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©
Geoff Andrews 2008
In the end, it was
Silvio Berlusconi who produced the surprises. The leader of the Popolo delle
Libertà (People of Freedom) coalition managed to overcome age, an absurd
electoral system, and the economic failures of his 2001-06 government to
secure a clear majority in both houses in Italy's general election of 13-14
April 2008. He was helped by the powerful surge of the Lega Nord (Northern
League), which doubled its representatives in parliament, and by the catastrophic
performance of the "rainbow" left-green alliance, which failed to get even
a single member elected to either house. As he prepares to return to the
prime ministership for a third time, the great political showman has promised
a new phase of stable government that will last the full five-year term.
Indeed, amongst the mix of narrow provincialism and pompous hyperbole that
characterises Italy's discredited political class - La Caste, as Sergio
Rizzo & Gianantonio Stella have described it - there is a palpable collective
sigh of relief that the country has at least produced a government with
a clear majority. The argument is that the election outcome - a clear victory
for one side, fewer parties represented in parliament, and the beginnings
of "bipartisanship" - will bring much needed stability and unity. Even Walter
Veltroni, the vanquished leader of the Democratic Party, appears to view
the election result as a partial victory. His party, which polled marginally
better than the L'Ulivo coalition (composed of the same groups which contested
the previous election in April 2006), has welcomed the demise of the rainbow
left as a prerequisite to "normal" politics, and has joined other politicians
and commentators in Italy who have proclaimed the dawn of an era of political
stability. Italy, the argument runs, will prove governable after all.
After the verdict
In fact, the election result promises nothing of the kind. Italy's stability
cannot be reduced to a senate majority and more clearly delineated parties
and coalitions - which are themselves dependent upon complex and contrasting
political identities. Moreover, Italy's urgent need is a new national settlement
based on fundamental institutional reforms to allow transparency and legality
- and to facilitate urgently needed economic renewal; in no way can the
new political landscape in itself deliver this. In addition, Berlusconi
is driven by quite different values than such wishful thinking implies,
and it is unlikely that he will enter into serious negotiations with Veltroni
on Italy's public interests. His new government will be dependent on the
Northern League, which will strengthen its demands for fiscal federalism;
remain hostile to Rome and the south; and display a vicious xenophobia towards
Italy's immigrants. The democratic forces which might have resisted these
developments are thus in danger of missing the significance of the election
result, which has moreover left them seriously divided as well as even more
weakened. There will be no green representation in either house of the new
Italian parliament; no members of the small "democratic left" group (which
had refused to join the Democratic Party); and no communists (a fact apparently
celebrated by Walter Veltroni - who owes his thirty-year political career
to the former Italian Communist Party (PCI) - even more than Berlusconi).
But Veltroni's wider response to the election result appears to misread
the electoral geography. He wanted to be rid of Rifondazione Comunista (the
refuseniks who scorned the PCI's transformation into social democrats) and
other leftists in order to win support in the centre and thus entrench bipartisan
politics. But there is no "radical centre" in Italy, apart from Antonio
Di Pietro's Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values), which saw its vote rise...to
5%. In order to challenge Berlusconi's coalition, Veltroni will have to
court the voters of the Union of Christian Democrats - the party closest
to its old-style predecessor; but if he attempts this he will lose support
in his own ranks. The problems Francesco Rutelli [12] (culture minister
in Romano Prodi's outgoing government) is encountering in succeeding Veltroni
as Rome's mayor (despite being endorsed by the football star Francesco Totti)
is an early warning of this problem; the contest with his post-fascist opponent
Gianni Alemanno has gone to a second, run-off ballot on 27-28 April after
many leftwing voters, uninspired by Rutelli's candidature, stayed at home
in the first round.
Inside the crisis
The crisis of governability will thus remain, the new political majorities
notwithstanding. Much of Italy is already deeply compromised. As many as
one third of all Calabrians are thought to be connected in some way to the
local mafia, the 'Ndrangheta; while the piles of rubbish on the streets
of Naples during the long strike were connected to the economic interests
of the Camorra, which controls refuse collection in the city. The outgoing
governor of Sicily, Savatore "Totò" Cuffaro, who in January 2008 was found
guilty of mafia favours and banned from office for five years, will shortly
take up his position as an elected member of the senate. In these circumstances,
even Silvio Berlusconi's choice of ministers - Franco Frattini is the probable
next foreign minister, with some other more redolent of the harder right
- seems far less important than his lack of concern with the public interest
and the very integrity of the state. There is little to suggest any change
in Berlusconi's determination to ignore constitutional procedures, to conflate
his private interests with those of the country, or to indulge the wider
culture of illegality that has clouded his era. Indeed, much of Italy's
economic stagnation is due to the power of organised crime and private cartels,
and Berlusconi's economic solutions are likely to give a green light to
tax evasion and the power of mafia clans. This election itself leaves questions
yet to be resolved: in the campaign's latter stages, it was reported that
Marcello Dell'Utri, Berlusconi's longstanding ally (who helped launch Forza
Italia and who has subsequently been found guilty of mafia collaboration)
attempted to organise the forging of ballot papers in the elections for
Italians living in Latin America. In this respect, the situation in which
Italy finds itself as Berlusconi takes power for the third time is worse
than when he started out in 1994. Then, as Ida Dominijanni has pointed out,
"it was a novelty...it was a vote in search of miracles. Today, it is a
vote in search of stability" (see Per la razza e il portafoglio, Il Manifesto,
15 April 2008). The reality that Italians have entrusted the nation's "stability"
to a "strong leader" prepared to abuse the power entrusted to him and to
seek (together with his post-fascist and xenophobic allies) authoritarian
solutions to Italy's problems suggests that the election marks the deepening
of Italy's crisis.
Into the night
The very legitimacy of the Italian state is in question. "What has become
of politics in Italy", the journalist Alvaro Ranzoni told me, is that it
has been reduced to "a way of giving and receiving favours of all kinds
and at every level. This is not a democracy as we have known it in Europe,
but similar to what happens in South America." This state-level predicament
will surely deepen in the coming months as Berlusconi's third government
establishes itself. Italy's political class, corrupt and untouchable, will
become further remote from the citizens, creating increased support for
the "anti-politics" represented by the comic blogger Beppe Grillo and others.
Many Italians - above all a vocal and still sizeable left now without parliamentary
representation - will now feel politically alienated, at a moment of deepening
social and economic tension. Berlusconi has forecast "tough times", but
he will be under pressure to deliver quickly - which will increase the temptation
that incendiary rhetoric (such as implying that immigrants constituted an
"army of evil") will be turned into action. The coming period may echo some
of the worst aspects of the 1970s - when the state was in the hands of dark
forces and the country was seriously polarised and disfigured by terrorism.
In foreign affairs, the relationship between Berlusconi and his old friend
Vladimir Putin - now Russian prime minister, and the first to congratulate
Il cavaliere on his victory - will be worth watching; they are already meeting
in Sardinia on 17-18 April. They have much in common: a concern with concentrated
power (Berlusconi never accepted his defeat in the 2006 election, and he
can be expected to reach for the presidency of the Italian republic at some
stage); a dependency on close political allies with mafia connections; a
contempt for constitutional structures; and a willingness to demonise and
undermine their opponents. Walter Veltroni continues to talk of a "new season"
in Italian politics. The phrase is as vacuous as the centre-left dawn he
expected proved false. Italy instead is moving into the political night.
Silvio Berlusconi's election is bad enough; but worse is to come.
First published on Open Democracy website http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/democracy_power/politics_protest/italys_hour_of_darkness
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