What are they expecting?

Two weeks ago we  all witnessed the success of both Beppe Grillo and Silvio Berlusconi and the ruin of Mario Monti in the Italian elections.

During the last two weeks, we have also seen the flood of critics against those "clowns" that have been pouring from press all around the northern countries of the European Union.

While we can agree or not about the election that was made by the Italians, we must never forget that it happened in a context and has a meaning that must be understood.

Last Italian elections happened in 2008 and had an absolute winner: Il Popolo della Libertà, PdL, a party whose lider is Silvio Berlusconi. Then, late in 2010, and due to problems with justice Silvio had to renounce and the place was vacant.

In that time, without any kind of democratic process, Mario Monti, Frau Merkel's flagship (who wans't even member of the either Italian Senato della Repubblica or Camera dei deputati) was appointed to guide the country through a long list of cuts directly commanded from both Berlin and Brussels.

Two year later, and that time, according to Italian law, new elections were hold. The results speak by themselves, is not only that they're showing that a great part of the Italian people still believe in Berlusconi, but that almost no one believes in Mario Monti, a guy whom no one voted four years ago.

Obviously, that's not something of European Union (or Bundesbank) like, and many people started to blame both Berlusconi and Grillo without knowing which could be the results of this behavior.

While we can all agree that Grillo is actually a clown (he indeed is) maybe the most important fact about his results is that. If I were a traditional politician I would force myself to think about how a clown got more votes than me and what am I supposed to be if I'm working with a clown.

In the other hand, while I have to express that I would never support Berlusconi, we should think, before blaming him, that he has been elected in different times as Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri of a democratic country and that he could have achieved that position again just two week ago, and start to think about the different reasons why the Italian people is still voting him before taking actions.

The real problem here, is again, the ethnocentrism. While we all have agreed to call ourselves "Europeans" that means nothing beyond those agreements, and accepting the differences between our different societies should be a must if we want to keep calling ourselves that way.

Why did the Italian society voted against Monti and why did they support both Grilo and Berlusconi? The reason seems to be quite clear, while we could speak about different points of their programs, the real answers can be focused in two different ways: a reaction to the cuts and a claim for political independence after two years of being governed by Frau Merkel, someone that none voted for in Italy so far.

What can the international media expect from their bombardment over those candidates? Do they think that they're going to destroy them?
Thinking that is the greatest shown of ethnocentrism ever seen and a great prove of  their knowledge of Mediterranean societies. Strengthening them will be the only result from those actions, not because they feed on those critics, but because Italians voted form them to show their disapproval about the European politics, and them, foreign pressure will do nothing but strengthening those feelings among the Italians.