ITALY:Bring on Mr Bean. Nothing quite sums up so accurately the current air of frustration, anger and disenchantment felt by Italians about their politicians as the fact that an online movement led by a comedian has developed into a serious challenge for mainstream political parties, on the right and even more so the left.
The man at the head of this movement is comedian Beppe Grillo, someone who has long cocked a snook at politicians, holding them to account for their administrative incompetence, corruption and excessive privileges. Twenty years ago, he had the audacity on live TV to attack the late disgraced socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi, asking how come he had taken with him, at taxpayers' expense, a 50-strong delegation on an official visit to China.
That "impertinence" nearly cost Grillo his career since he has been unofficially banned from the airwaves ever since. However, he neither lay down nor went away. Using his blog (www.beppegrillo.it, available in English), his travelling roadshow and wit, the comedian has touched on the most controversial issues in public life, from the €14 billion collapse of dairy giant Parmalat through to the "conflict of interests" embodied by centre-right opposition leader, media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi.
Two years ago, Grillo caused a major rumpus in Italy when he took out a full-page advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, highlighting the fact the Italian parliament's Lower House contained no fewer than 23 deputies convicted for crimes including bribery, perjury, income tax evasion, receipt of kick-backs and other forms of corruption. If there is another country out there with the same sort of political class, we would like to twin with them, he said.
Ten days ago, Grillo was at it again, organising a hugely successful V Day, in which the "V" stands not for victory but rather for the extremely rude expression vaffanculo (f-ck off). More than 332,000 people attending 250 simultaneous V rallies up and down Italy signed a petition, calling for new legislation that would: (a) prohibit convicted criminals from standing for parliament; (b) limit a parliamentarian to two terms of office; and (c) create an electoral system whereby the electorate votes only for named, individual candidates, rather than those imposed after the election by the party hierarchies.
Just as the political establishment was busy trying to assess the significance of V Day, Grillo pounced again, announcing last weekend that his blog would back candidates for next spring's local elections if they fulfilled his criteria of transparency and had no ties to established parties. The guru of "anti-politics" would seem to be about to enter politics full steam ahead.
Grassroots, popular protest movements are nothing new in Italian politics. Five years ago, art-house film director Nanni Moretti led a movement called the Girotondi, initially highly critical of the left-wing establishment. They then went on to organise symbolic "ring-a-ring-a-rosy" type protests throughout Italy, many of them criticising legislation then being introduced by the Berlusconi government. However, the movement eventually disbanded and faded out of public life.
Doubtless, the established parties are hoping that the Grillo movement will meet a similar fate. That may not be the case. One of this summer's best-selling books (more than 800,000 copies have been sold) has been La Casta (The Caste), a book that denounces the overpaid, overprivileged and legally protected lifestyle of Italian politicians.
Grillo may well have touched on a very sore nerve: "Anyone who watches TV is just hoping that one of the floor managers will walk up to [foreign minister] D'Alema or to the psycho-dwarf and whisper to him in his ear - the party's over, stop making a show of yourself," wrote Grillo in his blog yesterday.
Is Mr Bean about to take charge?