Note: An Italian translation of this post (not revised by the author) has been published by vocidallestero.it , I am grateful to them and to the many readers who twitted and ri-twitted this post, as well as those who expressed their support on Facebook (where I have an account that I do not manage well). All this gave this post an extraordinary diffusion. Thanks also to all those who offered comments: I would rather readers commented directly on the Blog rather than to me via e-mail, in which case I might post their comments under initials or a made-up pseudonym or ask for their permission to enter their name (DMN) .
Indro Montanelli (1909-2001), the prestigious Italian journalist and writer, on many occasions expressed great contempt for Silvio Berlusconi, his character and politics. Yet in 2001 Montanelli declared in an interview: “I want him to win, I make vows and give pledges to the Madonna for him to win, so that Italians will see who this man is. Berlusconi is a disease that is cured only by vaccination, with a good injection of Berlusconi in government [a Palazzo Chigi]; Berlusconi as President of Italy [al Quirinale], Berlusconi wherever he wants to be, Berlusconi at the Vatican. Only afterwards will we be immune. The immunity that is obtained through vaccination” (La Repubblica, 26 March 2001[1]).
In the 13 May 2001 elections the first part of Montanelli’s wishes came true: Berlusconi and his allies obtained an absolute majority in both Houses of Parliament.
Montanelli should have been more careful what he wished for. His verdict on the man was correct: the lower and the appeal courts in Milan in 2012 and 2013 convicted Berlusconi of fiscal fraud. The four year sentence was later reduced to one year and three months, which he never served by virtue of being over 70, but deprived him of political rights for two years until 2019.
"He is the most sincere liar I know, for he is the first to believe in his own lies”, Montanelli had said; he got away with a gigantic conflict of interest (with the complicity of the Left); Marco Travaglio, B. come Basta, Paperfirst, 2018, recounts how he run the country.
But otherwise Montanelli had been utterly and tragically wrong: the Italian electorate, who had already a short exposure to Berlusconi in 1994-95 and repeated large doses of vaccine with his governments in 2001-05 and 2008-11, still seems inclined to make his coalition the favourite to win the elections of 4 March 2018.
Despite Montanelli's mistaken prognosis and cure, I venture a similar wish, though in different circumstances, with respect to other parties and for different reasons.
At present there is a false, self-styled social-democraticLeft, justifying itself by pretending to defend the interests of working people while destroying their life chances with their hyper-liberal, austerian and globalist policies, promoting no-border movements of capital and labour, de-regulation, privatisation, the destruction of the welfare state and unprecedented inequality of income and wealth.
Inevitably a two steps (at least) process is required to get rid of this false Left and open the Left again to being the representative of working people, of fairness, of the admittance of workers' organisations into governance, of preventing falling wages and mass unemployment, of strengthening the welfare state in all its manifestations, from education to decent health and pensions as well as its current, defective, merely safety-net functions. If this analysis is correct, Italian socialists and socialdemocrats should vote for the centre-Right, from Noi con Italia-UDC, to Lega, to Forza Italia. They are going to win anyway this time. It is better that they should win well, preventing any attempt by the state to put the country through the repellent mess Napolitano concocted in 2011 and 2013, that has led to five years of illicit and incompetent governance and to the collapse of a proper Left position and Party.
If the Centre-Right governs well then the Left will have breathing space to construct a proper programme, a democratic Party structure, and consolidate its electorate. They must at least step back from the caricature of the Left of Grasso, Boldrini, and old men like Bersani. And get rid of all the contemptible collusion in corruption from Rignano sull’Arno and Laterina.
The Centre-Right might govern well, for many of the programme elements proposed by the current Centre-Right coalition should be in a programme of the Left: lower taxes on earned income; controls on economic immigration into Italy; new relations with the EU; a revision of Eurozone regulation and management; easing of regulation destructive of providing housing; security at home; defence of Italian interests at international level, etc., etc. Indeed it is a shame that these issues are not part of the Left manifesto, or indeed of the so-called Lefts' many manifestos.
A reshuffling of voters characterised by these values should be pursued and implemented, which is very different from an unholy Grosse Koalition of opposite approaches and interests held together exclusively by the pursuit of and for the maintenance of political power against democratic processes.
And if the Centre-Right fails to deliver then we return to vote again (which I believe we will) but this time, with the second step, the second consultation of the people, we can hope to have a real Left to vote for. The 'Progressive' class and national traitors can stand on their own platform, and not as the pretend Left that is all that is on offer this time.
On 4
December 2016 Italian electors will be called to vote on a Referendum on
Constitutional reform and a new electoral law. The question posed to electors
is: “Do you approve the text of the constitutional law concerning ‘norms for
overcoming perfect bicameralism, the reduction in the number of parliamentarians,
the containment of the costs of institutions, the abolition of CNEL [the
advisory National Council for Economy and Labour] and the revision of Title V
of Part II of the Constitution’ approved by the Italian Parliament and
published in the Official Gazette n. 88 of 15 April 2016?" YES/NO. Being a
confirmation and not an abrogation Referendum no quorum is required for its
validity.
Such a
question is tendentious. The constitutional law in question does not abolish the
Senate, it simply transforms perfect bicameralism into asymmetric (and less
directly democratic) bicameralism, turning the Senate into a Chamber elected by
a selectorate of mayors and regional
councillors among themselves, instead of being elected directly by “the people”
as art. 1 of the 1948 Constitution provides. What the new law abolishes is the
Senate’s power to bring down the government in a confidence vote, while retaining
for the proposed Senate dual legislative powers on a broad range of questions,
from local issues to European directives. The number of senators is reduced
from 395 to 100 (21 mayors, 74 regional councillors and 5 nominated by the
President) but there is almost no reduction in cost; far from the €500mn
boasted of by Renzi, it is officially estimated at €50mn a year – equivalent to
one day of Italian military expenditure, or a fraction of the tax that FIAT avoids
by moving its headquarters to the Netherlands. And even that tiny cost
reduction in keeping the Senate at all is matched by the only part time
involvement (two days per month) of the new senators most of whose time
naturally is taken up by their local administrative duties. The 630 members of
the lower Chamber with their generous salaries, golden pensions and handshakes,
bonuses, allowances and expenses entitlements, remain untouched.
Il Fatto Quotidiano (11 October) proposes spelling out and unbundling the long mixed
question drafted by the government asking specifically whether electors
approve:
·the abolition of elections for the Senate, which will be made up of
mayors and regional councillors nominated by regional Councils i.e. by parties,
not elected by the electorate, and empowered to legislate in the face of
popular sovereignty;
·the concession of parliamentary immunity (from surveillance, arrest and prosecution)
to mayors and regional councillors nominated as senators without ever having
been elected as legislators and therefore not entitled to that privilege;
·the complication of methods for law approval, passing from 2 to 10, or
to 7, 9 or 13 according to the interpretation given to the incomprehensible
text of the reform;
·the trebling, from 50,000 to 150,000, of the number of signatures needed
to introduce a law by popular initiative;
·the survival of a Senate that will be able to or be compelled to –
according to the subject matter – re-vote and modify all the laws approved by
the Chamber of Deputies, replicating and complicating the bicameralism (even in
its reformed asymmetry rather than current parity) that is alleged to be
abrogated;
·the expropriation of the powers of Regions to protect their populations,
territories, security and environment from useless large-scale, costly and polluting
public works (such as the Turin-Lyon TAV, the Third Crossing [Valico], the bridge on the Messina
Strait, oil drilling on land and at sea, regasification plants, etc.) which
will be decided by the Prime Minister in Rome alone and in command.
In order to raise YES support falling
behind in the South and on the Right Matteo Renzi has just resurrected the
multibillion euro project of the longest suspension bridge in the world connecting
Sicily with the mainland, associated with Silvio Berlusconi’s premiership, and which
Renzi had fiercely opposed in 2012. The project was abandoned in 2013 because
of its high costs and dubious benefits, it being a long-term mafia objective,
and the strait’s vulnerability to earthquakes. There are more pressing needs
and better growth-promoting projects in anti-seismic investment, rail and road
transport improvements, and environmental protection and reclamation. Tony Barber in
the Financial Times spoke of Renzi’s reforms as the “constitutional bridge to
nowhere” – nicely put were it not for the fact that opening to the mafia does
not lead to nowhere but to the further criminalisation of the Italian state.
On 16 October Andrea Camilleri,
Gustavo Zagrebelsky, Nadia Urbinati, Paolo Flores d’Arcais and Tomaso
Montanari, Why we vote NO, posed the
question that is really being asked in the referendum:
“Do you want to count less, to have
less democracy, to give a free hand?”.
“We will answer NO,” they write, “…
We do not want to give a free hand to this or to any other government. An inept
and often corrupt political class tries to convince us that the Constitution is
at fault, but this is not true. To those who tell us that to make Italy work it
is necessary to change the rules we answer: we, instead, want to change the
players”.
The present Parliament was elected on
the strength of electoral law 270 of 21 December 2005, named after its Lega
proponent, Roberto Calderoli, and better known as the Porcellum from the name (una porcata, a
pig’s breakfast) attached to it by the proponent himself, which in January 2014 was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional
Court (Sentence 1/2014). Continuity of state power required that Parliament
should continue to be legitimate in its functioning, but it is highly
questionable whether the current Parliament should have done anything other
than at most pass a new electoral law before being dissolved by the President, who
was himself elected by the current unconstitutional Parliament, moreover for a
second mandate not envisaged (although not specifically forbidden) by the
Constitution. Instead of which the unconstitutional Parliament with Napolitano’s
prodding launched itself at a major constitutional reform changing one third of
our Constitution.
Moreover, since its unconstitutional
election in February 2013 the Italian Parliament has achieved the unenviable
record of containing 246 turncoats (voltagabbana in Italian)
Members of Parliament changing sides, many of them more than once reaching a
total of 325 crossings of the floor, equivalent to about one third of the
combined membership of the Lower Chamber and the Senate (and rising weekly).
Berlusconi, a pioneer in establishing a market for parliamentarians, purchased
support that was decisive in toppling the Prodi government. With this kind of
tradition there is no way even the majority premium envisaged by the new Constitution
can guarantee a stable majority.
So the new Constitution dice are
loaded in favour of an authoritarian regime, where the leader of the party
enjoying a guaranteed 55% majority in the Lower Chamber, who will be mostly his
own nominees under the party list electoral system, in addition to his and his
party’s new-Constitution Senate nominees, can play an exceptionally powerful
role in appointing: the Head of State, the members of the Constitutional Court,
the members of the Higher Council of Magistrates (CSM), the leading Authorities
responsible for sectoral functions, the RAI Board of Directors etc.; as well as
legislating and exercising executive power without having to face any real
opposition. And, as the UK has found, the collapse of the Labour Party and its
subsequent failure to realise a real opposition has adverse consequences for the
country, and for Europe.
Gustavo Zagrebelsky, the former
President of the Constitutional Court, states that the combination of the new
electoral law (the so called Italicum, whereby 2/3 of deputies will
be nominated by party leaders), and the reforms linked to it by a YES in the
Referendum would remove the checks and balances so judiciously introduced in the
post-Fascist 1948 Constitution to prevent any return of authoritarianism of any
kind, and create the conditions for “a shift from democracy to oligarchy”. Indeed,
under Italicum a party commanding
only 20%-25% of the votes in the first ballot might access a second ballot and
beat the only other remaining competitor, thus gaining the winner’s premium to
end up with a statutory 55% majority.
The concept of oligarchy must not be
confused with that of minority. Government is always necessarily exercised
by a minority, but whether or not this is an oligarchy depends on whether power
is exercised for the benefit of that ruling minority and its goals, or for the
collective benefit of society, in which case it is not an oligarchy but a
representative democracy – as the historian Emilio Gentile observed in his rebuttal
of Eugenio Scalfari, the Repubblica
editorialist’s crass claim that oligarchy is the only possible form of
democracy. Moreover – as Gentile pointed out – any democracy is intensely
vulnerable to the oligarchic globalisation of economic and financial powers
interfering with national policy-making, a major constituent of the “post-democracy”
theorised by Colin Crouch. The risk is of a democracy in which the people are only
comparse (extras) acting an insignificant part on the political stage at
the time of the election leaving the exercise of power to party and government
oligarchies, demagogic leaders, a corrupt political class, a degraded political
culture and the method of populist slogans and announcements.
Renzi is simply the current
mouthpiece and tool for the implementation of the Piano di Rinascita Democratica (Plan for Democracy Reborn), an authoritarian project initiated in
Italy by Licio Gelli of the P2 secret Masonic Lodge (drafted around 1976,
published in 1982), and pursued by Craxi, Cossiga, Berlusconi, Napolitano, with
the blessing of international financial circles such as JP Morgan (2013),
not to mention the support obtained through undue interference by the US Ambassador and Barack Obama in his
role as the President of the US.
JP Morgan claimed that in Europe
“Constitutions tend to show a strong socialist influence, reflecting the
political strength that left wing parties gained after the defeat of fascism.
Political systems around the periphery typically display several of the
following features: weak executives; weak central states relative to regions;
constitutional protection of labor rights; consensus building systems which
foster political clientalism [sic]; and the right to protest if unwelcome
changes are made to the political status quo. The shortcomings of this
political legacy have been revealed by the crisis.” The Renzi regime’s
attempted scrapping of the Italian 1948 Constitution is custom-tailored to JP
Morgan’s specifications.
For my part, I will vote a convinced
NO, and encourage all my readers who have a vote to do the same on 4 December
next.
The re-election of Giorgio Napolitano on 20
April for a second seven-year term is an extraordinary event. Unprecedented in
the Republic of Italy, not least because of a silent Constitution that neither
prohibits nor specifically authorizes re-election (see Part II, Titolo II, art.
83-91). Most uncommon for a man of 88, one year older than the Queen of England
and only junior - among Heads of State worldwide - to Robert Mugabe and Shimon Peres, and over
six years older than the Italian male life expectancy at birth. Especially
after so many previous, consistent and stern denials of such a prospect, labeled
by himself as "ridiculous". And accepting the post on the
condition - not to be found in the Constitution, and requested only after re-election - that Parliament
grants him effective Carte Blanche in the formation of the next
Government.
Admittedly any President can be better than
no President, and financial markets (both the stock exchange and the market for
government bonds) rejoiced at the news and the very prospect of a new
government rather than none. Whether initial market optimism was
justified or groundless still remains to be seen. For many Napolitano has
been and is a Man of Providence, selfless and generous in the service of the
country, an impartial custodian of the Constitution. But many others see him
and his re-election at best as a mixed blessing, at worst as an unmitigated
disaster.
On the one hand, Napolitano has the merits of
being committed both to national unity and to Italy's European integration.
On the other hand, his understanding of such commitments is questionable. For him, national unity is the avoidance of
conflicts at any cost, and in particular the appeasement of Silvio Berlusconi,
with the speedy presidential countersigning of ad personam laws
favourable to him and his companies though subsequently declared
unconstitutional, the postponement of a confidence vote in December 2010 that
allowed Berlusconi time to illegally purchase additional parliamentary support,
and the President's undue exhortations to magistrates to postpone Berlusconi's
appearances in court and his sentencing in four open cases in the run up to the
last elections. While Napolitano's interpretation of Italy's interests in
Europe is the total acquiescence to the obligations of EU and EMU, including
the so-called Growth and Stability Pact that Romano Prodi at least had the
courage to call "stupid", and the associated European austerity
measures.
(In passing we might also mention Napolitano's political, outrageous
use of pardon in the case of CIA agent Joseph Romano, convicted for Abu Omar's "military
rendition" and torture, while pardon had been specifically restricted by
the Constitutional Court to cases of compassion; his demand that phone tappings
of four conversations of his with former Minister Mancino should be destroyed -
as they were on the day of his re-election - regardless of their possible relevance
to the investigation of State negotiations with the Mafia; and his continuous strong support for Italian
military involvement in "peace-keeping" missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Lebanon).
What is worse, in the name of such
questionable interpretations of well-meaning commitments Giorgio Napolitano has
been perfectly willing to sacrifice democracy and the very same Constitution
which he has sworn to observe and to which he has always vigorously
paid lip-service. An authoritarian streak, typical of a glorious old
Communist in the tradition of Togliatti and Amendola, used to sacrifice everything,
including his own party, in the name of a cause, has led him to transform Italy
into a semi-presidential republic. (For a lucid assessment of
Napolitano's first seven years, see Thomas Mackinson, Il Fatto Quotidiano, 18 aprile 2013.
Back in November 2011, when Berlusconi
resigned the Premiership, Giorgio Napolitano could have dissolved Parliament
and called new elections: Berlusconi would have been steamrolled and buried
forever. Instead of which Napolitano appointed Mario Monti as life
senator and pieced together a so-called "technocratic"
government under Monti's leadership, backed by a Grand Coalition of PdL,
UDC and PD, that squeezed economic life out of the country and led GDP further
down a recessionary path. Napolitano's pretext for a technocratic government
(of which as recently as 2010 he had denied the very concept) was the fear that
Italian debt might become unsustainable. The fear, that is, that the spread
between interest on Italian debt renewal and that on German Bunds - that under
Berlusconi had escalated to over 500 points (i.e. 5%) on ten year bonds - might
rise further during the electoral campaign and after the election if Parliament
had been dissolved.
Monti's austerity policies, predictably,
instead of reducing the Debt/GDP ratio raised it to 127% by the time of the recent
elections, poised to rise over 130%; though initially they had a small net
favourable effect on the spread due to financial markets taking note of a
renewed Italian commitment to repay debt. But the spread fell
significantly only in the summer of 2012, not thanks to Monti but as a result
of Mario Draghi's resolve to do "all that it takes" to save the euro,
and of his Outright Monetary Purchases approaching an ECB role as Lender of
Last Resort. If Napolitano had called an election in November 2011, it
would have been won hands down by the PD, and markets would have rejoiced just
as they did immediately after the elections of 24-25 February 2013 when they
believed early exit polls wrongly giving victory to the PD. But that was a
cruel delusion, the Italian electorate split three ways into three parts
defying governability.
The PD coalition, whose campaign ruled out an
alliance with PdL, gained by a whisker an artificial majority in the lower
Chamber (thanks to the majority premium of an indecent electoral law passed by
Berlusconi) but only a useless relative majority in the Senate, and was unable
to form a government even with the support of Monti's coalition that had barely
cleared the 10% threshold for entering the lower Chamber. The PdL coalition gained
almost a third of the vote in both Chambers, was open to an alliance with PD
but ruled out a technical government.Beppe
Grillo's 5Star Movement (the largest single party if we exclude Italian voters
abroad) obtained almost another third but ruled out participation in any government, not least with Bersani's
PD.
Pierluigi Bersani, the un-charismatic leader
of the PD, tainted by 15 months complicity with Monti's recessionary policies
(like the PdL, which at least had provoked Monti's fall before the end of
the legislature), handicapped by a lack-lustre electoral campaign without
either a programme or alternative policies, had always excluded most vigorously
the continuation of a Grand Coalition that included Berlusconi.
Napolitano gave him an "exploratory" mandate, conditional on his
obtaining a clear majority on paper before allowing him to seek a confidence
vote in both Chambers, and quickly withdrew it with dubious constitutionality,
in spite of the precedents of unconditional mandates. The M5S
followed a deplorable , indeed unforgivable, and self-defeating un-cooperative
strategy, refusing to support a government led by Bersani, who in truth had
offered only a vague programme of 8 points imitating some M5S policies, without
offering them ministerial posts or negotiations about the choice of the
Premier.
Napolitano should have allowed Bersani to seek a confidence vote,
which he had a fighting chance to obtain; even if he had lost, at least his
government would have taken the place of Monti's government, that Napolitano
undemocratically left in charge in spite of Monti's spectacular electoral defeat.
Napolitano should then have explored an alternative, or resigned at once long
before his tenure's expiry in mid-May, so as to speed up his replacement by a
new President who could then proceed to dissolve Parliament and call new
elections or seek to construct a new government on the strength of such a
threat.
Instead of which Giorgio Napolitano
temporised, wasted time and pre-judged the subsequent course of events, by
appointing an improvised "Commission of Ten Wise Men", with the
ambiguous role as "facilitators", totally outside Constitutional
procedures, with the task of producing a draft programme for the new
government. The so-called Wise Men were indeed all men in their middle to old
age, exclusively from the parties that would be included in the a potential
Grand Coalition. A most peculiar procedure, in the absence of a candidate
Premier, however pre-judging the subsequent appointment of a Premier who would
then be effectively bound to endorse a Grand Coalition to accompany that
particular programme.
What is worse, many of the ten
appointees, tipped as potential Ministers in the future government, as it
actually happened to fourof them - another extra-constitutional feature - were
rather controversial, notable not so much for their wisdom as much as their
representation of party kakistocracy (i.e. power of the worst, to coin an
expression). See Marco Travaglio at Servizio Pubblico of 4 April.
- Filippo
Bubbico (PD) former President of the Basilicata region, had been indicted four
times and was still subject to one indictment for abuse of office, the author
of a hare-brained, expensive and failed scheme to promote employment in his
region by subsidising silk worms cultivation (sic).
- Giancarlo Giorgetti, a Lega MP close to
Bossi who then switched to Maroni's support, well connected in banking circles
(Fioroni and Fazio), notorious for having taken a €100,000 bribe delivered
directly by Fioroni at Montecitorio, though he returned it the same day
recommending a donation to a sport association instead; his wife indicted for fraud
against the state.
- Enrico Giovannini, President of the
Statistical Office, undoubtedly a competent statistician but never speaking on
policy issues; he had been asked by Monti to conduct an investigation on the
costs of politics and the salary differentials between Italian MPs (the highest
paid in Europe) and MPs in the rest of Europe,but after six months research in the end had declined alleging the
difficulties of the task.
- Mario Mauro, a close associate of the
unspeakable ex-President of Lombardy Roberto Formigoni, had switched to Monti
at the last minute.
- Enzo
Moavero Milanesi, a EU official,Minister for European Affairs in Monti's government.
- Valerio
Onida, ex-President of the Constitutional Court, was on record both for backing
Napolitano in his quarrel against the Palermo magistrates investigating the
negotiations between mafia and the State, about phone tappings involving former
Minister Mancino; and as arguing that the 1957 Law named after Sturzo, often invoked
to allege Berlusconi's ineligibility to Parliament, did not apply on the
Jesuitical argument that Berlusconi was neither the direct holder of a state
concession of TV channels nor the manager of the company that was granted the
concessions - glossing over the fact that Berlusconi was indeed a major
shareholder in that company, in a clear conflict of interest with the State.
- Giovanni Petruzzelli, an associate of
Senate ex-President Schifani, was President of the Anti-Trust Authority without
being able to claim a specific competence, consultant and co-author of Totò Cuffaro,
former President of Sicily currently serving a 7 year
sentence for aiding the Mafia.
- Gaetano Quagliariello, distinguished for his
multiple moves from Radicals to the UDC, to PDL (as deputy head of the group),
to Monti's group and back to the PDL, was the author and proposer of many of
the initiatives introduced - and endorsed by Napolitano - to favour Berlusconi
and his companies.
- Salvatore Rossi, a Bank of Italy high
official close to the centre-left.
- Last but not least, Luciano Violante (PD),
a sycophant ex-magistrate who in 1998
had proposed an amnesty for Berlusconi and in 2003 (immortalised by youtube on
the web, http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=RHPRel7mpUM&) actually reminded an ungrateful Berlusconi in Parliament that the PD had guaranteed
in 1994 not to interfere with his TV channels, and had set aside the pursuit of
legislation on conflict of interest; he actually boasted that Mediaset turnover
had increased 25-fold under their government.
In conclusion, not a bunch of Wise Men but -
with a couple of exceptions - a gallery of partisan and biassed villains, at
least in the eyes of many respectable observers.
When, after over 50 days of total inaction,
parlamentarians and regional electors began the process of electing a new
President, Pierluigi Bersani - no doubt under the influence of Napolitano -
made a spectacular U-Turn from his "No alliance with Berlusconi in
government" that had been the main line of his electoral campaign and his
early exploration of forming a government, to opening to the Grand Coalition
with Berlusconi through the proposal of a candidate agreeable to the PdL, Franco
Marini, a respected Catholic trade unionist and former President of the Senate.
Such an abrupt switch, to a diametrically opposite policy, predictably was not
acceptable to a sufficient number of PD electors to miss the two third majority
(required in the first three ballots) so that the candidate was sunk even with
the support of most of the PdL.
At this point Bersani made a third spectacular
U-Turn and proposed Romano Prodi, corresponding to what Berlusconi called a
"declaration of war". Bersani behaved as a kingmaker, rather
than as a democratic leader, in proposing both Marini and Prodi, for neither
was subjected to a vote together with other contestants or on his own; Prodi
was approved by a dubious and opaque "acclamation" at a meeting of PD
electors, instead of being subjected to a ballot, whether open or secret.
So Prodi, the PD founding father and truly independent candidate, also failed to be elected even by the simple majority required
at that stage, missing as many as 101 votes that could have been commanded by
the PD.
All the time the M5S had put forward the
candidature of Stefano Rodotà, a distinguished professor of Civil Law, who had
served for two legislatures as an MP elected as an independent in the Communist
Party, former president of PDS - an earlier incarnation of the PD - an
ex-President of the Privacy Authority and a civil rights champion: an offer
Bersani could not refuse, but did refuse to his eternal shame. Just like the
M5S refused to vote for Prodi, also to Beppe Grillo's eternal shame.
This is when Napolitano was asked - again,
after repeated earlier refusals - to stand for re-election. On Bersani's part
this was a third U-Turn, from Prodi's independent candidature to Napolitano's
strong advocacy of the stitch-up between PD and PdL - or inciucio, in
Neapolitan dialect. This is a derogatory term that Napolitano now asks to be
banned in his version of political correctness and newspeak; equally banned are
expressions playing down the importance of the new government as a "the President's
government" or "limited purpose" or "low intensity",
or "service government". The designation of the new Premier,
Enrico Letta, until the previous week Bersani's deputy and equally
opposed to a Grand Coalition with PdL, made Berlusconi blissfully happy,
laughing all the way to the bank (and to the Tribunal), not least because
Enrico Letta is the nephew of Gianni Letta, a major advisor and a Minister of
his (which makes the present "governo di servizio" a "governo di
servi, zio..." in a cartoon in Il Fatto Quotidiano).
The government sworn in on 27 April could
have been worse. Angelino Alfano as a deputy Premier and Minister of the
Interior was a big price to pay, but at least the old party caryatids on both
sides (including Berlusconi) were out - for the time being. Ministerial
average age of 54 years is 11 years lower than in Monti's government; there are
only 21 Ministers of which one third are women, including the first black
Minister ever in Italian government. Their vote of confidence - aided by a
shooting incident in front of the government palace, Palazzo Chigi, immediately used unjustly
to demonize M5S - was taken for granted, but its durability is not: the proof
of the new pudding will be in the governing.
A Grand Coalition is being presented as a
novelty but is nothing more nor less than the replication of the Monti
government, with some involvement of politicians that Monti had sought and
failed to obtain. It is hard to imagine that Letta might do much more than
Monti, apart for the partial reversal of some of his austerity measures:
already the two sides are quarrelling about the suspension versus the
reimbursement of IMU, and it is not at all clear what government expenditures
will have to be cut to make room for lower taxes.
The centre left PD-SEL alliance is definitively
broken; the PD itself has been cracked by Bersani's repeated U-Turns and the final
betrayal of PD electoral commitments. Bersani has been scrapped at last; Matteo
Renzi has been side-lined and - having always supported an alliance with
Berlusconi - will not be able to re-unite the party. The millions who voted for
the PD on the basis of its commitment not to ally with the PdL have been
betrayed, yet paradoxically those MPs who would not give their confidence vote
to Enrico Letta are the ones who have been threatened with expulsion, instead of the other way
round. In the end, only one out of 293 PD members of parliament abstained: a "Bulgarian-style"
party discipline that would have deserved a better cause.
Neither Napolitano nor Letta,
but Berlusconi is the only true and absolute winner of Italy's latest elections. All he needs now is to be appointed as life
senator by a benevolent Napolitano, and to walk into the posts of either
Premier or President at the next round, especially if a French-style direct
election of the President was introduced beforehand. Gaetano Quagliariello's
appointment as Minister for Institutional Reform, and Berlusconi's bid to a
candidature as President of the Committee for Reforms, if successful, might pave the way
to such a formalisation of the extra-constitutional presidentialism ushered by
Napolitano. Nothing much can be done about everything else, as a fait accompli, but at least this final
corruption of the Italian Constitution can and should be resisted, in order not
to have Berlusconi for ever.
"You are a Dead Man talking!" - said Beppe Grillo to Pierluigi Bersani who had asked for M5S support for a legislative platform that included some of Grillo's pet initiatives. Admittedly Bersani is a lugubrious, funereal figure, totally un-charismatic, indeed "de-tumescing", to use a term coined by a former Cambridge colleague to damn Tony Giddens, then a candidate to College high office . After all, Bersani now demands respect, after calling Grillo "a Web fascist", which is worse and unwarranted. The 5 Star Movement is marked for its non-fascist, non racialist, non right-on rightist stance. And Bersani has been utterly inconsistent: he criticised Mario Monti, but aided and abetted his disastrous recessionary policies for fourteen months. A Bersani-led Democratic Party was only stopped from forming a new government with him by Monti's electoral debacle.
The problem is that Beppe Grillo is treating his brand new, clean and youthful 54 Senators and 109 "Onorevoli deputati" (or rather "citizens", as he wants them to be called, rejecting traditional titles), precisely like Zombies. "We will not give a vote of confidence to any government, let alone a PD-PDL government: we will vote on a law by law basis, according to our programme". Which is plainly silly: the M5S 163 parlamentarians will not get an opportunity to vote law by law unless there is a government in power that commands a confidence vote in both houses. The 163 citizen are turned by Grillo into Dead Men Who Do NOT talk.
Frozen, hibernated, silenced, ready to be resurrected only to leave their respective Houses when Parliament is soon going to be dissolved. A rather inglorious end to such an extraordinary, auspicious, revolutionary success. And when new elections are called, the protest voters that concentrated on Beppe Grillo on 24-25 February, now frustrated by the complete waste of their votes, will turn back to traditional parties, most probably PDL that will also drain some of Monti's support - unless the magistrates send Berlusconi to jail.
Grillo's suggestion, of forming a government on his own, with the confidence vote support of PD and PDL, is as much of a non-starter as Bersani's offer to Grillo of a PD government with M5S support on specific policies plucked from their programme. What is needed is effective power sharing, with a precise division of Ministries, not the unaccountable, unspecified support for policies presumed to be jointly desired (how many? to what extent? accompanied by what else?). Grillo seems to favour a PD-PDL "Governissimo" which would not last long and cause the PD to lose half of their electorate (as happened to the Left in Greece and in Spain). D'Alema would pay this high price, for it is the only government which would give him office. Napolitano and Veltroni would, out of concern for Italy's stability and place in Europe, but Bersani and his cronies are unlikely to bite. Nevertheless, there are three tenuous prospects for a way out of this unprecedented constitutional crisis.
First, last Friday Dario Fo - Grillo's stated candidate as Napolitano's successor, though unavailable - said that there is a possibility of a deal with the PD under the leadership of someone other than Bersani (Matteo Renzi? Fabrizio Barca? Dario Fo did not say). Earlier on the same day Massimo D'Alema had already said, on television, that if Grillo sets this condition it should be immediately accepted.
Second, the 163 parlamentarians treated like Zombies by Grillo are nothing of the kind. Leading personalities are emerging within their group, and they are a diverse and articulate lot. They do not have to revolt, they can simply ignore the attempts to make them do as they are told. Give them a taste of Roman parliamentary life, and they will prefer to stay on rather than to return to the provinces.
Finally, it might actually dawn on Beppe Grillo that rejecting the opportunity to change, at last, some of the fundamental ills of Italian political life might actually jeopardise his current command of the protest vote. He simply will not get a second chance.
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