Clash of institutions

Italy’s image abroad reels under each revelation of Silvio Berlusconi’s private life – the sex, the parties, the favours and largesse and political jobs given to pretty young women. Berlusconi has become an instantly recognisable peg for comics across the world to hang their jokes on. At home the prime minister’s lifestyle leaves him open to blackmail not only by the girls who go to his parties and their friends but also his business and political partners interested in government affairs. But worse than either is Berlusconi’s attempt to subvert the constitution, to annihilate the power of the judiciary and concentrate power in the executive and this is what he is trying to do now. This is a clash of institutions which can be a serious threat to Italian democracy.
Today was supposed to see the Prime Minister demonstrating against the Milan public prosecutors. At least that was what we thought a fortnight ago when two of Berlusconi’s closest supporters issued a communiqué proclaiming a Saturday 12 February as a day of action of Berlusconi against the prosecutors. Then the editor of one of the Berlusconi papers, Giuliano Ferrara (pictured above with Berlusconi) called the communiqué “politically criminal” and the machine went into reverse.
Instead one of the two original proposers, demonstrated outside the Milan Palace of Justice yesterday and we did indeed have a demonstration today but led by Ferrara himself in defence of Berlusconi and against what Ferrara calls “puritan moralism”.
For a prime minister to lead a crowd of supporters against the judiciary would have been a dress rehearsal for a coup d’état. But to have one of his most faithful courtiers doing it instead is not very different, especially since Ferrara published an interview with Berlusconi yesterday in which Berlusconi declared “there is an anti-democratic plan to get rid of me without a vote. It is managed by spying prosecutors followed by a crowd of Jacobins. But I will not yield and there is a gentleman in the Quirinale”, he again accused prosecutors of making Italy into a Stasi-run DDR because of their use of phone intercepts. Yesterday at a press conference, he said that the prosecutors were subversive and acting illegally and that he will sue the state for damages.
Far from being either subversive or illegal, the Milan prosecutor’s office is investigating the episode in May last year when Berlusconi phoned a Milan police station in order to have a 17 year old girl accused of theft released immediately. It transpired that she had stayed at Berlusconi’s villa in Arcore and had had frequent contacts with him. Investigators made extensive use of telephone taps of the girls that go to Arcore and the organiser of the parties. This is why Berlusconi calls the prosecutors “spies” and compares them with East Germany. The prosecution believes they have enough evidence to indict Berlusconi for abuse of power (the call to the policeman to get the girl released) and paying for sex with a minor. They reckon that there is clear and sufficient evidence to use a fast-track prosecution procedure and sent their request to the investigating magistrate this week. She should decide next week.
If she accepts the request, Berlusconi will argue that the Milan court does not have jurisdiction and will certainly do his best to delay the case coming to court.
But in the meantime, the prime minister and his supporters are doing their best to delegitimise the judiciary. They are trying to spin his tussles with the law into a supposedly anti-democratic move by revolutionary (hence the use of “Jacobin” to describe them) prosecutors who are “using the courts to subvert the people’s democratic will”. He and his supporters do not countenance the possibility that there might be some substance to the accusations against him.
In actual fact, it is Berlusconi who once again is trying to undermine the democratic process.
Whatever definition one takes of democracy today, it is a system in which no single element predominates in society or the political system. The separation of power is scissors, stone and paper written into the constitution with the rule of law as important as the rule of the majority. That majority rule must in any case be tempered and limited by among many other things, respect for human rights and minorities. Another fundamental feature of democracy is that no one is above the law whether for sexual misdemeanours like Bill Clinton a decade ago or for crimes like president Moshe Katsav of Israel who stepped down after being accused of rape and who was convicted in December.
Not for the first time, Berlusconi presents his view of the prime minister as being uncontrollable either by the law or indeed parliament. If either try to do so, he becomes angry and impatient. Even more so when newspapers or television programmes criticise him.
He is not even prepared to be conditioned by a political party so that when Gianfranco Fini dared counter him, Fini was expelled.
The corollary of unbridled power is populism and Berlusconi is very good at it. Over the last few weeks, he has increasingly used direct appeals both to his people and the whole of Italy. There are shades of Big Brother in his strategy – Orwell’s rather than the softer, more recent one which is another symbol of Berlusconi’s times. The Leader is always liable to turn up on one’s screen either with a mellifluous message or an attack on his enemies.
A message broadcast on the party website is not so surprising but for a prime minister to call a live television chat show and insult the presenter “your presentation is disgusting, foul and repugnant and completely untrue… I know what I’m saying, you don’t… this is a television brothel” is rather more unusual in western democracies. A few days after this episode, the director general of the public broadcaster, the RAI called another presenter to “disassociate” himself from the broadcast, another example of a lack of division of roles.
When he does appear on television, it is only with well-housetrained interviewers and he is now planning a careful media counterattack as damage control for the Ruby case. Once again, a dominant position in the media is a serious limit on democracy and both Freedom House, The Economist and Reporters without borders all have Italy’s ratings declining since 2008. Freedom House puts Italy at 72nd out of 196 for press freedom; “partly free” for 2010; Reporters without Borders puts Italy at 49 out of 175.
So far from democracy being under attack from latterday Robespierres, it is once again, Silvio Berlusconi’s refusal to accept limits which threaten Italian institutions. For the moment, though, they are holding firm and by now there is also some popular movement as well. Tomorrow sees demonstrations across the country in favour of women’s dignity. I will describe that Italy in the next blog.

Of cabbages and kings

Italian politics today make Lewis Carroll’s world seem remarkably staid but The Walrus and the Carpenter is as good a place as any to start any voyage through the absurd. Italy does not have a king any more but it does have a president and this last week he was an important figure. The 84 year old Giorgio Napolitano might have thought that he would have just a ceremonial and elder statesman role when he was elected in 2006 but instead, he has been busy with real politics; especially now. On Friday, he refused to sign a decree law passed by Cabinet but not by Parliament. The first take was that this was a major constitutional clash; the second that it was just a minor procedural glitch. The reality is that was just another Berlusconi sortie in the guerrilla war to increase executive powers and reduce all the others.
One of my correspondents suggested a blog on the head of state and this seems the right cue.
The section of The Italian constitution that deals with the President (Part II, Title II, articles 83-91) is short and vague. It describes a mainly symbolic figure with few formal powers. In practice he is has residual powers and is another guarantor of the constitution. The present president has increased his approval ratings from 58.5% in 2008 to 62.1 in 2009 to just over 70% last year according to Eurispes; that compares to around 25% for the government and over 40% for the magistrature.
He is elected to a seven year mandate by both chambers of parliament plus representatives of the regions. So he does not have a popular mandate but is usually elected by a broad majority (not Napolitano, though, who was elected by a simple majority). He “represents national unity”, and is the commander in chief of the armed force though not surprisingly, none has done anything substantial even when Italian troops were engaged in combat actions. He is also presides over the judiciary’s self-governing body, the High Council of the Magistrature but only one president, Cossiga, really chaired meetings and that only briefly.
Much more important is his power to dissolve parliament, a weapon which Berlusconi has often said he would like to have in the prime minister’s armoury in order to keep wayward allies under control. So when the prime minister resigns, the president will normally try and find an alternative before calling early elections.
Also more than a purely formal power, ministers are appointed by the president on the prime minister’s recommendation, not his right. So in 1994, Scalfaro baulked at the idea that Cesare Previti could be Minister of Justice. Previti was Berlusconi’s lawyer who was later given a six year sentence for bribing judges.
Most important for every day politics is the president’s role as the notary for all legislation. Unlike presidential systems where the head of state is also head of government, the Italian president cannot object to a bill on its substance. The US president can and does veto bills because they are politically unacceptable; the Italian president cannot veto a bill but he can send it back to Parliament if he reckons that there is insufficient financial cover (the usual reason before 1994) or if he thinks the bill might be unconstitutional. Even then, he cannot stop a bill; if parliament were to re-present a bill, he would have to sign it and it would be the Constitutional Court which would decide. But this has never happened. Moral suasion and back channels are the more usual ways of dealing with disagreement.
Napolitano has returned government decree laws though. In 2009 he refused to sign a decree which would have obliged physicians to keep a young woman, Eluana Englaro, on life support against her will confirmed by the Court of Cassation. Since there was a bill before parliament, undiscussed, the President refused to sign because he said there was no urgency.
This week, a Parliamentary commission did not approve one of the decree laws regulating fiscal federalism. An extraordinary Cabinet meeting was called which issued the decree law. It was this decree that President Napolitano returned saying that he was unable to receive it because it had not been approved by Parliament. The substance does not change as the decree will be put to both Chambers and will be passed and Napolitano will sign it. But Berlusconi and his allies have admitted that they were out of order. It was another gesture which showed Berlusconi’s impatience with democratic procedure.
Much more serious are his outbursts against the judiciary; he does not actually say “off with his head” like Alice’s Queen of Hearts, but he thinks it gets very close to saying it in public. These last few days have seen him once again attack the judiciary which he says is guilty of “illegitimate interference” in his private life (today); “Italy is a republic controlled by the prosecutors … a judicial republic” (yesterday). A week ago, he suggested an anti-judge demonstration in Milan; there was a rapid withdrawal when one of his advisors pointed out that having the prime minister demonstrate against the courts was close to a coup d’état.
These are the cabbages (or cavoli in Italian, a euphemism for unpleasant stuff in general). Next week, there will be a big cabbage for the prime minister, the court that Berlusconi wanted to demonstrate against will almost certainly put him on trial for abuse of power and under age prostitution. If and when that happens, there will be major international comment accompanied by resignation and indignation on either side of the Italian divide.
All sides claim that they do not want early elections but they are all preparing for them. If there are any more glitches in the road to the Northern League’s fiscal federalism, it will be Bossi that calls time. So we are back to Alice – elections in a country where no one wants them, with a government brought down by the prime minister’s closest ally.
The problem, of course, is that Italy is not on the other side of the looking-glass, at least for those of us who live here. It is the real world where the laws of physics apply but most other laws are up for negotiation.

Municipal federalism

Many thanks to those of you who reminded me that Michelangelo’s David is not in the Uffizi but in the Accademia. The point remains, wherever the illustrious marble stands: who owns it? And who can use for good or ill? Now we are told that two days after the government tried to push their municipal federalism decree past President Napolitano, the Grand Canal belongs to the Italian state and not to the city of Venice. I’m not sure what that means in practice and apparently nor do the city authorities or central government but it does demonstrate some uncertainty about what “federalism” really means.

Two women

We’ve heard so much about Italian women being bimbos prepared to do anything to get a part in “Big Brother” or a job in politics that you might be forgiven for thinking that it’s the only truth. Unfortunately it is indeed true that a large number of Italian women think that sex is the best way to success, and not only the younger ones.
But it is far from being the only truth. Today, the left wing paper L’Unità (one of the two national dailies edited by a woman) organised a demonstration of women in Milan “to bring back some dignity to Italy”. On the other side of the political barrier, the right wing (ex-Alleanza Nazionale) paper, Il Secolo d’Italia, also edited by a woman has made the same appeal “to give dignity back to women” and to organise a demonstration on 13 February (to coincide with Berlusconi’s anti-judiciary demo).
As if to symbolise the other side of Italian women, in a remarkable coincidence, for the first time, the heads of the biggest employers’ association, the Confindustria and the biggest trade union, the General Confederation of Italian Workers (CGIL) are both women.
The first is Emma Marcegaglia, 45, from Mantua in Lombardy. Her father started a successful steel processing company in which both she and her brother became senior management. She went to the Bocconi in Milan and then took an MBA at NYU. In March 2008, she was elected President of Confindustria. She had been vice president under the two previous presidents resigning over political differences with one and completing her mandate with the second. Since taking up the high profile position she has shown that she is clearly an able woman despite being part of a family firm.
The Financial Times ranks her 29th in their list of fifty most powerful women in the world. Here in Italy, with an increasingly directionless government of the economy, the voice of employers becomes ever more important. Marcegaglia recently criticised the government for not having done anything for the economy in the last six months and gave an implicit nod to economics minister Giulio Tremonti taking over from Berlusconi.
The other woman at the top is Susanna Camusso, 55, who took over the leadership of the CGIL in November. Once upon a time she would have been Marcegaglia’s direct antagonist but given today’s climate, their interests are surprisingly parallel. She explicitly endorsed Marcegaglia’s remarks on the government’s lack of action. Camusso is also a Lombard, from Milan and almost as a mirror image of Marcegaglia, spent most of her career in the metalworkers section of the union.
The CGIL has been the strongest opponent of Fiat’s reorganisation plans and in particular, the metalworkers at the Termini Imerese plant are furious because they will stop producing cars at the end of this year and in the rest of the country because of the new contract with the other unions. Camusso is going to have to play the delicate negotiating act between her own members and the sister unions and the less delicate negotiation with Fiat CEO Marchionne.
This week she also led a demonstration which presented a draft bill to regulate one of the plagues of the Italian workplace, the unofficial work gangs or caporalato.
Given the governments lethargy, it is employers like Marchionne and the Confindustria or the unions who are actually addressing today’s issues and two of prime actors are women. So women’s prospects should be good in Italy, shouldn’t they? Well, up to a point…
Despite these two very visible success stories for gender equality, the reality is far more depressing and closer to the bimbo stereotypes.
In politics, parliamentarians are in practice appointed by the parties so the Berlusconi factor is very visible; the Chamber of Deputies has 133 women members or 21.1% and it is striking that they are heavily weighted on the younger side. Between age 24 and 29, there are four women and no men; 30-39 41.8% women: 40-49 25.7% women: 50+ 15.6%. The optimistic take on the numbers is that there is change taking place and that in ten or twenty year there will be Norwegian near parity. The cynical view is that physical appearance is more important than experience. In the European Parliament and the regional assemblies, this even more apparent.
Not surprisingly, the Cabinet shows the B-factor most heavily. Of the 24 members of the Cabinet, five are women (3 without portfolio, 2 with) three had very close personal connections with B before going into politics. It is striking that all five are young (between 33 and 43) and by any standards go from the good looking to the very goodlooking while the 19 men are mostly older and go from the ordinary to the the distinctly ugly. Just last week, the most notorious of Berlusconi’s women ministers, the former showgirl and topless model, Mara Carfagna, now minister for equal opportunities came to an agreement with the self-governing board for publicity. The ministry will be able to ask for the withdrawal of advertisements that “degrade the image of women or which are violent or sexist”. There is more than a touch of irony in the announcement given what Carfagna did before becoming a deputy and what her boss apparently still does with a wide variety of lovelies.
In the civil service and wider public service, there has been an increase in the number of women employed going from an overall 48.7% in 1994 to 54.4% in 2006, apparent progress for gender equality. Most of that increase has been in the health service: 55.2% to 62.0% and the regional and city administrations: 42.2% to 50.4% (both around a fifth of the total each), schools (over 30% of the total) 72.2% to 76.6%. But at a senior level, the increase has been slight; 28.8% diplomats and prefects in 1994 to 35.4% in 2006, universities 38.8% to 43.8%. The figures mask a very solid glass ceiling.
In the general labour market, according to the OECD, less than half of Italian women work (46.4% compared to almost 80% of Norwegians). Only Turkey in Europe is worse at 24%, and the Italian figure is declining – in 2008 47.2% worked. The 2007 World Economic Forum gender gap index put Italy in 84th place down from 77th in 2006.


So all in all, despite Marcegaglia and Camusso, the rest of Italy is pretty bleak for women.

Strikes and demonstrations

Italy is not just concerned with the prime minister's sex life. On Friday there were demonstrations across the country with the CGIL in particular preparing the ground for their battle with Fiat over the new contract that Fiat CEO, Sergio Marchionne signed with the other unions last year.
This is certainly not anything like a full scale revolution - both the labour movement and the centre left parties are seriously divided over what position to take - but the rising unemployment and decreasing purchasing power mean that most Italians are less well off today than they were a year ago or two years ago. But there is not a critical mass big enough to affect government policy yet.
Here was my own tuppenny ha'penny worth of comment.
It is interesting that the only real innovation and movement towards free market liberalism has come from Marchionne and not from either Tremonti or Berlusconi both of whom affect a great admiration for the Thatcher and Reagan reforms of the Eighties.

Federalism Italian style

Fiscal federalism is one of the core issues of the now wobbling Berlusconi government. Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Northern League (LN), made it the key issue in his support for Berlusconi in both the September and December votes of confidence. He also said last month that if the first of the enabling laws was not passed by 28 January, he would insist on early elections. That was a paper threat; the decrees are not going to pass today and there will not be an immediate call for early elections at least not today. But if there are elections the issue will play a huge role in the campaign.
Gianfranco Fini and his new party Futuro e Libertà and the opposition Democratic Party accept the general principle of some sort of federalism or devolution but draw the line at reducing economic support for the poorer south. Fini’s original split with Berlusconi in April last year was largely because he felt Bossi was leading the dance and Berlusconi was following. The centre left opposition also supports some of the principles of fiscal federalism but does not want to lose its electoral support in the south. The whole issue is another version of the differences between north and south, the Southern Question which has dogged Italy since unification. One commentator, Luca Ricolfi argues that the real divide in Italy is not left-right but north-south.
The problem today is that the fiscal federalism bill was passed in May 2009, but very few people even in government actually know exactly what the phrase means. More importantly, they don’t know how much it will cost and to whom. All the leaders of the Northern League have made it very clear that their support for the government is conditional on the implementation of fiscal federalism. It was listed as one of the five issues in last September’s vote of confidence but is still far from being a reality. The discussion this week is on what sort of tax and spending powers the local councils should have.
This plan does not aim to make Italy a genuinely federal state nor does it pretend to. Actually, the centre-left made Italy “federal” just before they left office in 2001 with a constitutional amendment confirmed in a referendum. It changed Chapter V of the constitution and gave more power to the 20 regions but it was never implemented. In practice, Italy is still one of the more centralised states in Europe and there has been next to no debate on what “federalism” actually means.
Put very crudely, a federal state is one where the constitution explicitly gives certain powers to central government and others to the lower or meso-levels. Some constitutions define the centre’s powers and leave the rest to the meso-level. Others do the opposite and others again are precise in their distribution. In the American case, the states have responsibility for most of the civil and criminal laws and their application and they have complete fiscal independence. Washington does not bail out an improvident Sacramento (nor does Albany bail out New York City); Massachusetts residents are painfully aware of how much they pay to keep their state going while Nevada residents are happily supported by the out of state gamblers who pay most of their taxes. Germans and Swiss too are very conscious of the different taxes and service from one canton or Land to another or from one city to another. In Italy, in contrast the responsibilities of the different levels are far from clear. The Naples rubbish crisis for the last three years has been an object lesson in buckpassing between national, regional and city governments.
Italian fiscal federalism is just that – fiscal and the legislation being discussed now is just for cities or comuni, not even the regions. Laws and law enforcement agencies will stay Italian. Some property will be transferred to regional and city governments and some already has. There are curious spats like the one between the city of Florence and the Ministry of Fine Arts over who owns Michelangelo’s David. Betta Povoledo described the serious and frivolous aspects of ownership of cultural heritage. The Mayor of Florence is adamant that it belongs to the city. The ministry argues that since it was commissioned for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, title has passed to Italy as the successor state. The Accademia is a state museum and David is the principal attraction; all income goes to the state. In another argument after last month’s snow, the Tuscan regional government wanted to fine the State Railways €1.3m for delays due to their incapability of dealing with bad weather. We can expect a lot more spats like these ones.
Spending will be proportional to taxes received which means that the north will get more and the south less. According to Il Sole 24 ore, a study published by IFEL for the national association of local authorities (ANCI) calculates that there will be a €2.5bn overall drop in income for the comuni or local government after last year’s cuts. The government calculated that a lower flat rate for tax on rent (payable to the comuni) would make up the shortfall but ANCI reckons the calculation is over-optimistic.
There are some elements of the reform which almost everyone agrees on – health services (managed by the regions) should cost the same to the regional provider throughout the country. At the moment the same service (clinical analyses, operations &c.) can be accounted for at vastly different prices in Sicily, Tuscany or Lombardy, with the price usually being more in the south.
But as the economist Mario Deaglio pointed out this week, not all local governments are actually capable of delivering the necessary services at the moment. Everyone loves the idea of federalism but the reality is very different, especially for the poorer or less efficient comuni or regions. And the French and Piedmontese centralisation is so deeply ingrained in Italian political thinking and practice that the centre always wants to keep tabs on what the periphery is doing.
The result is that even if Bossi manages to get some degree of fiscal autonomy for the north, it will be a small part of regional and local government business. And as the costs become clearer, the opposition mounts. The Northern League started its fight for fiscal autonomy in 1994; they risk having to wait another 17 year and still have little to show for the campaign. The immediate result is an even weaker government.

Comment!

In the meantime… no change. Eppur si muove.

A fortnight away and once again, everything changes in Italy; and yet, and yet, when I asked a friend what had happened while I was away, he replied, depressed, “Nothing!” Actually, lots of things are happening but it is very difficult to make sense of events beyond the immediate scandals. A couple of days ago, a deputy confessed to me that he really had no idea of what was going on and how it would end. He was an opposition backbencher but I suspect that even government ministers do not have any better ideas – except they don’t admit it.
A quick summary: ten days ago the Constitutional Court finally gave its verdict on the so-called legitimate impediment law. This was a law passed a year ago which allowed the prime minister and cabinet to claim that government business prevents them from answering summonses to appear in court as defendants in criminal cases. In practice it was meant to give Berlusconi immunity because he did not have to go to court on three major corruption charges. The law is only valid for 18 months and was supposed to be an interim measure before a constitutional amendment is passed giving the prime minister a more solid shield. After twice declaring Berlusconi’s immunity laws unconstitutional, this time the Court allowed the concept of “legitimate impediment” but declared that it would be the courts themselves to decide when the impediment was legitimate and not the prime minister himself.
This was not what Berlusconi wanted and the Milanese courts trying him immediately set about summoning him to hearings. Much worse for him was the news that prosecutors in Milan were investigating him for his involvement with the Karima El Mahrough aka Ruby a then underage prostitute,. The whole business was immediately dubbed “Rubygate”. Telephone taps suggest that not only was she a frequent guest at Berlusconi’s principal residence but that there were lots of other girls involved. There were also some details of what the supposedly exotic and erotic (and not a little racist, too) “bunga-bunga” really is.
Since then, the president of the employers’ federation, Emma Marcegaglia of the Confindustria, criticised the government by explicitly saying they had done nothing to improve the Italian economy for six months; essentially they had not been governing, she said. The president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Angelo Bagnasco made veiled criticisms of Berlusconi when he spoke of the climate of “moral discomfort” in the country. But he also criticised the judiciary for being overzealous. It was a typical cardinal’s speech with no explicit judgement but the implication was clear enough.
And then Berlusconi called an evening talk show which was investigating Rubygate, insulted the presenter and his guests and then hung up. He refuses to defend himself in court but is happy to do so on television. But then the call was a dialogue defined as “I talk, you listen, and if I don’t like what you’re saying, I hang up”. In one sense, this was very refreshing as Berlusconi is the most unspun of politicians; this was a raw, unmediated response, the sort of outburst that drives his minders crazy and endears him to his core supporters
All this makes good copy but is there anything new? We have known publically about the prime minister’s penchant for young girls since his wife said “he frequents minors” in April 2009. And details of what that meant have been piling up since then. The Constitutional Court has already overturned two laws which gave the prime minister immunity from prosecution. Both the Catholic Church and the employers have been criticising him more or less openly for more than a year and Berlusconi has been making surprise calls to talk show hosts for years defending himself and insulting them.
In this sense, my friend was right when he said that nothing had happened while I was away. It was all more of the same. Once again, there is the sad picture of an old man watching television alone and flying off the handle when there is something he disagrees with on the tube. When he’s not alone in front of the box, the same old man needs a bevy of bimbos to tell him how young and potent he is. And his natural political allies try to nudge him back into reality.
But there has been a change nonetheless. The sheer quantity of evidence is mindboggling and there are even allegations that some of the girls were not willing at least for some of the personal services requested. If the charges are sex with underage girls and maybe rape as well, then this would be a different level. With Naomi Letizia (the first girl that we know about who called him “Papi”), it was possible to finesse the exact nature of their relationship. With Ruby, it is next to impossible.
The conclusion is that Berlusconi is no longer a man in control either of his government or of his own private life. He is a fighter, though, and the television outburst shows his mettle. He still has huge resources and is prepared to use them all to maintain his position and his power. He has threatened prosecutors and the courts that he will take to the streets with all his supporters if they continue prosecuting him, I’m sorry, persecuting him; in practice a coup d’état against the judiciary. Approval ratings for him and his party are still around the 30% mark and even the worst still puts his party first.
While the rest of the world is agog at the Italian prime minister’s antics and cannot understand why Berlusconi has not resigned, Italians worry about rising prices and reduced purchasing power and lowered wages (or none at all). One of Berlusconi’s ministers faces a vote of no confidence today and the his closest allies, the Northern League are fighting to get their fiscal federalism implementation measures through parliament (my next blog). So not everything has changed but as Gallileo said “but it does move!”. He was talking about the earth but there are times that the movement in Italian politics is as imperceptible.

Italy-Ghana. Micro international relations

Politics is not only the grand activities of leaders or the effects of big numbers – economical, electoral or social. It is also the sum total of millions of tiny events, decisions and discussions. Politics is about the distribution of power and resources, material and non-material; political science tries to analyse that tangled mess.

The Winter programme that my university, The American University of Rome runs in Ghana is one example. Since 2004 we have been using Ghana as a classroom for our own international students and for Ghanaians. They visits sites and talk to experts and opinionmakers as well as ordinary people in Accra and the villages. For a fortnight, we learn about Ghanaian history – the slave trade, an earlier globalisation which brought together Europe, Africa and the Americas. Ghana has some of the most striking monuments; British, Dutch, Danish and Portuguese castles and forts which starkly illustrate the Atlantic trade. Then the colonisation and independence where Kwame Nkrumah’s legacy is felt keenly – his daughter Samia is now a member of Parliament and she gives us a direct link with the past and an up to date picture of today’s politics.

Politics and Ghana’s democracy are the programme’s second pillar. Over the last 20 years Ghana has moved from military dictatorships and weak democracies to a well consolidated example of democracy not only for Africa but the rest of the world. There have been two peaceful changes of party with the 2008 results fought down to the wire over a handful of votes; but with no violence whatsoever. A far cry from Kenya that year or neigbouring Côte d’Ivoire today. The third element is west African international relations; developments in the Ivorian crisis will show us exactly what the international community can and cannot do.

Finally, there is economic development; Ghana aims at reaching emerging economy status by 2015. Oil started flowing a month ago and everyone is very conscious of the perils that oil wealth might bring and working on making oil a blessing and not a curse.

And on our own micro level, we are part of that development; we have been awarded a grant by the Latium Regional Government (the regions are Italy’s second level of government and Rome is in Latium). Development aid and projects can either go through multi-million dollar initiatives run by governments of UN agencies like the FAO or they can be managed by NGOs and universities like ours; it’s called “decentralised cooperation”. Here the support comes from local government, like the regions or cities for much more modest sums, tens of thousands of euros.

Our own projects are both commercial and educational “Sustaining Education; Educating for Sustainability”. Our partner in Rome is La Sapienza, Rome’s first university and our partners in Ghana are the Kokrobitey Institute where we will be contributing to “Little Steps” an initiative which teaches young women from the village to produce and market fashion items from recycled material. The second part is at the Cape Coast School for the Deaf together with the Cape Coast NGO, DASFA (Development Assistance for School Farms) where we will be working on their school farm, building on the previous fundraiser which gave the farm a poultry unit. We hope that along with the very concrete benefits which the grant will be able to produce, it will also enhance links between Ghana and Rome and Latium. Apart from fashion items where Italian and African design could produce some very creative results, “Little Steps” produces shopping bags made from recycled sacking and posters – from 1 January, Italy has banned plastic bags from the supermarkets, so there’s a new market for us.

The other piece of excellent news is that we have our Spring 2011 AUR Ghana Scholarship beneficiary: he is Darlington Kwablah Wiredu, third year Business Administration student from the University of Ghana. Congratulations Darlington. Darlington will spend two weeks with us on the January programme before coming back to Rome with us for the regular semester. Our thanks too, to the Committee: Profs. Samuel Agyei Mensah and Kodjo Gavua of the University of Ghana, Legon, Dr. Kwesi Aning, of the Kofi Annan Inter¬national Peace¬keep¬ing Training Centre, Prof. Nana Apt, Dr. Zelalem Birhanu, a physician who works on public health and with refugees, Commissioner Anna Bossman of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, Prof. Gyimah Boadi, Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, and of course, the director of the Kokrobitey Institute, Renée Neblett who chaired. They did all the work publicis¬ing the award and then going through the applications. Thanks to Bliss Holloway who provided the funds to get the scholarship going and who provided the links to get the programme started back in 2004.

But in order to maintain the scholarship we will need contributions from others. AUR waives full tuition and I am normally able to find a home stay or a space in AUR housing. That leaves the allowance which at the moment is set at €500 per month or €1,750 per semester, €3,500 per year.

At the same time, I would like to offer a scholarship/grant to support a student going to Ghana. After paying for the course, the flight and spending money, there is little change from €3,000 which I still reckon is a good deal, but it is still quite a lot of money. I would like to aim at two €1,000 awards to be given to students from Rome who can show a combination of need, academic excellence and good reasons for wanting to go.

I would like to aim at €6,000 for the first year and to start the ball rolling I will put in €500 myself. Those of you who are earning in the US can of course make the donation tax deductable and I would guess that something similar exists in most other countries.

How to donate

From the US (in Dollars), wire to:
Bank of America
Account: 001923458961
Routing: 026009593

From Europe (in Euros), wire to:
Banca Popolare di Sondrio
Account: 3010X51
IBAN: IT48C0569603221000003010X51
SWIFT: POSOIT22

By check (in Dollars or Euros) to:
The American University of Rome

Send check to:
The American University of Rome
Via P. Roselli 4 – 00153 Rome, Italy

Or send check to:
The American
University of Rome, c/o NIAF
1860 19th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009

Donors should specify what their donation is for. AUR President’s assistant, Maurizia Garzia, keeps a log of donations and issues thank you letters with tax relief notes to donors, but she needs to know what donations are for. Please can you let me know as well.

We have also established link with the Italian public broadcaster, RAI’s flagship international affairs programme Radio 3 Mondo; Anna Maria Giordano is due to be with us for the second half of our stay. This is another example of the synergies which this type of programme can develop.

Academic and policymaking research is also part of the programme. We have a project with the Real Instituto Elcano and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Centre on transnational organized crime. We will be meeting with Dr. Kwesi Aning of the Centre to work on the project.

As well as Anna Maria Giordano’s reporting on Ghana and West Africa, I plan to write on Ghana’s successful route to democracy, transnational organised crime and oil.

• Candidates for the Fall 2011 Scholarship or those who want practical infor¬mation about applications should get in touch with Nathanael Larbi nlarbi@kokrobiteyinstitute.org
• For enrollment or information about the 2011 and 2012 Program, get in touch with me at j.walston@aur.edu

The risks of mayhem

Last week as Parliament was about to pass the controversial university reform bill, Rome braced itself for trouble. On 14 December, the week before, street violence had once again erupted with pictures of cars in flames in the Corso and Piazza del Popolo; masked and helmeted youths and policemen beating each other. Thunderflashes and molotovs were much in evidence. Windows were smashed and ATMs broken. It took one back more than 30 years to 1977 when there were similar scenes in Rome. Or to London or Athens over the last month.
This time my own experiences were some loud bangs from the outside of the Chamber of Deputies while the no confidence vote was being counted. In the square there was a surreal quiet as police and carabinieri put a ring of vehicles and men around the sensitive areas. Walking home through empty streets, the only indication of trouble were a few gaping holes in the cobbles. Rome’s sanpietrini make an effective, abundant and easily available missile for any hostile crowd that needs one.
Most of the students had demonstrated peacefully but there was clearly some sympathy for the demonstrators who showed their mettle. There was talk of agents provocateurs or infiltrati, plainclothesmen who stirred up trouble and the temperature went up. The Minister of Defence, Ignazio La Russa walked out of a television talk show when some students refused to condemn violence while his colleague, the majority leader in the Senate, Maurizio Gasparri, seriously suggested “preventive arrests”. Both had been active in violent right wing groups when they were young so the irony was not lost on commentators. La Russa is not known for his calm nor Gasparri for his legal acumen but they did present a government which was upping the ante. On 21 December, a pipe bomb was found in the underground but it had no detonator. The right used it as proof of trouble to come, the left presented it as a tension raising plant.
So on 22 December there was nervous expectation with big demonstrations planned to coincide with the final passage of the university reform bill. Many shopkeepers in the centre decided not to open and the traffic was absurdly thin for the busiest shopping period in the year. There were police, carabinieri and finance guards everywhere in the centre.
And then… nothing happened.
The students demonstrated in various parts of the city and for a time blocked the ring road. They had decided very explicitly to avoid any provocation and succeeded. They even found some solidarity among the traffic jammed motorists. At the same time, President Napolitano invited a student delegation to the Quirinale to talk about their issues. He played the role of the firm but just grandfather who would still have to sign the bill into law but was listening to their grievances.
There was indeed violence in other parts of Italy and no one thinks that the implementation of the new law will be without hiccoughs. But for that moment before Christmas, violence was avoided and there was a lesson both for the authorities and for the discontented students.
At least since De Toqueville and in a scientific way since Ted Gurr’s Why men rebel in 1975, we have known that most revolts begin not when people are in total misery but when they feel worse off than they were before. Gurr called it “relative deprivation”. Italian (and British and Greek) students are not starving but they will have to pay much more for their education than their parents or forgo it completely and they have far fewer prospects of a steady job or a pension. An interviewer pointed out to the 37 year old Minister of Education, Mariastella Gelmini, that unlike her, many of her contemporaries still don’t have a job or prospects and her reform cuts budgets even further. Touchée.
Then just before Christmas, there were parcel bombs sent to the Chilean, Swiss and Greek embassies all claimed by a so-called Informal Anarchist Federation, a tautology and contradiction in terms in just three words. Yesterday, a couple of people threw thunderflashes at a section house of the Northern League in the village where its leader Umberto Bossi lives. There was an explosion outside a court in Athens today. All this has provoked a buzz about “global anarchism” or, for Italy, a “a return to the Seventies”. As part of that debate, along with a former US diplomat in Greece and a British security expert, I was asked about the Italian aspects on al Jazeera “Inside Story” 27 December 2010.
We all agreed that however unpleasant the recent bombs are for people close to them, they do not presage a worldwide anarchist plot. Their communication methods have changed but they aims and even their weapons are much closer to the world of Conrad’s Secret Agent at the end of the 19th century or the Russians of a generation before. They would like to start a world revolution but are unlikely to succeed.
In Italy, in particular, anarchism has always held far less appeal than more organised forms of revolt. The language of the left has nearly always been a Marxist one; it spoke with violence against fascism through the Communist partisans in the war and again in the ‘70s through the Red Brigades against the Italian Republic. The fascist right was born in violence through the ‘20s squadristi and again found expression in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Political violence is as Italian as pasta and returns every generation. Given the discontent today and the very real relative deprivation, the conditions are right for another round. There is political and economic instability and a very uncertain future so the future is not rosy.
But it is not anarchist violence from a few small groups that is the worry. And last week’s lesson from the students is that politics does not have to be violent.
So for the moment, I hope, the worst we can expect are the new year’s eve fireworks and bangers. And a happy new year to you all.

Eatanswill-on-Tiber; Trasformismo in the 21st century

Or the Vicar of Bray, Italian style (“And to this law I will maintain/ Unto my dying day, Sir./ That whatever King may reign, /I will be the Vicar of Bray”)

The last week before the confidence votes were marked by violent polemics over the cattlemarket for wavering deputies. The opposition has made it very clear that Berlusconi played dirty in the ways he inveigled the less principled into his camp. But whatever the ethics of the matter and Di Pietro’s accusations of crimes, there is very likely nothing illegal and certainly nothing very original in the process.
Now that the government has a tiny (and relative) majority, it is almost certain that there is likely to be a lot of horsetrading at the next crucial vote. Two or three deputies can hold the government to ransom so we have certainly not seen the last of Parliament looking more like a stock exchange than a legislative body.
In English popular culture, the Vicar of Bray epitomises the figure who adjusts his principles to suit the times. In the 17th century, the real vicar maintained his prebend in the parish of Bray officiating happily as a puritan, an Anglican and a Catholic. Italian legislators are no less adept at navigating the shoals of a career in politics.
For a good part of its first 60 years and before, Italy was marked by a permeability between political groupings that was know euphemistically first as the connubio and then as trasformismo. Before unification Cavour managed to put together liberals and conservatives in the Piedmontese parliament in order to push through his reforms; this was the connubio or marriage. In 1882 the prime minister Agostino Depretis remarked “if someone wants to transform (trasformarsi) himself and become progressive, how can I send him away?” and the term was coined. But the whole period was marked by a lack of a clear divide in programmes and ideologies between the two sides.
A generation later, the Piedmontese statesman Giovanni Giolitti became a master of political management worthy of New York’s Tamanay or Dickens’ Eatanswill. Like today’s accusations of deputy-buying, Depretis and Giolitti cajoled their clients by promising them re-election as well as personal and political benefits. But on the whole, the persuasion which was exercised was much more similar to the carrots and sticks which an American president uses to negotiate a bill through congress. The lack of sharp party discipline also links the US system with pre-fascist Italy so that despite the extensive horsetrading there was rarely anything clearly illegal or overtly corrupt.
The lack of parties led to the importance of personalities; a deputy’s loyalty was to Giolitti, not to the party. And despite the overwhelming importance of parties today, paradoxically, personalities are even more important. The big difference between today and the old trasformismo is that the reward is personal rather than political.
The two members of Antonio Di Pietro’s Italy of Values (IdV), Domenico Scilipoti and Antonio Razzi who voted for Berlusconi were betraying Di Pietro because they had been recruited by him and had a loyalty to him rather than the party. Massimo Calearo is a Veneto businessman who Walter Veltroni had put in the Democratic Party list in the hope of widening the party’s appeal; he was linked more to Veltroni than the PD. Calearo left the party a year ago and last week voted in favour of Berlusconi. The bond in all cases in personal and the motive may or may not be private rather than political advantage.
The past master of today’s game is Clemente Mastella, the man who brought down Prodi’s government in January 2008 and is probably the best personification of a contemporary vicar of Bray. Just before the 14 December vote, he explained exactly why a deputy should look after his own interests and change sides. A deputy has an income of c. €15,000 per month; the legislature could last another 28 months which totals more than €400,000. Add to that the generous pension which a deputy is entitled to after five years service, there are strong incentives not to go to early elections especially for new deputies. Principles are hardly relevant.
His take on the result, by the way, was that Berlusconi will win by a short head and he was right. But the €15,000 p.m. figure that Mastella quotes is by my reckoning a bit low; the Chamber of Deputies states that a deputy receives c. €11,700 a month salary (which after tax, pension, health deductions becomes €5,500 net) plus €3,500 expenses for living in Rome, €3,700 for “relations between electors and elected”, c. €1,000 pm for travel to an from the airport, €250 pm for telephone and free air, rail and sea travel in Italy and free motorways.
In any case, it is well documented that Italian deputies are the highest paid in Europe.
So as Mastella put so elegantly, there are good reasons to support the government even if Berlusconi gives them nothing. The five years’ service before being entitled to a pension is not quite true as there are ways of getting a pension after only three years; but I’ll deal with that in another blog. Berlusconi does not only have the possibility of doling out cash bonuses to deputies. Like Giolitti a century before, but without Giolitti’s stature, he can decide who is to be elected in the next elections. Since the resignation of the Fli members of government, Berlusconi has the bounty of one cabinet minister, one deputy minister and two undersecretaries to distribute. And he is keeping those jobs empty, dangling as bait for possible incentives in the future. One deputy, a physician, is alleged to have been promised a consultant’s post in hospital; another is the daughter of the owner of Italy’s largest crammer which is also seeking university status and Berlusconi has supported private education. Future jobs and contributions to foundations and thinktanks have also been suggested a coin for these transactions but we will have to wait some months to see if the deals were respected.
One of those who gave their vote to Berlusconi, Domenico Scilipoti, even had the nerve to make fun of himself posting a clip from the great Neapolitan comic Totò’s Gli onorevoli where Totò is promised the world for three votes – very prescient.
Berlusconi claimed another eight deputies on Friday but of course it won’t be tested till the next controversial vote (Wednesday’s vote on the university reform bill will not be opposed by Fli).
There is no doubt about the sleaze which surrounded Tuesday’s vote. But while vote buying at an individual level is criminal, members of parliament have their independence guaranteed by the constitution precisely to prevent the parties taking over. Unless investigators are able to find more than circumstantial evidence that deputies were bought for precise benefits rather than persuaded by Berlusconi’s strength of argument and personality, then there will be no convictions. It is a question of ethics and standards rather than specific crimes; welcome to an Italian Eatanswill.
But before that, there is the far more immediate problem of violence in the streets which I will deal with before the Wednesday vote.

Once more unto the swamp, my friends

Italy is full of significant dates but 14 December is not going to be one of them. The no confidence vote was hyped in both Italian and foreign media as being a crucial date for Berlusconi and for Italy but even before the result it was clear that the vote would resolve very little.
If he had lost the vote, today would certainly provide more interesting copy with endless speculation about whether Berlusconi could form a new government, how the coalition might be enlarged, who might be alternative leaders and when or if Napolitano would call early elections. All this will come, but not today. Instead we have very low key speculation on the same issues. Berlusconi is indeed trying to enlarge his coalition and continues his pre-Christmas shopping spree (the next blog will be on buying and selling parliamentarians), and early elections are still high on the agenda.
It is true that the government won on Tuesday but only by three votes which means that any two deputies can hold Berlusconi to ransom; this will happen sooner rather than later.
In order to pre-empt any moves by Berlusconi towards bringing in Pierferdinando Casini’s centrist UDC, Casini and Gianfranco Fini along with Francesco Rutelli formed a new group which they have called Polo della Nazione. At the moment they have around 100 deputies and while there is no chance that they could poll more that the Berlusconi’s People of Freedom, (PdL) in the Chamber at a general election, there are very good chances that they would win enough in the Senate to stymie a possible Berlusconi majority. That is, of course, if they manage to stay together. They are three oversized egos whose highest common factor is that they dislike Berlusconi and they call themselves “centrists” or “moderates”. But Fini is fiercely secular and supports living wills, civil unions and stem cell research. Casini comes from the old Christian Democratic party and presents himself as their successor while Rutelli started in the militantly anti-clerical Radical Party, then as mayor of Rome sidled up to the Vatican and is now the paladin of compromise with the Church. The three are odd bedfellows and even if they manage not to quarrel, the electorate is too savvy to be duped into thinking that they are a solid alliance. There are too many examples of marriages more or less of convenience winning fewer votes than their component parts from the Socialists and Communists in 1948 to the Socialists and Social Democrats in 1968 to the piles of small far left and far right parties over the last decade.
To emphasise where the substance of power lies, yesterday when the Pope received the new Italian ambassador to the Holy See, he thanked the Italian government for its defence of crucifixes in state schools. The day after the vote of confidence, the president of the Italian bishops’ conference, Angelo Bagnasco said that the Italians had declared themselves in favour of “governability” and the secretary of state, Bertone, blessed the government. Once again, the Vatican and the Catholic Church heirarchy in Italy have shown their realism and are backing what they think is the winning horse. Certainly not Casini and the UDC.
But while the Church seeks stability, Berlusconi closest ally is threatening some sort of revolt. Umberto Bossi and the Northern League (LN) have been fighting for different forms of devolution or federalism since they first went into government in 1994. In practice they have achieved very little for their almost nine years in government plus more than a year supporting a technocrat government. Now Bossi is demanding action on the implementation of last year’s fiscal federalism law (and another blog on that before Christmas). If progress is blocked by the opposition, then he has said he will demand elections.
So despite Tuesday’s trumpeted victory, the government is just as fragile as it was before the vote and the chances of a spring election just as high. The procedure is that there must be 60 days between dissolving Parliament and new elections so in order to make the date that many punters have been backing, 27 March, the real crunch must happen before the end of January. The Constitutional Court is due to pronounce in mid January on the “legitimate impediment” law which gives Berlusconi immunity from trials while in office so there will be many cues for a new crisis to begin.
With elections, there is a good possibility that Berlusconi would win a relative majority in the Chamber. His media resources and his own campaigning ability are still powerful weapons. The present electoral law would make the relative into an absolute majority. He might just take the Senate though that is less likely. But if he did, then he would be able to have himself elected President of the Republic in 2013 (it is Parliament plus representatives of the regions who elect the president), and retire safely up the hill to the Quirinale for another seven years by which time he would be 83; a nightmare scenario which would have many Italian claiming refugee status in San Marino.
In the meantime, unemployment rises, businesses downsize or fail, stringent cuts have provoked violent reactions as we saw on Tuesday here in Rome. So the alternative to a PdL-LN victory would not be very pretty either. A hung parliament; or the victory of a divided opposition. Not the best way of facing serious issues.
The answer to the question I posed last week, “who’s next?” was answered instantly by a correspondent who knows the country to a tee “why Berlusconi, of course”. For the moment, and for a fair time to come, he is right and journey through the swamp will be long, arduous and very messy.

Who can follow this act? Who will follow it?

We all know that Silvio Berlusconi is immortal according to his doctor or at the very least that he is good for 120 years as he told Vladimir Putin recently. But just in case he is not prime minister for the next 46 years and especially if he is not prime minister after Tuesday’s vote of no confidence, as I promised on Friday, now is a good time to look at possible successors.
If he were to step down, there are two close associates who might take over. The first is Gianni Letta, a year older than Berlusconi, former editor of the right wing Roman paper Il Tempo who started working for Berlusconi in 1987. For the last 16 years he has been Berlusconi’s shadow, undersecretary to the Council of Ministers (the cabinet) when Berlusconi was prime minister, close advisor in opposition. He avoids the limelight and is very much at home on both sides of the Tiber. Over the last few months he only came to the fore when there was bad news to break. If he did take over, it would be as an interim PM, a gentle move towards a more normal political leader. His nephew, Enrico Letta is a senior member of the opposition Democratic Party.
More likely to be in conflict with his former boss would be the economics and finance minister, Giulio Tremonti loved by the Northern League and respected by most of his own party and the European institutions. He was both a tax accountantcy specialist close to Berlusconi and an academic but over the last 16 years has built up a reputation of independence which makes him a potential successor.
For a time, there was a very small possibility that the leader of the centrist Christian Democrat movement the UDC, Pierferdinando Casini might be a candidate. He is a former ally of Berlusconi and former speaker of the Chamber who Berlusconi has been trying to win back for the last three months but today he seems set to vote against the government on Tuesday and is trying to put together a centrist coalition with Francesco Rutelli and Gianfranco Fini.
Another outsider could be interior minister Roberto Maroni, the polite, good cop face of the Northern League but he would have a hard time persuading even people on the right that his version of the LN was different from Umberto Bossi racist, separatist and uncouth version.
Finally, there is always the dynastic option. Granted Italy is a republic but there are plenty of republics from North Korea to the United States where power moves through blood or marriage. Berlusconi’s daughter, Marina, is 44 and head for the family holding company, Fininvest. Over the summer she gave interviews on politics and the family papers gave her full coverage. Not surprisingly she denies that she would be going into politics.
On the left, obviously the natural candidate should be Pierlugi Bersani, the Democratic Party (PD) secretary who yesterday once again staked his claim as the leader of a future centre left coalition. There was a huge anti-Berlusconi demo in Piazza S. Giovanni addressed by Bersani alone. If anything it was more about Bersani and the PD showing that they really are the opposition leaders than the usual anti-B demo.
The problem is of course that for all his very real qualities, Bersani is still perceived as Massimo D’Alema’s man and apart from his diehard supporters, for most of the centre-left, D’Alema has been the kiss of death since he actively allowed Prodi’s downfall in 1998. And then since the introduction of primaries, first for Prodi himself and the Democrats of the Left in 2005 and then for Walter Veltroni in 2007, centre-left voters have not always followed the party line.
If there are elections next spring and assuming that there are primaries beforehand, the most likely winner is 52 year old Nichi Vendola, not Bersani. Unlike Bersani, Vendola is able to conjure up a dream, an essential quality for a winning politician. He also has practical experience as president of the Apulia region where he has governed effectively since 2005. In 2009, he founded his own party Sinistra, ecologia, libertà (“freedom” is the catchword across the whole spectrum). He is gay, Catholic and on the radical left; he is also a very strong speaker with an excellent presence and probably most important, untainted with the old political class even though he has been an activist since he was 14.
Age has become an issue since the 35 year old mayor of Florence Matteo Renzi said last month that the old leadership should be scrapped and traded in. Bersani could not do any better than saying I demand respect. Renzi is certainly very pushy but since he paid a private visit to Berlusconi, it is not quite clear in which direction he is pushing.
The mayor of Turin, Sergio Chiamparino, 62, is also another potential leader but definitely an outsider. Another outsider or possible future candidate is the president of the province of Rome, Nicola Zingaretti, 45, former MEP and secretary of the party’s international section. He has managed to install free wi-fi in areas throughout the province, no mean feat, has charm and works Facebook and the new media well.
Then of course there is the new right, or as they would prefer, the new centre that has its own potential leaders. There have been preliminary moves to form a “third pole” with Fini, Casini and former Radical and PD mayor of Rome, Francesco Rutelli but the differences between them and their lack of mass support mean that there is no great probability of the alliance taking off successfully. Only if Fini is able to take over as the leader of most of the centre-right would he stand a chance. He played the role of successor to Berlusconi until April, now he has to go it alone, a very difficult task.
An outsider on the right is another mayor, Rome’s present incumbent, Gianni Alemanno. Once on the far right, very ambitious, he might have been aiming at some bid when his mandate ends in 2012 but for the moment he is facing a serious of accusations of helping too many friends and relations find jobs in the city administration.
Outside the present political spectrum are three names worth mentioning: Ferrari chief, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the president of the Bank of Italy, Mario Draghi and Mario Monti, former European commissioner. The first has said that he is “prepared to sacrifice himself for the country” a sure preamble to putting his hat in the ring. And he has set up a thinktank Italia Futura, another precurser to a political party. He too would have a conflict of interest but after Berlusconi, his would be trifling. He is biding his time and waiting for the right moment to come along.
The other two have said very explicitly that they do not want to go into politics but with the precedent of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi who moved very successfully from the Bank of Italy to first Palazzo Chigi, then the ministry of economics and then the Quirinal, there are many who would like to see a clean and competent economist with practical experience take over. Draghi would probably prefer the ECB to Palazzo Chigi and his chances are good.
Monti was a much respected commissioner appointed by Berlusconi and then renewed by D’Alema, and is a confirmed European. He has returned to academe but for both him and Draghi, the siren song of “saving one’s country” would be hard to resist if the situation worsens dramatically over the next few months.
As for the next two days, all the talk is of Berlusconi’s shopping spree and he might just make it to a majority. But if he does, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. I will try and deal with that aspect of the crisis tomorrow.

Italian countdown

Most of the foreign media seem to think that Italy is coming to the end of an era and that on Tuesday Berlusconi’s long moment at centre stage will be over. The Italian media are concerned about the detail – will he, won’t he get a majority? Who has changed sides? Why? And for how much?
For those who find Italian politics too arcane or too tedious to follow in its minutiæ, you should know that Tuesday 14 December is crunch time for Silvio Berlusconi. There will be two motions put to the Italian Parliament; a motion of confidence in the Senate tabled by the government parties – Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) and Umberto Bossi’s Northern League (LN). It will be voted on in the morning and will pass as the coalition has a solid majority.
In the Chamber of Deputies there is a vote of no confidence in the government put by the various opposition parties from Antonio Di Pietro’s Italy of Values (IdV) to Gianfranco Fini’s Future and Liberty (Fli). On paper, if everyone votes and votes according to their positions a month ago, the government should lose. But these last few days have seen feverish negotiations across the spectrum. Some are about individuals not following their party whip; rumours fly – so-and-so was offered a consultancy job €100,000 a year over the next four years; someone else was offered a free mortgage and so on or a future position in government. Some negotiations have been made public. The veteran leader of the Radical Party, Marco Pannella is once again threatening to move his six deputies from the Democratic Party to support Berlusconi as he did in the ‘90s. The price is apparently special legislation on prison reform and on the administration of justice. Fini’s principal lieutenant, Italo Bocchino has admitted that he too had a meeting with Berlusconi in order to try and come to an agreement before the vote. But it came to nothing.
Some of the negotiations are of substance, both the sleazy ones (the PD leader has called for the prosecution of paid turncoats) and the political ones like Pannella’s but most of the activity is posturing. Everyone wants to maintain the moral high ground in this case defined as “responsibility”… towards the country which is in the throes of a worsening economic crisis. No one wants to be labelled as having brought about early elections so they want to present themselves as making every possible effort to avoid the divisiveness that an election will inevitably accentuate.
The other posture in the negotiations is to paint the other side as “traitors” and one’s own as being true to “our” principles. There has been much rhetoric on this score. The centre-right tabloid Libero ran its front page earlier this week with mug shots of the Fli deputies and others who had left the PdL under the banner headline “Traitors”. Di Pietro proclaimed yesterday that if any of his deputies voted to support Berlusconi they would be “Judas who sold himself for 30 pieces of silver”.
All those involved in the negotiations have promised cliffhangers right up to the moment of the division.
After they have all pressed their buttons and the screen in the Chamber lights up, the following scenarios are possible.
Berlusconi might scrape by with a majority. This is unlikely but just possible. He might just get an absolute majority – more likely is a win due to abstentions. If it does happen by whatever means, then everyone will go home for Christmas and there will be another crisis sometime in the new year, probably fairly soon.
If he loses, then precedent and constitution mean that he would offer his resignation to President Napolitano. Napolitano will then consult with party leaders and the speakers of both houses to see who might be able to put together a new government, i.e what sort of coalition could command a majority in both houses. There is a slim possibility that Berlusconi might be given a mandate to form a new government based on a broader coalition but this was more or less what Bocchino and the Fli offered him and which he turned down.
The second possibility is that someone else is given a mandate – perhaps Berlusconi’s éminence grise, Gianni Letta, perhaps the economics minister, Giulio Tremonti to see if he has any better chances of finding a majority. There was even talk of Berlusconi stepping to one side and becoming foreign minister. Much of the opposition is clamoring for a “technical” government or a government of national unity. This would change the electoral law and try and preserve confidence in the economy until new elections could be held. But at the moment this seems unlikely because Berlusconi and the PdL are strongly against a solution which would leave him out in the cold and in their words “betray the electorate who gave him a majority in 2008”. For him, it smacks of 1994 all over again when the LN brought the government down and put in one led by the Bank of Italy director Lamberto Dini. I will go over today’s potential leaders in another blog this weekend.
In the distant past, the negotiations for a new leader and new majority often went on for weeks, sometimes months. Today that is not going to happen. If no one can form a government in a few days, the most likely scenario is that early elections will be called. The bookmakers’ favorite date is 27 March. Unless something dramatic happens over the next few days, I would put my money on that outcome as well. The results of the elections are much more uncertain, but at the moment Berlusconi would most likely win in the Chamber and given his media resource and campaigning ability, he might even make it in the Senate. But March is a long way off.
Tomorrow there will be a massive anti-Berlusconi demonstration here in Rome in Piazza San Giovanni. In order to claim success, the PD will have to make it bigger than Berlusconi San Giovanni demo just before the regional elections this year. We’ll see tomorrow; today at least the weather is a sunny 12 degrees.
There is momentum for street protests as Italian students have taken to the streets and monuments complaining about cuts in education. There was a big demo at La Scala’s opening, again protesting against cuts in the arts budget. And there is everyone else who is tired of Berlusconi and uncertainty.
Last week the budget passed, almost without a murmur and the Constitutional Court should have begun deliberations on 14th on whether the present “legitimate impediment” law which give the prime minister immunity from prosecution is actually constitutional. But they have put it off until next month. So for the moment Parliament is centre stage.
This latest act in the Berlusconi saga is heading towards a finale, but not yet the finale.

Interview with Sylvia Poggioli on NPR:


Link to the interview with Gerry Hadden in mp3 format

Fini awakes

The gauntlet has been thrown down, and with a vengeance. Gianfranco Fini has finally come out into the open from his guerrilla warfare and has declared an open war.
At the end of a passionate and expertly articulated speech, he came to the climax with a call to Silvio Berlusconi to resign. Fini succeeded once again in passing on the responsibility for early elections and potential chaos to Berlusconi who only last week challenged Fini to come out into the open.
As ever in Italian politics, nothing is simple. Fini and the other people of his group made it clear that they are firmly within the centre-right, that they do not want early elections but that this government has gone beyond its best by date. Fini’s solution is that Berlusconi should resign and President Napolitano should call all the parties to the Quirinale and form a new centre-right government, almost certainly including the centrist UDC led by Pierferdinando Casini, a former Berlusconi ally and himself a former speaker of the Chamber of Deputies like Fini.
There would be no guarantee that the new government would have Berlusconi as prime minister and certainly Fini pulled few punches in his attacks on Berlusconi both for his private life but more importantly for his public accomplishment. Making fun of Berlusconi’s mantra that his is “un governo del fare” (a government that gets things done), Fini said it was “un governo del fare finta” (a government that fakes everything) adding that “the government is off course and adrift”.
If Berlusconi does not accept the challenge and stays where he is, Fini has said that his ministers will withdraw from the government. Berlusconi would then find it very difficult to stay put. He could replace Fini’s four (a cabinet minister, a deputy minister and two undersecretaries) and limp on. Fini said that his group, Futuro e Libertà would support measures that were part of the government programme so they would not bring the government down immediately but whatever he does, Berlusconi is a lame duck. He has little or no control over special legislation to help him out of the criminal charges that he is facing and the 14 December deadline is rapidly approaching. This is the day that the Constitutional Court will pronounce on whether the present immunity law is constitutional.
Legality was one of the points that Fini hammered on in his speech “without legality, there is no freedom” and again, “there is a culture of tolerance of arbitrariness and lack of fairness where the powerful dominate the weak”.
It was a speech worthy of any opposition, in favour of human rights and equality between north and south, men and women, black and white, hetero- and homosexual, a passage which brought huge cheers from the audience, perhaps surprising in a speech which was explicitly right wing and to a public which declares itself on the centre-right.
The latest sex scandal, “Rubygate”, was never mentioned by name but Fini referred to it when he lamented the collapse of part of Pompei yesterday and “other events which present Italy in a negative light”. And again when he quoted the Pope (emphasising three times that he was speaking “secularly”) who said that the rubbish is “not just in the streets of Naples but in people’s consciences”.
Apart from Berlusconi, Fini’s other target was Umberto Bossi’s Northern League who he accused of being the “most backward party in Europe”, strong words for a coalition ally. For Fini, the League was leading Berlusconi’s PdL.
That he is a man of the right was clear from the beginning when he spoke of the “nation” which he defined as “community, and the need for a clear national identity (there was a right wing mention of gens italica). After the speech the national anthem was palyed; there were some positive references to the church but Fini has never hidden his own secularity. Despite using the word “destra” or “centro-destra” most of the substance of the speech would have gone down well on the centre-left. There was plenty of talk about looking after the weaker members of society.
It was, explicitly, a challenge for the next elections whether they are in 2013 or next spring, or, just possibly, sooner. After 17 years of being Berlusconi’s presumed successor (it is almost exactly 17 years since Berlusconi endorsed Fini’s candidacy for the mayor of Rome), Fini has said in practice, “if you’re not going to retire quietly and give me the succession, I will fight you for it”. The only question is why it has taken him so long – he and Berlusconi have been in power for eight years out of the last ten.
And now the ball is firmly in Berlusconi’s court.

Here we go again! Italy ever teetering

At the risk of being repetitive, the Italian media and a good portion of foreign commentators are once again agog at Berlusconi’s sex life and above all, his abuse of power. We can only echo Yogi Berra wearily, “It’s déjà vu all over again”.
For a moment, one was tempted to think that this was all a great plot by a diabolically devious Berlusconi; his friendship with “Ruby” the now 18 year old Moroccan girl almost looks like a diversionary tactic to shift media focus from his government’s inaction and lack of success. He did something like that in 2003 when he suggested in the European Parliament that a German MEP, Martin Schulz, could play the part of a concentration camp guard. It caused an uproar but no one got an answer from Schulz’s question (“how will you be able to act as the president of the European Union with your conflicts of interests?). This time, though, there were no hidden motives and both he and his government are suffering real damage from what has inevitably been called “Rubygate”.
The superficial story is that the Italian prime minister has a weakness for pretty girls. This is hardly news; 18 months ago his wife said that he was “not well and frequents minors”. He had met the 17 year old Naomi Letizia on various occasions and then very publically went to her 18th birthday party. A month later it transpired that he had spent the US election night in November 2008 with Patrizia D’Addario, an escort from Bari who had recorded their encounter. Photographs were published of almost naked girls at his Sardinian villa. This time he called the Milan police last May to secure the release of an underage Moroccan with no documents. The girl had visited Berlusconi at least once and he admitted both to the meeting and the calls to the police when he said he “always helped people in need”.
But there other aspects to the revelations which are even more serious. So far no one is suggesting that he had sex with the girl but over the last week there have been more allegations about paid sex for the prime minister and now another minister, Renato Brunetta, hyperactive and even more vertically challenged than the prime minister who has been trying to cut waste and overmanning in the public administration.
The story came out as part of an investigation into a prostitution racket. The main figures under investigation are all closely linked to Berlusconi. There is Emilio Fede, the grovelling anchorman of Berlusconi’s Rete Quattro news. It was Fede who made the connection between Berlusconi and Naomi. He is a frequent member of beauty contest juries and is always on the lookout for young talent. Also under investigation is Lele Mora who is professionally a talent scout and agent as well as being a neighbour of Berlusconi’s in Sardinia. There are also investigations into Mora’s connections with Calabrian organised crime, the ndrangheta. The third person is Nicole Minetti a 25 year old former showgirl and dancer, now described as the Prime Minister’s dental hygienist. Earlier this year Berlusconi put her up for election to the Lombard Regional Assembly where she now sits. It was Minetti who took charge of “Ruby” after the Prime Minister’s phone calls to the police.
At the very least, this suggest a rising tide of sleaze even if there are no criminal convictions at the end of the day. Berlusconi himself has made matters worse by admitting the call to the police in May and then boasting about his life style. And then to add to the anti-semitic, anti-women and blasphemous “jokes” last month, he proudly proclaimed that it was better to “love women than to be gay”. Finally then to give the old definition of chutzpah [the quality of nerve defined by the person who murders both his parents and then demands support from the community because he is an orphan] a new spin, Fede explained that Berlusconi “is single and has become sad since he lost his mother. I can’t see anything wrong if he enjoys himself one evening a week”. He ended the interview saying “I’ve got to go on air, otherwise he’ll fire me”.
But there is more than sycophantic courtiers to this story. Some of Berlusconi’s carabinieri escorts have complained that they spend more time moving and escorting the prime minister’s “escorts” than providing security. Worse is the strong suspicion that Berlusconi leant on the police to have Ruby released. So far the letter of the law appears to have been followed but in Italy and in many other places a policeman ignores a call from the prime minister at his peril.
All of this happens as rubbish once again piles up in and around Naples; Parliament was adjourned for most of last month; last Friday’s cabinet meeting failed to set up a nuclear energy agency or appoint new members of the stock exchange watchdog, the Consob. And on Saturday, Emma Marcegaglia, the president of the Confindustria, the employers’ association, once again laid into the government’s inaction. “The country is paralysed” she said, “and the government is absent”.
Worse from Berlusconi’s personal point of view, his “reform of justice” (shorthand for his own immunity) has ground to a standstill with strong opposition from the breakaway centre right group lead by Gianfranco Fini and from President Napolitano. On 14 December the Constitutional Court will pronounce on the constitutionality of his present immunity law; if they overturn it, then Berlusconi will have to again answer summonses to appear in court and could face a conviction by the end of next year. If that happens, there is a fair chance that Berlusconi would cut and run like his friend and mentor Bettino Craxi 20 years ago. Craxi spent the rest of his life in gilded exile in Tunisia; Berlusconi has just bought a new villa in Antigua so there might be a Caribbean future for him; still, it would be a terrible failure however comfortable.
By any standards, he is floundering. Opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani and other have urged Fini and his Futuro e Libertà to “pull the plug”. They could, and would like to do so on the immunity/impunity issue but for the moment, they don’t dare.
Fini has carved out a role as a “responsible statesman” – he cannot be seen to being bringing down the government and in any case, his group Futuro e Libertà is not ready to fight an election. He cannot be seen to be a rabblerouser especially when his natural allies like Marcegaglia and the Confindustria have said explicitly that they do not want early elections. The trades unions have not been so clear but they too don’t want to risk elections which mean instability and who knows whether the polls would give them a better result. For its part only Di Pietro’s Italia dei Valori would relish a campaign.
So Berlusconi will teeter on. In the meantime support from conservatives and the church is eroding because of his lifestyle, from business because of the stagnant economy and from consumers because of declining purchasing power. But for the moment, there is no alternative and if elections were held now, he would, despite everything, probably, win again; the relative majority in the Chamber, but that would give him an absolute majority of seats. So he can challenge Fini as he did today and Fini will for the moment “support the government programme”.
In Italian grand opera, the heroine takes half an hour to die; in the Grand Soap Opera which is Berlusconi’s Italy, the government takes half a year or more to collapse.

With enemies like this, who needs friends… the opposition in Italy
For years now, the joke has been that Berlusconi’s best allies are the centre left. Unfortunately, for years it has not been a joke – it’s true. Now that we are likely to have elections next spring, the question has become a very practical and urgent one not just for the centre-left but the whole democratic process.
In April 2008, after Gianni Alemanno won the Rome municipal elections for the centre-right, some of his supporters swarmed around the Campidoglio. The more crass greeted the victory with the fascist salute; others showed that parts of the right have a sense of humour. They raised placards saying “Veltroni – santo subito!” (“make Veltroni a saint immediately”) echoing the cries for immediate sainthood for John Paul II. Their reasons were clear enough; Veltroni founded the Democratic Party (PD) in October 2007 and organised primary elections for the leader. This undermined Prodi’s authority as prime minister; then he declared that the PD would stand for election alone, without coalition allies. That frightened off the weakest element of the then Prodi government, bringing down the government and provoking early elections at a moment when Berlusconi was riding high and the centre left was very unpopular. And finally, he put up Francesco Rutelli as candidate for mayor of Rome making it clear that the party and the people had no choice in the matter – except they did and elected Alemanno. In six months, he brought Prodi and the centre-left government down, removed Communists and Socialists from Parliament for the first time in 65 years and then gave Rome to the centre-right. The least they could do for him was sainthood.
Except now he has done more; he suggested last month that the centre-left should look outside the PD for a leader, “a foreign pope” was the metaphor used. All sorts of names were thrown up as a result; from Nichi Vendola, president of the Apulia regional government, much loved by the left, with charm and charisma, gay and Catholic, to Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, a possible leader of the centre. This was yet another re-run of the battle between Veltroni and D’Alema as the present PD secretary, Pierluigi Bersani, is a D’Alemiano. The problem is that Veltroni and D’Alema have been bickering “since they wore shorts” as one commentator put it. Since then Veltroni has withdrawn the suggestion, but the damage was done. The centre-left showed its divisions once again.
They are no better when it comes to winning policy and position issues. Compromise is inevitable in politics and sometimes even admirable but the PD’s version always seems to come across as tired, old fashioned and unprincipled. In the never-ending story of Berlusconi trying to avoid his criminal trials coming to verdict, the PD immediately left the moral high ground and is seeking a solution which distinguishes the “political” from the “legal”. And this at a time when a growing section of the centre-right is tired of the Prime Minister’s squirming for impunity. They could fight for principle and political advantage at the same time but they don’t.
They did the same on the vital issue of the High Council of the Magistrature, (CSM or Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura), the judiciary’s self governing body which is crucial given the battle between Berlusconi and the judiciary. The vice president is in practice the voice of the CSM (the president is the President of the Republic who only has a ceremonial role) and this time was due to be held by an opposition appointee. Instead of fighting for a distingished and independent lawyer of which there were many possibilities, the PD settled for a centrist figure who had already helped in drafting one of Berlusconi immunity bills and after election immediately began coming to terms with the centre-right members of the CSM. Again, a loss of principle and position.
Winning elections needs three components: leadership, organisation and a programme. Strength in one suit can compensate weakness in the other two but the centre-left is weak in all three. Given the format of elections in most western democracies today, leadership is undoubtedly the most important. Even in parliamentary systems, election campaigns are in practice “presidential”. Despite some real differences in programmes between the Labour Party and the Tories, it was the Brown-Cameron contrast which counted. The first time presidential style debates emphasised the leadership factor.
In Italy, the combination of Berlusconi’s “entry onto the field” and then the change of electoral system meant that personality and leadership became essential in the political game. For almost 17 years Silvio Berlusconi has been the focus of Italian politics even when he was in opposition. No one denies his previous qualities of personality and leadership and his rapidly learnt ability to navigate political shoals. The opposition has had to take this into account and the only times that they were successful was with Romano Prodi who expressed the antithesis of Berlusconi’s qualities. Prodi was careful and plodding where Berlusconi is spontaneous and mercurial; Berlusconi vaunts his successful football club while Prodi rode his bicycle even to the top of serious alpine passes. Prodi was the professor who explained everything in lengthy and calm detail; Berlusconi produced the “contract with the Italians” in five bullet points. But Prodi won twice against Berlusconi.
Today, Prodi is not poised for a second comeback though the PD leader, Pierluigi Bersani, tried to launch a Nuovo Ulivo in August. It was as if by invoking the winning name of a past alliance, he could conjure up a new and successful formula. Instead it only brought on yawns. Bersani is a solid ex-Communist from Emilia who was a more than competent minister for development in Prodi’s last government; he is sharp and a good debater but does not have the flair that only Berlinguer and maybe Togliatti had among Communist and post-Communist leaders. Above all, he is marked as a D’Alemiano which means that half of his natural supporters do not fully trust him.
As for programmes, in the big metal workers’ demonstration on 16 October protesting the threatened FIAT plant transfers and government inaction, some PD leaders participated, others kept their distance showing once again a lack of clarity in what they stand for, left or centre, workers or management. They need both, of course, to win an election, but they seem unable to finesse their different elements.
On the last point, the organisation is still there, a tribute to the Italian Communist Party whose ghost is still supporting its successors 20 years on.
But it is not enough. Their only hope is the growing confusion on the other side but despite the increasing discontent with Berlusconi, he would still win an election held today. Even if he lost and the PD won, what would they do with victory? It is not an edifying spectacle.

A comment on "Ahi serva Italia"
Italy hasn't changed over the centuries, has it? That is why it remains so frustratingly lovable, in its eternal adolescence, even in the eyes of the foreign beholder!
What must be stressed, nowadays, is that Berlusconi is the consequence, not the cause, of the much lamented general meltdown of Italian politics."