Opinion of Mario Monti

[Antonio the Sixth]

Mixed, but I tilt FF for liberating us from Berlusconi (probably for good!), and more generally for being a honest and good-willing man who views his country's interests above politicking and personal gains - which is extremely rare in modern Italian politics. His policies remain tragically misguided.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's not even like all of his policies were bad, actually. He did a lot of things which were really long overdues for Italy (like starting to crack down on tax evasion, only to cite one). And I'm sure that, had he not had the PdL's thorn in his side, I'm sure he would have tried something serious against corruption. He's also been a principled Europeist and wasn't afraid to stand against Merkel and push for Euro-bonds and pro-growth policies (so no, he's not Merkel's lackey in any way).

He's just a right-winger, a right-winger of the right kind. Western countries are so used of having demagogues, crooks or ideologues as right-wing politicians that they have forgot there is nothing inherently right-wing about these things.