Italy's parliament was on the defensive this week after dozens of MPs were shown up as drug users and dunces by a cult TV show .
Satire show Le Iene (The Hyenas), which is famous for pranks that embarrass public officials, secretly tested 50 lawmakers for drugs .
The results showed that one in three had taken illegal drugs in the previous 36 hours, with 12 allegedly testing positive for cannabis and four for cocaine .
The report was prevented from being aired on Tuesday night by Italy's privacy authority, which controversially stepped in following protests from MPs .
But Le Iene, which goes out on former premier Silvio Berlusconi's commercial TV network Mediaset, went ahead with another report in which MPs were stopped outside parliament and quizzed on their general knowledge .
Several MPs were unable to answer a question on Darfur, with one male lawmaker responding with conviction that the conflict-torn region of Sudan was "a lifestyle, a hurried one" .
Another MP failed to answer the question "what is Guantanamo?" .
When told that it was a US terrorist prison camp, the MP said it was in "Iraq or Afghanistan" instead of Cuba .
More than one MP was convinced that former South African president and Nobel peace prize winner Nelson Mandela was from South America while another was clueless as to why he had won his Nobel .
One female MP was clearly embarrassed at her inability to say what Consob, the bourse watchdog, was .
LAWMAKERS CALL FOR ACTION .
Green Senator Gianpaolo Silvestri suggested on Wednesday that all lawmakers be given a free course in general knowledge to help remedy the situation .
"There are too many ignoramuses in parliament," he said .
Meanwhile, other politicians called for compulsory drug tests for lawmakers .
The opposition centrist, Catholic UDC party said it was working on a draft law which would introduce drug testing for all members of the House and Senate .
UDC chief and former House speaker Pierferdinando Casini said that "Italian citizens have the right to know if the lawmakers they've elected are drug addicts or not" .
The idea won the immediate backing of the opposition rightist National Alliance and hard-right MP Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, as well as several members of the centre-left Green party .
Le Iene pulled off the drug test stunt by pretending to interview MPs about next year's budget. A fake make-up artist carried out drug-wipe tests on the MPs' foreheads in a method which Le Iene said was 100% foolproof .
When the privacy regulator suspended the report on Tuesday afternoon, Le Iene protested that it would not have violated the privacy of the MPs because their faces and voices would have been masked during broadcasting .
But the regulator objected to the methods involved, saying the tests were carried out illicitly without the knowledge of the people concerned .
The authority's move created a censorship row, particularly since Le Iene was allowed to broadcast a flanking report in which the same drug tests were secretly carried out on ordinary people at a nightclub .
Of the 40 people tested, half of them showed up positive for cocaine .
Dozens of MPs protested against the regulator's decision, saying that lawmakers were being unfairly protected by the authority .
A government party, Italy of Values, said that "for years, Le Iene has used hidden cameras to show up scams by plumbers, taxi drivers and others and no one has ever asked for these items to be censored. Why should it be any different for lawmakers?" Liberal groups and MPs in favour of abolishing Italy's tough new drug laws also accused parliament of hypocrisy .
Environment Minister and Green party chief Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio said that "absurd laws have been passed which punish youngsters for smoking a joint, and then we find out that politicians are taking too much cocaine" .
Welfare Minister Paolo Ferrero, a hard leftist, triggered a storm recently when he said many politicians and other professionals took drugs, particularly cocaine .
"It's obvious that drugs circulate among (some) politicians... and perhaps that's why the drug possession thresholds set by the last government were more permissive where cocaine was concerned compared to cannabis," the minister said .
Italy's new drug laws were passed in February in one of the last acts of the previous, centre-right government .
The legislation enshrines a "zero tolerance" approach to all types of drugs, making possession of hard and soft ones a potentially criminal offence with jail terms ranging from six to 20 years for dealers .
Critics have protested strongly over the thresholds for drug possession, which they say are too low and above which a user can be prosecuted for dealing .
The centre-left government is expected to overturn the laws .
