democracia representativa?

"The Italian Parliament has long been a three-ring circus, but events of the past days have been so outrageous as to lead the president to upbraid its leaders for 'intolerable' conduct (...) In heated debate Wednesday, the defense minister told the speaker of the lower house to go do something to himself that cannot be printed in this newspaper. When the defense minister and the environment minister left the Parliament, protesters hurled coins at them, calling them thieves. The next day a member of the center-right governing coalition called an opposition politician who uses a wheelchair a 'stupid cripple', and the normally calm justice minister threw his electronic voting card out into the opposition, angry that he had been too late to vote. On Thursday evening, President Giorgio Napolitano took the rare step of calling political leaders to a meeting where he reminded them that he could dissolve Parliament and call early elections", ontem no "International Herald Tribune" (página 4).

Um belo retrato do estado da democracia parlamentar nos países católicos: uma feira de vaidades. E que, em Itália como em Portugal, está a caminho, felizmente, de uma democracia directa e presidencialista. Só falta um Presidente!