Italy is known for mafia – the word mafia is an Italian word. Also la cucina italiana (Italian cuisine) is well-known and everybody knows pizza. Then maybe (hopefully) a little bit less known fact is that Italy is a very badly corrupted country. Every year Transparency International publishes the corruption perception index. Italy’s rank is 61!!! Finland is the second least corrupted country. Ten days ago Guardia di Finanza (Financial Guard) arrested the responsible of the healthcare system in Lombardy. Yesterday MIUR (Ministry of Education, University and Research) made a blitz to some private schools due to some irregularities.
I’m extremely surprised to read that here in Italy and in this case in Lombardy there are private schools that promise to pass the students from matriculation examination if parents pay a nice sum of money. In some schools students didn’t even go to school, but despite of their absence teachers marked them as present at school. Teachers gave positive votes automatically. This all functioned, because some families were ready to pay tangenti (bribes) to secure that their child got through the school and received a diploma. As a foreigner I’m still shocked about this – especially because one school involved in this scandal, is the school that I know pretty well. Once again I feel that I will never learn to understand this country and the Italian mentality, maybe my handicap is being grown up in the Finnish culture.
Then about 10 days ago Guardia di Finanza arrested some important politicians here in Lombardy. I also learnt that one of them lives here in our neighborhood. In this case some politicians helped their friends win some call for tenders and naturally then the politicians got some benefit from these arrangements. There was one society that won always the call for tenders in orthodontics. The police intercepted phone calls where responsible persons mentioned that the material they used was of inferior quality. They created fake waiting lists in the public healthcare system and advised patients to use the private sector.
Italy is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, Italian wines are fantastic, la cucina italiana world famous. Therefore I wonder why they want to ruin this country. There must be some historical roots in this corruption culture and I’m afraid we have to go as far as the Roman empire to find the roots. In the normal life one doesn’t see corruption or mafia (at least here in the Northern Italy). Nobody wants to corrupt me and I don’t even know how the corruption works in practice. Unfortunately after all these corruption news, I wonder should I move to another country, can I accept that corruption is widely accepted and considered as something normal. On the other hand I love this country and I don’t want to move away, but there is always this but in my mind.
hekanahoblog 