Bertinotti Resigns As Rainbow Left Reaches End of Line

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

Bertinotti Resigns As Rainbow Left Reaches End of Line

Disastrous night for Italy’s Left as workers celebrate with Northern League.

“Find the brown bear JJ3”, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio ordered not so long ago. There followed a media release to make it known that the minister of the environment had “set up discussion tables with a number of Alpine countries” and was anxiously enquiring into the whereabouts of the animal, which had disappeared from the Adamello park. Yesterday, however, Mr Pecoraro Scanio had other problems: like the brown bear, the radical Left has disappeared. Communists and greens have vanished, at least from parliament. They do not have a single senator or deputy, or at least that’s how it was looking as the most excruciating, awful night in the history of Italy’s Left drew in. In the stunned eyes of the Rainbow people, the night was made even blacker by the triumph of Silvio Berlusconi, the impressive gains of the Northern League and the hard-to-refute claim of its secretary, Umberto Bossi: “The workers have voted for the Northern League”. Pause for effect: “The workers don’t vote for the Left any more. The Northern League is the new workers’ party”.

It’s not easy to raise a quizzical eyebrow, shrug your shoulders or make jokes about it. Mr Bossi’s claim is backed up by the figures. Take the province of Vicenza. It’s an industrial province, an area of engineering and manufacturing that for decades voted Christian Democrat. It was “marian” and “bisaglian” in the sense that it supported Mariano Rumor and Toni Bisaglia. It was loyal to Monsignor Carlo Zinato, the bishop whom Camilla Cederna nicknamed “La Wandissima” because of his penchant for showboating. Yet even in those days, the Left managed to hang on to a few strongholds. At every election. But yesterday’s figures are unequivocal. What a stab to the heart they must be for Fausto Bertinotti, who took up office as leader of the Chamber of Deputies by dedicating his victory “to working women and men”. The Northern League outstripped the Rainbow Left at Valdagno by 30% to 2.1% – in a town where forty years ago rioters pulled down the statue to industrialist Gaetano Marzotto. The League also eclipsed the Left in Schio, with its Lanerossi factories, by 25% to 2.6%, and destroyed it at Arzignano, where the mayor is Centre-left, by 37% to 1.5%. The Left was annihilated in the two blue-collar towns of Chiampo (41% to 0.9%) and San Pietro Mussolino, where the local electorate, largely made up of factory workers and their families, gave Umberto Bossi an amazing 49.8% of the vote and the grouping that somewhat presumptuously calls itself the “only Left” a miserable 0.6%.

Of course, Messrs Bertinotti, Pecoraro and Diliberto could look for crumbs of encouragement in other parts of Italy. History has provided us with some wonderful examples of disasters passed off as blips. How can we forget the immortal words of Christian Democrat Vito Napoli? As his party was swept off the board in the disastrous municipal elections of 1993, he observed: “We have lost Rome, Milan, Naples, Venice and Palermo but there are encouraging signs. I’m referring to our successes at Gerace, Pizzo Calabro and Praia a Mare”. Nor can we forget Rocco Buttiglione’s CDU colleague, Maurizio Ronconi, who after the party had taken a thrashing said: “The electorate has given Valfabbrica back to the Pole, despite the presence of a disturbance list. And with Valfabbrica we have gained Parrano and Attigliano”. Never before, however, have we seen an entire political area vanish as if it had been swallowed up by the very earth. Only two years ago, Communist Refoundation (PRC) won 5.8% of the vote, the Italian Communists (CI) 2.3% and the Greens more than 2%. In all, they totalled 10.2%. Then came the 2004 European elections, when the radical Left garnered more than 11%. In fact, there was no speech, debate or political encounter in which, after Silvio Berlusconi’s well-attended public rallies, one or other radical Left politician omitted to refer to the opinion polls that gave the Left overall about 13%.

Only a few months ago, when what was still the majority was enduring the worst of its Budget-driven frictions, Fabio Mussi threatened: “We are a massive force, so if no heed is paid to our proposals, it will be a serious mistake, a very serious mistake”. A few weeks ago, journalists asked “subcomandante” Fausto Bertinotti: “For you, would the 8.7% vote for the united Left in Germany be a victory or a defeat?” The Rainbow Left leader replied: “We have high ambitions. Never put limits to Red Providence”. Five parties, mini-parties and micro-parties presented themselves at the election waving the hammer and sickle flag, despite Mr Bertinotti’s explanation that Communism in the alliance would be a “cultural faction”. Voters failed to take even one of the five seriously and as a result there has been an incredible sea change. For the first time in history since the fall of the Fascist dictatorship, Italy’s parliament will not have a single “red” sitting on its benches, from where even the birth of the constitution was greeted by a gaggle of red shirts. “It’s a clear defeat of clear proportions, and that makes it all the more painful”, explained Mr Bertinotti, announcing that his role “ends here”.

Even before the gloomiest predictions could come true, the Left was already, predictably, torn by arguments, jibes, insults, venomous outbursts and accusations of guilt. Needless to say, it was not on the scale of past purges, when Antonio Roasio kept files on party members who had fled to Russia to find out whether they deserved to be taken to the Taganka prison or subjected to the “kista”, the self-confession of errors that was demanded at the Frattocchie party cadre school to bolster the communist spirit. But it will be a long process, fraught with difficulties. The truth is that this tetchy, daydreaming, belligerently pacifist Left, which in recent years has said no to high speed trains, wind power, peace mission, pension reform and almost everything else, has lost on all fronts. It has been kicked out at Taranto, where only a year ago, astonishingly, it won the municipal elections after the now-resurgent Right collapsed by 46%. It has lost in the rest of Puglia, which had voted Nichi Vendola into the presidency of the region. It has lost in Sicily, where Rita Borsellino was running. It has lost in Campania, where regional president Franco Bassolino’s policies have been buried under the rubble. And it has lost in Piedmont, despite its opposition to high speed trains in Val di Susa. As the Left glumly folds away its flags, Silvio Berlusconi, Gianfranco Fini and above all Umberto Bossi smile triumphantly in the background among the celebrating workers that the Left can no longer reach.

Gian Antonio Stella

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