← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Nov 03, 2011
00:28:05
Silvio Berlusconi attends the G20 meeting in Cannes amid mounting alarm in Italy about...
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Hello, this is from our own correspondent, a download from the BBC. For a sneak preview of our programme, you can join our feed on Twitter. And there's a daily airing of from our own correspondent on the BBC World Service. But now the latest edition as broadcast on BBC Radio 4. And it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, Silvio Berlusconi is in Cannes talking about austerity. But at home, the demands for him to step down grow ever louder. There's concern about intimidation of the media in Liberia ahead of an election run off. Next week, we talk to one of China's new breed of super rich, proud of his country's history. He seems less certain about its future. And we may have said no to pig's feet, but we still emerge from the market in Cork with a feast fit for a queen. The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi held a crisis meeting with senior ministers in Rome last night amid mounting alarm about the country's debt problems. This morning, he's in Cannes, where the G20 meeting of World leaders is expected to take a break from discussions about Greece to hear Mr. Berlusconi give further details of the austerity measures he plans for his country. Earlier, the Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, took the unusual step of issuing a public statement urging Mr. Berlusconi to implement those reforms without delay. Manuela Saragossa has been talking to Italians who've lost faith in their prime minister and feel he should resign.
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Italians call it fare una bella figura. Roughly translated, it means cutting a fine figure, looking good. It's not just about polished shoes, tidy hair and sharp suits, though. It's also about what you say and how you carry yourself. And lately, many Italians worry that their bella figura has taken a beating on the international stage. It's a topic that comes up over lunch with extended family in our home town of Cassino, just off the toll road that connects Rome to Naples. Some 20 of us, uncles, aunts and cousins are meeting up at the apartment of cousin Vittorio. It's a warm autumn Sunday, and the French doors to the balcony are open, chiffon curtains billowing gently in the breeze. From here, you can see the Abbey of Monte Cassino gazing down on the town below from its peak on the surrounding mountains. Tucking into his antipasti, Vittorio offers me a drink. What do they say about us over there? He asks. It's a question that will be put to me more than once on this visit as the foreigner in the family, the anglicised Italian living and working in London, it's presumed I have the inside line. On the outside view. They want to know if Emma Marchegallia, the president of Italy's largest employers association, Confindustria, was right. She warned recently that Mr. Berlusconi's diplomatic gaffes and sex scandals, the infamous bunga bunga parties, and allegations involving prostitutes were making Italy the world's laughing stock. For Vittorio, though, there's little to laugh about. His two daughters are now teenagers looking towards their future jobs have always been hard to come by in this part of Italy, a third of 15 to 24 year olds can't find employment. With the Italian economy looking to its EU partners for financial support, what Mr. Berlusconi says and does has become more than just a matter of bella figura. Yet Italians keep voting for him. Only a few days earlier, the prime minister's candidates won a regional election in the poor and rural southern region of Molise. It's the pensioners. They keep supporting him, says my retired uncle Enrico over a plate of fresh clam and parsley spaghetti. Aunt Cristina, in her 70s and matriarch of the family, shakes her head. It's not just the pensioners, you know, she says, jabbing at the air with her fork. It's a macho thing. So many Italians think he's all man. She practically spits out the last word. This, after all, is a country that voted a pawn star into parliament back in the 1980s. Embarrassing politics, Vittorio says, should be nothing new for Italians. There's no credible alternative, you know, says Aunt Christina. The opposition is divided in Italy, she argues. People go into politics for financial gain, not conviction. She points to the generous pay and pensions of those in office. It's a sore issue, not least because Mr. Berlusconi, under pressure from EU partners, is now proposing to reform the pension system by raising the retirement age as a way of curbing public spending. My cousin Livia arrives just in time to join us for coffee. She teaches at a secondary school in Cassino, just down the road from where we are having our family get together. She has some 30 pupils per class, but struggles to get teaching materials. There isn't enough money to make photocopies, she says. There are only two overhead projectors for a school with hundreds of students. The school toilets have been broken since the beginning of the year, and there is no money to fix them. We go in there at the end of every day with buckets of water to flush everything away, she shrugs, with more cutbacks being demanded by those seeking to bring Italy's huge public debt under control, the toilets aren't likely to be fixed anytime soon. Culture doesn't put food on the table, Mr. Berlusconi's finance minister is reported to have said recently. Livia gives me a wry smile as she sips her coffee. That's the sort of philosophy we have to work with these days, she says. It's all a far cry from Italy's cult of Bella Figura.
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And that's Manuela Saragossa. The G20 meeting in Cannes is also looking at the possibility of raising cash from China to bail out the beleaguered eurozone. The proposals caused alarm bells to ring. There are questions about what sort of concessions would be offered to China in return. Beijing, the Financial Times boomed on Monday, will exact a price proportional to the desperation exuded by Europeans. These days, a lot of Chinese money is in private hands. Two recently published rich lists show there's a growing number of billionaires. Michael Bristow's been having lunch with a steel tycoon who's one of the country's new super rich.
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Ding Ligou commands his steel empire from an eight floor office block in Beijing, but not from its top floor that's occupied by a Tibetan monk hired by Mr. Ding to spend his days chanting Buddhist prayers. Dressed in orange and crimson robes, he sits in a mock up temple surrounded by the smell of incense and antique furniture. It's not what I expect to find in the office of a business tycoon, particularly one who now serves in a communist government. A few years ago it invited this famous businessman to become a member of the country's parliament. Having his own monk would have blocked Mr. Ding's advance and probably landed him in jail just a few decades ago. Not now, though. The temple doesn't take up the whole of the eighth floor. Elsewhere there are more traditional signs of a successful businessman. Easy chairs and expensive alcohol, champagne and cognac suggest relaxing evenings not spent in religious meditation. I'm on the 8th floor because I'm waiting for the 40 year old to finish a meeting organizing a company that's built on the production of hot rolled steel coils. This business has made Mr. Ding one of the wealthiest people in China. He came from an ordinary family, but his personal fortune is now estimated at more than £130 million. When he arrives, the young looking businessman apologises for making me wait. I'm here to ask him about his efforts to ban the sale of shark's fin soup and an expensive Chinese delicacy that's pushing some shark species towards extinction. His opposition to the trade is based on his Buddhism, a religion that gives respect to all living creatures. But he also seems to think there's something a little crass about the behaviour of many of China's newly rich the people buying shark's fin soup. Materialism is well advanced here, he says, but people's quality has not developed as quickly. Quality is a word used in China to describe someone's moral character and people often talk about others as being of low quality. When the interview's over, Ding Ligu asks me to stay for lunch. We eat it next to his Buddhist temple. The monk's gone to another room to check his mobile phone. Mr. Ding can afford to eat anything he wants, but he serves up simple food, a canteen style. Meals served on steel trays roll rice, vegetables, meat and tofu. We eat and chat. Mr. Ding tells me about his political role, which doesn't seem to interest him that much. Fortunately, he's not asked to do an awful lot. China's parliament meets just once a year. Its members do little more than turn up, support the government and then go back to their usual day jobs. After lunch, he invites me to look around his private office to two floors below the monks. Soft carpets, a bedroom for late nights and expensive antiques catch my eye. There's a model horse more than a thousand years old in a glass case and a complete set of very delicate looking armour from the Ming dynasty. Mr. Ding jabs a finger at the leatherwork, miraculously still intact after all these years. This businessman is obviously proud of his country's history, but other comments suggest he's not so sure about its future. He has five children. Their portraits adorn a table in his private office. I feel a little awkward pointing out that most couples in China are limited to just one child, so I don't mention it. But I can't help wondering how he's got round this rule. Mr. Ding's oldest children go to Haro, an international school in Beijing that's linked to the famous British private school. His eldest is about to go to university in America. Mr. Ding, it seems, prefers to trust foreigners with his children's education. I'm reminded of a recent survey that suggests a large proportion of China's wealthy people would like to emigrate. China's where they made their money, but the west is where they want to spend it. The fact that extremely wealthy businessmen like Ding Liguo exist at all in China is a talking point. After all, this is still a country that claims to be socialist and that traces its reason for being back to Marx, Engels and Lenin. Mr. Ding's opinions, the things he spends his money on, his religion all show how far China's changed over the last few decades. But with millions of people in China still struggling to survive and a widening wealth gap, not everyone welcomes the arrival of China's super rich. Even so, many want the chance to emulate them. The government's future success will depend largely on its ability to give them that opportunity.
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Michael Bristow in Beijing, Africa's first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is fighting for re election in Liberia after failing to get enough support in the first round of voting. Ma Ellen, as she's known, goes into a run off next week against Winston Tubman. Sirleaf may have a good record on ridding the country of its foreign debt and attracting outside investment, but frustration over a lack of jobs and a lackluster fight against corruption seem to be costing her support. Nevertheless, in her six years in power, Liberia has experienced its first taste of press freedom after decades of censorship and intimidation. But Thomasin Ford, who's in Liberia during this tense election period, says in recent weeks there have been several attacks on and threats against Liberian journalists.
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People are in the streets singing and dancing. Motorbike drivers, sometimes carrying as many as four passengers, are racing up and down the roads, horns blaring. Street sellers, taking advantage of the crowds, are plying their wares bananas, groundnuts and pouches of cold water. They have been waiting for hours for their hero, the world football legend George Weah. He's the vice presidential candidate for the main opposition party, the CDC Congress for Democratic Change. Winston Tubman is running for president on the same ticket today. They're on their way here to Ganta in the northeast of Liberia to campaign, and the excitement is mounting. They're coming. Someone shouts. Suddenly, everyone rushes to see the convoy arrive. But in the mayhem, a man gets knocked down by one of the CDC cars. A Liberian journalist starts taking pictures of him lying on the ground covered in blood. This will be the story in all the papers tomorrow. I join the other journalists by the podium where the visitors will speak. And it's here where I see first hand attempts to stifle the press. George Weah beckons the journalist with the camera over and with Tubman's nodding approval, threatens him, forcing him to delete the photos or else deal with his security men. This incident may seem small when taking into account Liberia's history of clamping down on the press, but it's a worrying sign of what a possible future president of the country thinks is appropriate. Under former leaders for decades, media houses were not only shut down, they were burned and their staff were flogged or killed. Journalists were forced to go undercover or into exile under Ma Ellen. While there have still been incidences involved involving threats and beatings, Liberia has enjoyed its first taste of press freedom in its history. Front page stories involving official corruption or allegations of wrongdoing are commonplace. Radio stations hold phone ins no longer afraid to be critical of their president. While some people in positions of power still feel they have the authority to order reporters what to write and what not to write, the level of press freedom in this West African nation is unprecedented. So when I had a chance to interview Winston Tubman a few weeks later on what this incident I witnessed in Ganta could mean for the future of press freedom in Liberia, I, along with a few other reporters, jumped at the chance. We waited for hours for the presidential candidate at his hotel at another campaign trail spot in the southeast of the country in the city of Zwedruh. After initially denying the incident ever took place, he went on to say how civil liberties were not what the guys on the street were calling for. He said they wanted better roads, health care and education. And after that they would focus on press freedom. Can they not be achieved at the same time? Maybe not under a CDC government. So the issues of press freedom and civil liberties were thrust into the public debate. Radio stations aired the interview. Newspapers ran editorials in response. Even the president was asked to comment on what she thought of Tubman's statement. But all of this hasn't stopped further attacks and threats on journalists. A radio station thought to be pro CDC was petrol bombed. The home of a prominent radio presenter was robbed at gunpoint. He works at a media house supported by the ruling Unity Party. At least one Liberian journalist is now too afraid to sleep in the same place every night after receiving threatening calls from unrecognized numbers. And some now voice concerns that Liberia is slipping back into the days where reporters were controlled and too terrified to report the truth. While the most recent incidents have mainly involved the opposition party, Liberian journalists have reason to view both run off contestants warily. The Director general of the national public broadcaster was sacked after airing a press conference where George Weah made derogatory comments about President Sirleaf. As tension in Liberia increases and the runoff date looms, it seems both political parties are petrified at the thought of negative attention in the media. But for democracy and transparency to flourish in this post conflict country, surely Press freedom and civil liberties are exactly what Liberians need right now.
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That's Tammersen Ford in Liberia. Now, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf undoubtedly shows that women can reach the very top. But in the former Soviet state of Georgia, they still have a long way to go. There, it seems even now, most Georgians expect men to be head of the family, earn the money and make all the decisions. Yet the reality of life in modern Georgia is rapidly changing. But Damian McGuinness in the capital Tbilisi, says not everyone seems to have noticed.
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As we get on the bus, the driver tells me, when I'm at the wheel I cause traffic jams. Now that's not because the driver of this bus is particularly bad, but rather because she's a woman. So other cars can't help grinding to a halt to stop and stare. And in fact, Madonna Naroushvili is the only female bus driver in Georgia, a country where traditionally there's a strict division between what women do and what men do. Seeing a woman drive a bus is unusual here, explained one of the other bus drivers. They are usually just in the kitchen or in the bedroom, he added with a conspiratorial nudge and a wink. Not exactly an open minded attitude, but also not actually correct. In a recent survey, Georgians of both sexes were asked who should be the main breadwinner in a family. 83% of people said the man. But when they were asked who actually was the breadwinner of the family, the result was very different. Only 36% of people said it was the man. It's more often the case that the woman earns the main wage. That's because there's a real lack of what's seen as men's work. The heavy industry of the former Soviet Union has collapsed. Farmers lacking access to loans and equipment barely scrape a living on the land, and even the bored looking security guards you see smoking or texting on their mobile phones. Outside, expensive shops and posh cafes seem a bit superfluous, a leftover from the dangerous, crime ridden days before the rose Revolution in 2003. In today's more western orientated Georgia, where tourism is replacing agriculture and heavy industry and shopping centres are seen as the way to prosperity, the service sector is often the only place to find work. But for many proud Georgian men, standing behind a counter doesn't really fit in with the heroic, swashbuckling image they might have of themselves. So women run shops, restaurants and are always quick to set up ad hoc stalls selling snacks and cold drinks whenever there's a protest outside Parliament people here say, oh, we are chaotic and creative with our hot climate and our nice wine and no one really does much work. But that's not true. Many Georgian women seem to have a real entrepreneurial spirit, with elderly ladies in headscarves sitting in doorways, selling everything from nuts and fruit to a quick go on a set of bathroom scales for a few cents. While men are more often seen hanging round street corners chatting and smoking, something you never see women doing. They are just too busy. The traditional model of staying at home is no longer economically viable, but the image that women should cook and clean and look after kids is still very much there. So many women are left doing both. Men do sometimes help at home. One female Georgian friend told me, if there's a party, they'd organise the wine. Something which sounds much more fun than being left with the washing up at the end of the evening. So are women oppressed by their men folk? Well, not quite, if Madonna's experience is anything to go by. Back on the bus, when I asked her if men gave her a hard time for doing a man's job, she said it was actually other women who were toughest on her. They're just jealous because they see me doing what I like and they can't, she said. It seems rather than let their daughters off the hook, some mothers are loath to see them have an easier time than they do. But it's changing simply because it has to. The factories aren't coming back, but the tourists are. And after having cannily survived centuries of foreign occupation, Georgians are nothing if not flexible. So we may soon start seeing more women driving buses and maybe even a few men serving in shops.
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Damian McGuinness in Tbilisi. The Queens returned from a trip to Australia, which most commentators have judged a huge success. Now, we don't know which entrepreneurs down under might have benefited from the tour, but there's no doubt a royal visit can be good for business. Certainly that's the verdict at the so called English Market in Cork. The Queen made a much publicised visit there during her historic Irish tour in May. Since then, apparently the number of people visiting the market has gone up 20%. Established on this site in 1788, this celebrated facility has survived famine, fires, floods, world wars and revolutions, as well as economic boom and bust. Trish Flanagan's been along to sample its wares.
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There's a regal grandeur about the English Market, with its coloured tiles and bricks, cast iron pillars and ornate fountain. But there's a roughness as well here, you see, and Smell food in unadorned rawness. No layers of packaging. Put a safe distance between you and the food. Noonans boast that they sell every bit of the pig except for its squeal. There are pork skirts, corned bodices, tails, ribs, heads, hocks and crew beans or pigs feet. A local delicacy, o' Connells has a gleaming array of fish, including red snapper, Dover sole, sea bass, swordfish, ray wing and brill fishmonger. Pat o' Connell's face is synonymous with the Queen's visit. He's become a local celebrity since he was photographed sharing a joke with Her Majesty. The British ambassador asked Pat for a signed copy of the famous photo to give to the Queen. Pat says he was nervous ahead of the meeting because he didn't know how the Queen would react to the Cork sense of humour. I'd say she couldn't understand the accent, he laughs. Pat told her that he hadn't been as nervous since the day he got married 30 years ago. He told Prince Philip that the ugly monkfish was known as mother in law fish in Cork. I only then realized that it was just weeks after their grandson, Prince William had got married, he says in mock horror. Spiced beef is a Cork speciality, which attracted Prince Philip's attention. Glenn at Tom Durkin's Butchers tells me that they cure topside of beef in brine for a week and then in pimento for a few days. Although it's a traditional Cork Christmas dish, there's now a big demand for spiced beef all year round. Buttered eggs are another Cork speciality. They're the freshest you'll get, says Jerry Moynihan of Moynihan's Poultry. In the days before refrigeration, eggs were buttered. To preserve them. A coat of butter is applied as soon as the eggs are laid, which seals in the freshness and flavour. It's as if you're eating the egg straight from the nest, Gerry tells me. The cheese stalls have a dazzling display of continental and national cheeses. Irish names trip off the tongue like poetry. Ardrahan and Ardsala, Coulet and Clonmore, Gobines and Mileens. There's even buffalo mozzarella. A small herd of water buffalo was imported from Italy to Toonsbridge in West Cork a few years ago, and they're thriving. Haji Bey, an Armenian immigrant, started making Turkish delight in Cork in 1902. The tradition has recently been revived by a company in Kildare who make it using the original recipe, and it's Back on sale at the chocolate shop in the market. In recent years, other migrant communities from Africa and Europe have shaped the English market. O' Flynn's sell South African, Czech, Italian, Mexican and French gourmet sausages. I tried the Cork Boy sausage, a combination of beef, pork, thyme, onion and locally brewed Murphy Stout. Cooked to order, it's tossed onto a sizzling hot plate and served on a skewer. Delicious. Kay Hart has run the Farm Gate cafe on the first floor gallery for 18 years. She serves tripe and drisheen, yet another Cork speciality. Tripe is the lining of the stomach and drisheen is a sausage made from sheep's or cow's blood. Kaye cooks it in milk and onions the way it's been done in Cork for 250 years. I decide that it's very much an acquired taste. My highlight instead is the Golden Wonder potato, freshly dug and cooked in its jacket. Or as they say in Cork skins and all. Kaye's cafe is about simple, fresh, local produce. And she doesn't plan the menus in advance. She only installed a cold room two months ago. The market is my larder, she says. Beautiful black and white photos of her suppliers line the walls of the cafe. She recalls the Queen's visit. I remember looking over the banister at her and saying to myself, is that really the Queen of England? Under the Farm Gate Cafe, tourists line up to have their photo taken next to the plaque which the Queen unveiled to commemorate her visit. Chef Rick Stein reckons the English market is the best covered market in the UK and Ireland. It's easy to see why I leave with a full stomach and a bag laden with fresh chicken, fish, steak, eggs, bread and buffalo mozzarella. A feast of food fit for a Queen.
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Trish Flanagan at the English Market in Cork. And concluding another edition of from our own correspondent. We're back on Saturday morning at half past eleven. Why don't you join us? Goodbye.