Italy's Center-Left Government Near Collapse Despite Advent of New Party

[Strengthandhonour]

Italy's Center-Left Government Near Collapse Despite Advent of New Party


Erica Alini | 04 Oct 2007
World Politics Review Exclusive

ROME -- A design to create a unified party of the center-left in Italy risks undermining the very government it supports and is unlikely to appease Italians, who are increasingly disgruntled with the political status quo in their country.

The new Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) will officially be born on Oct. 14, when Italians will choose the party's leadership and constituent assembly in nationwide primary elections. But many fear that the baptism of the new center-left party will be the last rites for Prodi and his troubled government.

Italy's fractious ruling coalition, lead by Prime Minister Romano Prodi, has seemed to be on the verge of collapse several times since it won the elections in April 2006. Many Italians, dissatisfied with the previous reform-shy conservative government, had hoped Prodi would bring about a much-needed change in the state of politics and the economy. But the election of the center-left was no turning point. Forced to bargain with a multitude of political allies, the government has been unable to undertake the bold reforms it promised during the election campaign.

The Democratic Party (DP) is aimed at bringing stability to the riotous government majority by merging, among others, the two main parties of the Italian moderate left, the catholic Margherita and the socialist Democratici di Sinistra. However, its looming birth has scared a constellation of minor political allies who helped build the government's majority in Parliament.

"The birth of the DP will upset the existing power balance in the coalition, and smaller parties are afraid that they will no longer have access to policymaking," says Marco Tarchi, who teaches political science at the University of Florence. If smaller allies bid farewell, the center-left government would lose the required majority of 160 in the Senate and capitulate.

However, even if it doesn't scare away its smaller allies, the newborn DP could unintentionally crack its own coalition by creating a two-headed leadership of the center-left. Polls show that Walter Veltroni, mayor of Rome and the prime candidate for the DP leadership, will have the blessing of a 60 percent margin of victory over other candidates at the October primaries. Veltroni's rising political star risks overshadowing an already weak and unpopular Prodi, who is busy with keeping his allies together in the process of getting a highly controversial state budget ratified by the Parliament. Even though Veltroni has repeatedly pledged undying loyalty to the incumbent prime minister, there's a real risk that his election as party leader will de-legitimize Prodi in the eyes of the public, experts say.

In the event of snap elections, it seems unlikely that the novelty of the DP will convince Italians to vote the center-left back into power. "If the government falls any time soon, it will be very difficult for whatever future leader of the DP to erase the loser image of the center-left coalition," says Tarchi. The majority would then go the center-right, headed by former prime minister and flamboyant media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.

A recent poll published by the moderate daily Corriere della Sera found that support for the coalition government has sunk to 42.1 percent, while that of the opposition has risen to 56.1 percent. However, in another Corriere article, pollster Renato Mannheimer warned that the gap may actually be smaller than it now appears, as "all executives of both the left and the right that have succeeded each other in this country lived through some tormented, sometimes dramatic weeks before the ratification of the state budget law."

But growing dissatisfaction with the state of politics goes well beyond fallout over ratification of the state budget. "The Caste," a journalistic inquiry-turned-book by reporters Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella, which examines corruption and waste in the Italian political class, has hit record sales for non-fiction in Italy, with nearly 1 million copies sold within four months of publication.

And the tide of popular malcontent continues to rise. In early September, 200,000 Italians gathered in Bologna for a choral derision of the political elite orchestrated by popular political satirist Beppe Grillo. "We don't want to erase politics," Grillo told an enthusiastic crowd "we want another politics."

Although the comedian targeted the entire political class indiscriminately, he told Italian daily La Stampa that "[Italians] understand that this center-left coalition is worse than the right." In fact, polls show that Grillo's invectives eroded support for the center-left more than for the center-right.

Some wonder if the newborn DP could upset the center-left disadvantage in the polls by presenting itself as a novelty with grassroots legitimacy (conferred by the primaries), and could thereby quench many dissatisfied voters' thirst for change. But it appears DP promoters have failed to seize the opportunity. The more than 4,000 candidates contesting the October primaries look like a perfect reproduction of "the caste" of fossilized politicians derided by Rizzo, Stella and Grillo: Virtually none of the DP candidates are new to politics or under the age of 40.

But there are some reasons the DP can hope. As a broad political entity with moderate leanings, the new party could win the favor of the right-leaning Catholics who are uncomfortable in Berlusconi's embrace. That would allow the left to form a government majority without relying on the radical left, which has stubbornly vetoed all the boldest reforms put forward by the present government.

If that happens, the DP could be the key to achieving greater labor-market flexibility, cuts in public expenses and all such reforms that economists deem necessary to revitalizing the Italian economy. But, says Tarchi, "Italians no longer believe that this political class can in any way bring improvements, no matter what."

Erica Alini is a graduate student at Georgetown University and currently a researcher at the Associated Press in Rome.

source: World Politics Review | Italy\'s Center-Left Government Near Collapse Despite Advent of New Party