The general elections in Italy produced a number of ironies.

First, the electoral law introduced at the last minute in order to guarantee the success of Silvio Berlusconi's ruling coalition produced the opposite effect, the victory of his opponents led by Romano Prodi. The law bucked the trend in Italy to move towards a two-party system, with one majority winner. A special Ministry of Reforms was created to devise a fail-safe electoral law and to propose constitutional reforms favorable to the ruling coalition, and it was placed in the hands of Northern League representative Roberto Calderoli. (If the name sounds familiar, Calderoli is the same minister who went on national TV at the height of the anti-Islamic cartoon scandal and unbuttoned his shirt to exhibit a tee shirt on which the cartoons had been printed!) His solution to the voting problem was to reintroduce proportional representation of the myriad large and small parties and to make it impossible to vote for individual candidates (who would be chosen sight unseen by the winning parties after the elections from a previously prepared list). In other words, a return to the dreaded partitocracy of the not so distant past. In addition, it was decided to allot a special additional premium to the coalition receiving the most votes. A second irony was that the special measure designed to ensure victory for the Casa delle liberta', the granting of the right to vote to Italians residing outside of Italy, also blew up in their faces. Another special Ministry, this time for Italians Abroad, was created and put in the hands of Alleanza Nazionale senator Mirko Tremaglia, a proud veteran of Benito Mussolini's last-ditch Repubblica di Salo'. Apparently Tremaglia was convinced and convinced Berlusconi that practically all Italians living abroad were Fascists and would vote for the Right. As it turned out, they weren't and they didn't. At the victory rally of Prodi's "Unione" in Rome, an ironical sign, reminiscent of the enthusiastic outcry that followwed the death of Pope John Paul II, invoked the immediate canonization of Minister Tremaglia: "Tremaglia Santo Subito!"

A third irony concerns the leader of the "Alternativa sociale" party, Alessandra Mussolini, the Duce's granddaughter, allied with the Casa delle liberta'. A couple of weeks before the elections, she appeared on TV in a debate with Vladimir Luxuria (the last name is a pseudonym), a candidate of the extreme left Rifondazione comunista party. Luxuria is a trans-sexual who dresses and behaves like a woman. S/he (who prefers to be called "she") is also an able debater who knows how to stay cool. The clkimax of the exchange came when Mussolini, in defense of the rights of "our children", screamed from across the studio "Meglio fascisti che froci!" ("Better Fascists than faggots!"). Whatever one's opinion on that particular choice, it is interesting to note that, after the elections, Luxuria is a potential member of parliament and Mussolini is not. He small party did not obtain sufficient votes to be represented.

Homophobia seems to run on the right. Sme time back, the same Mirko Tremaglia used a variant of Alessandra Mussolini's "f-word" to console fellow minister conservative Catholic Rocco Buttiglione when his Vatican-inspired principles caused him to be rejected for the position of human rights commissioner by the European Commission. Tremaglia hastily conveyed his public condolences to Buttiglione for his having been turned down by the "culattoni" or "bum-boys" of Europe. Readers, this is all true!