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Italy, Sicily

Today’s Sicilian elections showcase potential party strength before 2013 Italian election

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Today, one of Italy’s most iconic regions — Sicily — goes to the polls to elect the 90 members of its regional legislature and, indirectly, a new regional president.

For all the beauty of its landscape, the majesty of its architecture and the divinity of its food and wine, Sicily, the home of the well known Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian organized crime group that has become synonymous with the word mafia, is not the world’s model showcase for good governance.

Sunday’s elections come six month early after the resignation on July 31 of regional president Raffaele Lombardo, who was elected overwhelmingly in 2008, but stepped down under a cloud of corruption — depressingly familiar charges of complicity with the Sicilian mafia.  The election also comes as a bit of a dress rehearsal for Italy’s expected upcoming general election (along with early elections expected soon in Lombardy as well) — just a couple days after former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s conviction in a Milan court for tax fraud.

Rosario Crocetta (pictured above, top), the leading leftist candidate for president and the mafia-fighting former mayor of Gela (Sicily’s sixth-largest city) would be Sicily’s first openly-gay regional president and has campaign marks the best chance of the center-left in a generation to govern Sicily.  But polling nearly as well as the broad center-right and the center-left is the new anti-austerity protest party, the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) of blogger and comedian Beppe Grillo — he made a splash by swimming across the Strait of Messina from the Italian peninsula to Sicily at the beginning of the campaign (pictured above, bottom).

In one way or another, each of the five main parties competing in today’s election in Sicily will be able to pull lessons from the result in advance of national elections that, although just six months away, remain incredibly fluid.

Italy’s technocratic prime minister Mario Monti, who was appointed in November 2011 to push through budget, tax and labor reforms in the midst of an Italian sovereign debt crisis, remains popular, but has said he won’t run in his own right for election (although could remain available to head a future technocratic government).

Berlusconi had pledged as recently as last Wednesday that he would not run for prime minister as the leader of his own center-right Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom), though the unpredictable former prime minister has already said he plans on staying in politics to some degree.  Yesterday, in a Nixonesque, hourlong rant, the enraged, newly-convicted Berlusconi hinted he might even try to bring down Monti’s government to bring forward a snap election even sooner, lashing out at Monti, German chancellor Angela Merkel, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, and a ‘judge-ocracy’ that he says is ruling Italy.  With plenty of money and control over Italy’s private media, he’ll be able to influence politics as long as he wants.  Currently, the PdL secretary is Angelino Alfano, a 41-year-old former justice minister who is from Sicily and rising star who’s thought to be the leading contender to lead the PdL into the next general election.

Meanwhile, the center-left Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party) expects to choose its candidate for prime minister in November.

With 5 million people, Sicily features just around 8.5% of Italy’s total population.  Despite a national GDP per capita of around $31,000, Sicily’s is something like $19,000, vying for Italy’s poorest region with a handful of other southern provinces — it’s nearly half the GDP per capita of the richest province, Lombardy (around $39,000).

In the prior regional elections in 2008, Lombardo led a center-right coalition that included the PdL, the Unione di Centro (UdC, Union of the Center), remains of what used to be the once-formidable Christian Democratic party and his own regionalist Movimento per le Autonomie (MpA, Movement for Autonomies) and together won 65.4% of the vote and 61 of the 90 seats in Sicily’s regional parliament.  A PD-led leftist coalition, headed by Anna Finocchiaro, won just 29 seats at 30.4% of the vote.  The vast majority of the seats (80) will be chosen by proportional representation, with a 5% threshold for winning seats; an additional 10 members are elected with a block-voting system.

In today’s regional elections, though, there are five coalitions/parties, each fielding its own candidate for regional president — polls are hard to come by, but it’s a bit of a free-for-all.

Near the top of the polls is the PdL coalition, headed by Sebastiano ‘Nello’ Musumeci.  Musumeci, a member of the European Parliament, is himself a member of a small autonomist right-wing party in Sicily, Alleanza Siciliana (Sicilian Alliance), having his roots in the now-defunct National Alliance, a stridently right-wing party which had neofascist roots.  Although he’s not actually a member of the PdL, a broad win for Musumeci would bolster the PdL nonetheless and, in particular, boost Alfano’s chances of leading the PdL into the next elections — despite record-low polling for the PdL nationally, Alfano would be attempting to become Italy’s first Sicilian prime minister since Mario Scelba led the Italian government from 1954 to 1955.

Also at the top of the tolls is Crocetta’s PD-led coalition (also supported by the UdC).  Crocetta’s election would be historic in at least two ways.   Continue reading Today’s Sicilian elections showcase potential party strength before 2013 Italian election →

Germany

Thoughts on what a Steinbrück government would mean for U.S.-German relations

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I’ve written a short piece today for Deutsche Welle looking at how U.S.-German relations might (slightly) vary if Peer Steinbrück, chancellor candidate for the center-left  Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD, Social Democratic Party), defeats current German chancellor Angela Merkel, of the center-right Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU, Christian Democratic Party) in elections expected to be held in September 2013.

By and large, the main priority for U.S. policymakers, no matter who wins the Nov. 6 presidential election in the United States, will be that Germany keeps the eurozone from spiraling into crisis.

The key point is that U.S. policymakers should expect continuity, mostly, on the German position vis-a-vis the eurozone and on German economic policy:

Steinbrück, who served as Germany’s finance minister under Merkel in the SPD-CDU grand coalition government from 2005 to 2009, would also mark continuity in German economic policy – in contrast to center-left leaders such as former UK prime minister Gordon Brown and current French president Francois Hollande, Steinbrück derided Keynsian economics in 2008 and, alongside Merkel, refused to consider large amounts of stimulus funding in 2008 and 2009.

Nonetheless, on European policy, as well as on the more narrow focus of German economic policy, Steinbrück would not exactly mark a rupture; that will be especially true if the next German election leads to another grand coalition between the CDU and SPD.

Steinbrück emerged as the SPD candidate last month.

Ultimately, I note, the biggest area for potential disagreement is on foreign policy especially in light of the rift over Iraq between then-U.S. president George W. Bush and then-German chancellor Gerhard Schröder a decade ago:

[N]owhere will the US election matter more than in the area of foreign policy – a Romney administration would be much more likely than the Obama administration to consider military action to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapon capability.  While Merkel’s government has supported the Obama administration’s approach for increasingly tougher economic sanctions on Iran, it seems unlikely that Germany, especially under a SPD chancellor, would have much appetite for military action in Iran.

Germany

Steinbrück set to challenge Merkel as SPD candidate for chancellor

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In a month when most eyes have been on Germany’s current finance minister, all eyes are now on Germany’s former finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, who is now set to become the main challenger to German chancellor Angela Merkel in federal elections expected later in 2013.

In a bit of a surprise, Steinbrück was named as the candidate of the main opposition party, the center-left Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD, Social Democratic Party) on Friday after the other main contender, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, indicated that he didn’t want to run.

Among the trio of Steinmeier, Steinbrück and party leader Sigmar Gabriel, Steinbrück has always been the clear favorite.

But perhaps the most jarring element of Friday’s announcement was that SPD party leaders simply announced the news — in Germany, there are no primaries and no leadership contest as such to determine who will be the candidate for chancellor (essentially, think of the German chancellor much like a very strong prime minister rather than a president). Gabriel is highly unpopular among voters and Steinmeier previously led the SPD against Merkel and her governing Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU, Christian Democratic Party) — to disastrous result.

In the previous September 2009 general election, Steinmeier won just 23% for the SDP and lost 76 seats (for a total of just 146).  The party thereupon fell out of the CDU-SDP “grand coalition” that had governed Germany since 2005.  The CDU, which won 34% and 239 seats, was able to form a more rightist coalition with its preferred partner, the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP, Free Democratic Party), which won 15% and 93 seats. Steinmeier had previously served in the “grand coalition” as foreign minister.

The next federal election in Germany is expected to be held in September or October 2013.

Steinbrück, however, remains a less than ideal candidate — he served as Merkel’s finance minister from 2005 to 2009, so it’s going to be difficult for Steinbrück to draw as clear a contrast on economic policy as might otherwise be the case, even with signs that Germany, the last beacon of economic strength throughout the eurozone, is now also likely headed into recession.  As finance minister, Steinbrück famously (demonstrating his, ahem, willful side) derided Keynesian economics and criticized the stimulative approach of the UK’s government under Labour prime minister Gordon Brown, but he is well regarded, alongside Merkel, for steering Germany reasonably well through the 2008-09 financial panic. (Note: Paul Krugman will be happy).

On Europe, too, the German electorate seems receptive to a populist challenge to Merkel’s performance on European affairs — Germans are incredibly weary of four years of what they see as German bailouts of profligate governments from Portugal to Greece.  Nonetheless, the SPD is actually more pro-Europe than the CDU — and especially more pro-Europe than the CDU’s sister party in Bavaria, the Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU, Christian Social Union).  In Bavaria, the CSU-led government’s finance minister Markus Söder has all but called for Greece to be booted out of the eurozone.

In any event, German voters seem fairly well disposed to giving credit to Merkel for walking a tight line between letting the eurozone crumble, on the one hand, and holding governments in Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Greece to very tight austerity plans in exchange for European monetary and fiscal support, on the other hand.

The latest polls show the CDU-CSU with a very healthy lead of around 38% to just barely 30% for the SDP — since 2010 and 2011, the gap has only grown wider in favor of the CDU-CSU.  The FDP, however, looks set to collapse, picking up just 4%, though the SDP’s preferred coalition partners, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (the Greens) poll a very strong 13%.  The newly-formed Piratenpartei Deutschland (Pirate Party) and the more leftist Die Linke (The Left Party) poll 6% each.  Given Steinbrück’s centrist characteristics, I would not be surprised to see the current soft support for the Pirate Party migrate to the Left Party or to the Greens — there will be a lot of room on the left in a Merkel-Steinbrück race to win support, both on Europe and on economic policy, especially if Germany’s economy continues in a downward trajectory.  Given the Left Party’s strong base of support in the former East Germany, there’s a real opportunity for the Left to break out.

The ideal candidate for the SPD may well have been the premier of Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hannelore Kraft, who led the SPD to a huge victory in elections in May of this year.  A premier with charisma, who has championed a more activist state response to boost economic growth, and who could well have been Germany’s second woman as chancellor, Kraft indicated earlier this year that she was not interested in running for chancellor.