Piero Marrazzo

The president of the Lazio region, Piero Marrazzo, a former television journalist who was elected in 2005 on the ticket of a center-left coalition called the Unione (today superseded by the Partito Democratico) stepped down from office yesterday after it became known he had paid blackmail to four carabiniere policemen who last July filmed him half dressed in the apartment of a transsexual named Natalie. Some news reports said there was also cocaine in the apartment. The four carabinieri have been arrested and are currently in Rome's Regina Coeli prison.

Marazzo, 51, and married to another TV journalist, first denied the story and then admitted it, attributing his actions to personal weaknesses, and said he had paid the money (reportedly four checks amounting to a total of 80,000 euros about $120,000) because he was frightened that his career would be ruined. Again reportedly, the checks were never cashed but he still could be liable for submitting to extortion which is a crime here.

Italian newspapers are having a heyday with the story, as usual doing a lot of embroidering which makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction. But understandably they are comparing the scandal with Berlusconi's encounter with at least one prostitute last fall in his Rome residence. The leftist and left-leaning papers say at least Marrazzo did the right thing and stepped down, which Berlusconi didn't do. But you can bet that traditional Italy is likely to be much more tolerant with a politician having trysts with women (Berlusconi claims - and this may be true - that he didn't know the woman had been given money) then someone who is seeing a transsexual who may still have male sexual organs.

Some articles also claim that he went to visit Natalie in his official car, having himself dropped off nearby. All of which means that the man may well be a total idiot who deserves his downfall. It reminds me of the Bill Clinton mess. An ambitious politician who is on top of the world and cannot control his sexual impulses. Or else men who rise to power are so over confident they really think they are allowed to do whatever they want and are convinced they can get away with it. Of course, Marrazzo is no Bill Clinton. But how stupid can you be at a time when the head of the Italian government is being raked over the coals for his own sexual behaviour and his supporters can only rejoice now that a leftist is up to his neck in it. And this only six months away from new regional elections.

One particularly ironic aspect to all this is that Marrazzo's trysts with Natalie in Rome' s Via Gradoli took place in the same low-income apartment building where in 1978 former Prime Minister Aldo Moro was held for nearly two months by his Red Brigades captors before they murdered him. A good place for a politician to avoid, dontcha think?