desert.

Then there are the rumors and speculations that already are spicing up the upcoming Italian elections, among them that the now world-famous letter from our attorney general to his prime minister is an outrageous fake, a dud deliberately planted by supporters of Berlusconi. Several visiting Italian journalists I spoke with over the last three or four days seem convinced there is more to the letter than has been revealed by the government of Saint Lucia. Berlusconi plays one way only, one of the journalists told me, and it ain’t clean. The Italian suspicion is that he may have paid a Saint Lucian co-conspirator for the letter that started the whole scandal.

“And who might that be?” I asked, absolutely perplexed.
“Well, I don’t know for sure,” said the reporter Italiano. “It could be anyone. How honest are your politicians? I am told you have elections coming up in a few months. Your candidates will need money—and Berlusconi is a very rich man. His party is loaded.”

Another journalist was more blunt: “Are your politicians rich? Do some of them have debts, mortgages perhaps, that they have a hard time paying? Any of them known to pass bad checks?”

Might the expressed suspicions be among the reasons the visiting Italians hounded our latest attorney general during their visit. What a horrible spectacle it was even in the by now inured Saint Lucian eye. Imagine what the average Italiano will think of the footage that appeared on Monday’s evening news. At least Berlusconi appears suave in his customized suits, his slicked-back hair and movie-star smile.

His public image suggests he can do whatever he pleases and get away with it, mainly because he is living every red-blooded Italian’s fantasy. On the other hand, our AG, as he appeared on TV this week, was hardly the picture of intelligence and big-city suavity, let alone diplomacy, as he debated the determined Italian reporters outside his office, at least one of them recording the action. If only Doddy had remembered to keep his mouth shut and his Leon Spinks smile to himself!

Anche a Saint Lucia la stampa comincia a domandarsi quali conseguenze negative potrà avere questa fuga di notizie riguardanti le società offshore.
Articolo ironico e pungente che prende di mira il ministro Francis e il nostro Premier, il giornalista fa notare che questa storia rischia di travolgere il governo locale.