“We can do it alone” is the latest rallying cry to be heard in Italy as economists and politicians shower Mario Monti with proposals to use the country’s own vast but often dormant resources to slash its debt mountain rather than become hostage to the perceived diktat of Germany and Brussels.
Initiatives range from the patriotically modest to politically opportunist. But they add up to a crescendo of protests that the prime minister will find hard to ignore as he considers giving up sovereignty in exchange for the uncertain outcome of intervention to prop up Italy’s debt by euro zone bailout funds and the European Central Bank .
The latest proposal was registered in parliament on Tuesday by two center-left MPs — Giulio Santagata and Giacomo Portas — who believe Italians can be persuaded out of the national good to pay some of their taxes in advance.
“Before we end up like the Greeks we want to show we are able to save ourselves,” Santagata, a former minister and convinced European, told the Financial Times.
While he recognizes that this measure alone would not solve Italy’s debt problem nor is likely to become law, he is hopeful that it will spur the government into action.
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