Beyond Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi is back in power once more. Less than two years after he was ousted from office in favour of Romani Prodi's leftist L'Unione coalition in May 2006, Italian voters have granted the billionaire media magnate a third crack at the prime ministership, with sweeping majorities in both upper and lower houses at the head of his new Il Popolo della Libertà party (PdL) and his broader tripartite rightist coalition. The election produced a greatly simplified political scene, reducing the number of Italian political parties represented in parliament from 39 to 9, wiping out both the Communists and the Greens in the process. “Now we'll govern like major western democracies, with one major party in power and one major party in opposition" announced Berlusconi after the election, "With the extremists gone...we'll operate extremely quickly in parliament and get to work modernising this country.” A worthy goal, no doubt, but it is hard to believe that Berlusconi is the right man for the job. Indeed, with his hegemonic grip on Italian television, his myriad judicial entanglements and his listless previous records in government, il Cavaliere is simply unfit to lead a modern open society. Beholden to the protectionist and xenophobic elements in his coalition, his government looks set to adopt a heavy handed and populist immigration policy whilst dodging the painful reforms of which the Italian economy is in dire need.

Of course, had the new centre-left political party, the Partito Democratico (PD), instead emerged victorious after the April 14th poll, there are no guarantees that their candidate for prime minister, Walter Veltroni, would have administered enough of the structural medicines which most economists seem to prescribe to fully revive Italy's ailing economy either. But shorn of a dependence on the hard left, which had served as a check on Prodi's reforms during his latetest period in office, it is a safe bet that the PD would have pushed such an agenda with much more vigour than the current government, whose economic priority seems to be a vain attempt to save Alitalia, the dying national airline, and whose finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, blames globalisation rather than structural deficiencies for Italy's woes. There is even less doubt that had the left held onto power, Italy would now be safe from Berlusconi's promise to force unemployed foreigners into specially constituted camps. But they did not, and they suffered a further setback on April 28th when they lost the mayoralty of Rome to the post-fascist component of the PdL, the Alleanza Nazionale (AN).

Two hefty defeats in as many weeks have left Veltroni under considerable pressure. But despite a lacklustre parliamentary campaign, the Italian centre-left should probably bear with him, for an analysis of the PD's defeat gives grounds for optimism as to their medium-term prospects of power. Berlusconi's victory was not due to a groundswell of support for the PdL. It came as a result of popular disillusionment with the outgoing Prodi government, rooted in the state of the economy and its half-baked attempts to remedy it, and of the protest votes which thus accrued to the bigger of the two junior partners of the new coalition, the regionalist Lega Nord (LN). Back in power almost by default, Berlusconi is much more vulnerable than his large majorities (68 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 33 in the Senate) suggest. He will also, at 71, almost certainly not contest the next election, whether the current administration serves out its full five year term or not. Berlusconi has no coherent plan to kick-start the Italian economy, and without one he will struggle to avoid the wrath of an electorate impatient for an end to their economic decline. His coalition is held together by little more than the power of his charisma, and as his authority begins to wane - as he ages further, as the weaknesses of a lame-duck prime ministership begin to tell, and as his personal ambitions turn to securing for himself the (largely ceremonial) presidency - he will struggle to contain simmering tensions between the LN and the AN, who have long been bitter rivals divided by both ideology and clashes of personality at the top.

Patience, then, may well be rewarded for the PD. But this is not an excuse for inaction. With the far-left ousted from parliament, the PD has emerged as the national voice of the Italian left, and Veltroni has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to forge it into potent political machine. Within days of his defeat Veltroni began talks with the centrist Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e di Centro party about forming common fronts in opposition, and made clear his desire to "start discussions with those forces that have not made it into Parliament" on the far left. Whilst harnessing a broad swathe of the political spectrum behind it is probably essential if the DP are to best the right next time around, tempting both Catholic-centrists and communists over into an alliance is not without risks, for in doing so the PD blurs its own identity and diminishes its chances of implementing a reform agenda should it find itself back in power. Veltroni is perhaps better off positioning the PD where it can hope to tempt across members of the PdL, should their own current coalition begin to falter or they find themselves chafing under the influence of the LN or AN. But more importantly, Veltroni must stake out clear political ground for the PD. He should make it clear that a new centre-left coalition would not be afraid as it has been in the past to tackle the conflicts of interest inherent in Berlusconi's media empire, and to remedy his attempts to evade the law. He should make the economic case for immigration, and attack the xenophobic 'law-and-order' scaremongering of the right. And, perhaps most difficult of all, he must make the centre-left case for a more economically-liberal Italy. Sooner or later, Italy's new government will begin to falter under the weight of its tensions and contradictions, and the Italian left must be ready for when they do. Unlike Berlusconi, they deserve to bounce back.