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Napolitano’s in (again), Bersani’s out, and Italy’s as dysfunctional as ever

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So after a humiliating Friday that saw Italy’s centrosinistra (center-left) revolt over the prospect of electing former prime minister Romano Prodi as president, Pier Luigi Bersani, the leader of Italy’s main center-left party, Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party), has resigned — effective of the selection of Italy’s new president.Italy Flag Icon

Italy got that president on Saturday on the sixth and final ballot, when the centrosinistra and the centrodestra (center-right) led by Silvio Berlusconi joined together to back the reelection of Giorgio Napolitano, who won handily.

But Napolitano’s reelection — at age 87 — to a new seven-year term isn’t a sign of the political health of the country.

Beppe Grillo, the leader of the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, the Five Star Movement), a movement that had supported legal scholar and former leftist parliamentarian Stefano Rodotà since the first ballot termed Napolitano’s election a coup, calling for a large rally in protest later today in Rome.

While Napolitano’s reelection isn’t a coup, it is unprecedented, and Grillo is right to suggest that it represents a victory for the traditional left and the traditional right in Italian politics — in many ways, the sixth ballot represented a return to Bersani’s first-ballot strategy whereby he attempted to join his centrosinistra forces with Berlusconi’s to elect former Senato president Franco Marini with a massive two-thirds majority.  When that strategy failed, largely on the revolt of many on the left, including Puglia regional president Nichi Vendola, who leads the minor party in Bersani’s coalition, the Sinistra Ecologia Libertà (SEL, Left Ecology Freedom), and Firenze mayor Matteo Renzi, who challenged Bersani in the centrosinistra primary to determine its candidate for prime minister in the February 2013 elections.

So what comes next?

Most immediately, Napolitano will turn to finding a way out of the political impasse.  With Bersani gone from the PD leadership, it seems likelier now that some PD deputies will join with Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom) to form a short-lived government under, perhaps, another technocratic prime minister.  We’ll see over the coming days what Napolitano proposes, who will support it, and what agenda that government might submit.

Although he’s just been reelected, it’s hard to see Napolitano serving much beyond the next parliamentary elections, let alone a full term until he reaches age 94, so I would view the election today as more of a one-year or two-year extension of Napolitano’s term than the promulgation of a head of state for the next seven years.  That means, of course, whoever wins the next elections would stand a good chance of electing the next president.

There will be some procedure to determine who replaces Bersani, at least on an interim basis.  Without Bersani at the helm, it’s difficult to see any kind of discipline among a group of legislators that runs from former Christian Democrats to democratic socialists.  In the longer term, however, Renzi certainly seems the smartest choice to lead what remains of the Italian left following Bersani’s implosion — he’s by far the most popular politician in the country.  But it’s not clear that Vendola would accept a Renzi-led left nor is it clear that Renzi would be elected by acclamation, given the potential candidacy of others.

That includes Fabrizio Barca, a rising star who served in prime minister Mario Monti’s cabinet as a minister for territorial cohesion and a former protégé of former Banca d’Italia president and Napolitano’s predecessor, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.  Barca joined the PD last week with a plan to reform both the PD and Italian government.

Prodi emerges as united center-left’s presidential candidate in Italy

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So with the third ballot completed in the election of Italy’s new president, the centrosinistra (center-left) has a new candidate for the fourth ballot — which can be won by a simple majority — former prime minister Romano Prodi.Italy Flag Icon

Prodi is no doubt the most successful member of the Italian center-left in postwar history, winning the 1996 and the 2006 elections, though he failed to serve out the full terms in either case.

On the one hand, Prodi is a superb, even canny, choice — he has much more international credibility than Franco Marini as a former president of the European Commission, he has a lot of goodwill for pushing through a limited set of reforms in the mid 1990s to prepare Italy for entering the eurozone, and he’s generally an even broker.  It’s a much safer bet for the leader of the Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party), Pier Luigi Bersani, who will have re-united his coalition after so damagingly supporting Marini on the first ballot as a consensus candidate who won the backing of Silvio Berlusconi and his centrodestra (center-right) that drew howls from within Bersani’s own party.  Both Florence mayor Matteo Renzi and the leader of the more leftist Sinistra Ecologia Libertà (SEL, Left Ecology Freedom), Nichi Vendola, will support Prodi, and the centrosinistra seems likely to rally around Prodi.

But it’s left Berlusconi angry and further apart than ever from Bersani, which means elections are likelier sooner rather than later.  It’s a much more blatantly political choice than many of the past Italian presidents:

  • current president Giorgio Napolitano was a former Communist, but widely respected and out of the political fray upon his election in 2006;
  • his predecessor Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was a former president of the Banca d’Italia, Italy’s central bank, and a former short-term technocratic prime minister when he was elected in 1999;
  • his predecessor, in turn, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, was a former Christian Democrat and magistrate, elected in 1992.

Prodi’s candidacy will also rankle members of the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, the Five Star Movement), not to mention the fact that, despite his absence from frontline politics since 2008, Prodi still represents much of the old fights of the past 20 years in Italian politics.

Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom) will cast blank ballots on the fourth vote, and the Five Star Movement will continue to support former leftist parliamentarian and legal scholar Stefano Rodotà.

Although the center-left controls nearly a majority of the seats in the electoral college, it will still need a handful of additional votes for Prodi to win on the fourth ballot, and that’s provided that none of the centrosinistra breaks ranks in what is a secret ballot.  So Prodi’s election is far from certain — if he fails, it’s not certain what will happen on the fifth ballot.

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Presidential vote returns Italian politics to high operatic drama

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Voting began earlier today to select the new Italian president among the electoral college that’s gathered for that express purpose, and it’s left Italian politics once again in disarray, this time by revealing a split among the centrosinistra led by an incredibly powerless Pier Luigi Bersani after two ballots failed to elect a successor to Giorgio Napolitano who, at age 86, is not running for reelection for another seven-year term. Italy Flag Icon

The Italian president, whose role remains essentially ceremonial, is not elected directly, but through an electoral college that includes the members of both houses of Italy’s parliament, plus a special group of electors that includes three members for each region (except for the Valle d’Aosta, which has just one) that total 1,007 voters.  A president can be elected on the first three ballots only with a two-thirds majority; on the fourth ballot, a simple majority can elect the president, as happened in 2008 with the election of Napolitano.

At the end of last month, I highlighted some of the potential technocratic prime ministers that outgoing president Giorgio Napolitano might appoint.  In the interim, he’s chosen to continue talks and keep prime minister Mario Monti in place to tend to day-to-day government affairs while the presidential vote proceeds.

One of those potential consensus candidates was Stefano Rodotà (pictured above), who finished tops in the second ballot just held by the Italian presidential electoral college this afternoon with 230 votes to just 90 for former Turin mayor Sergio Chiamparino, 38 for former prime minister and foreign minster Massimo D’Alema and a bare 15 for the former first ballot leader Franco Marini, who originally had not only Bersani’s support, but the support of Silvio Berlusconi as well, leading to a howl of ‘corrupt bargain’ accusations.

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The result is a disaster for Bersani — The Economist blasted it as the failure of an ‘inciucio,’ a Napolitano word meaning ‘stitch-up,’ and Alberto Nardelli has brutally written that Bersani’s deal with Berlusconi reveals that he’s putting his own career over the interests of Italy:

Bersani (who says he doesn’t want to form a government with Berlusconi) is happy to deal behind closed doors, and in attempting an agreement on the presidency, the PD leader is hoping that the PDL will then not obstruct the formation of a government. The goal isn’t a ‘government of change’, it’s landing the job – the mask has slipped.

This is (Italian) politics at its worse – career ahead of country and leading via back room deals in the style of country fairs where livestock is exchanged. And many still wonder why Beppe Grillo is so popular.

How Bersani blew it

Marini’s collapse was a predictable blunder, and it goes to the heart of why Italian politics is in the dysfunction state that it’s in.

Bersani, who leads not only the center-left Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party), but the broader center-left coalition that also contains the more socialist Sinistra Ecologia Libertà (SEL, Left Ecology Freedom), led by Nichi Vendola, agreed to support Marini on the first ballot, who also received the support of the centrodestra coalition dominated by Silvio Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom) and Monti’s centrist, reformist allies.

The center-left in Italy contains essentially two strands — those who came out of the world dominated by Democrazia Cristiana (DC, Christian Democracy) that controlled Italian government in the post-war period through 1993, and those who came out of the tradition of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI, Italian Communist Party), consistently in opposition to the hegemonic and increasingly corruption Christian Democracy (and their various allies), who were mostly wiped out of office after a series of scandals in 1992 and 1993.  Napolitano, for instances, comes from the Communist background.

But Marini, age 80, comes not only from the Christian Democratic world, he was a member of Democrazia Cristiana since 1950, the leader of the Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori (CISL, Italian Confederation of Trade Unions), the trade union arm of Christian Democracy in the 1980s, and minister of labour to Giulio Andreotti, who was thrice prime minister between the 1970s and the 1990s and is synonymous with the Catholic right wing of Christian Democracy.  Marini was the president of the Senato from 2006 to 2008, however, when Romano Prodi governed Italy, but he lost his senatorial seat in February’s elections.  As Florence mayor Matteo Renzi said, Marini comes from ‘the last century’ of Italian politics, and his failure to win reelection makes him a poor choice to represent vital Italian democracy in 2013.

All of which would have made Marini a poor choice for the presidency, but Berlusconi’s endorsement made Marini all but toxic.  Bersani had previously refused to make any deal with Berlusconi over a governing coalition (despite Berlusconi’s repeated offers for a ‘grand coalition’).  So his volte face immediately caused alarm even within his own ranks.  That includes not only much of the SEL, but significant portions of Bersani’s own Democratic Party, including Renzi, all of whom refused to support Marini.  Theoretically, the centrosinitra and centrodestra could have pooled enough votes to win on the first ballot, but Marini’s 521 first-ballot supporters were just barely a majority, opening a wide schism in the centrosinistra, and strengthening Renzi, a popular, young mayor who, at age 37, who lost last November’s primary contest to Bersani to led the centrosinistra in the February election.

Rodotà and the politics of change

Renzi, who’s called for a new generation of leadership on both Italy’s left and right, is the most popular politician in the country.  If a second election is called, and the centrosinistra is dumb enough to stick with Bersani as its leader, it will lose.  But if the centrosinistra chooses Renzi to lead it into the next election, it will probably win in a landslide, because Renzi’s message blends the best of both the center-left and that of the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, the Five Star Movement), a diverse, largely anti-austerity protest group led by blogger, comedian and popular activist Beppe Grillo into power as the third force of Italian politics on a platform of more transparency and better governance, among other priorities.

The deal between Bersani and Berlusconi personifies the kind of old-school back-room dealing that Renzi has decried and that powered the Five Star Movement into the spotlight.  So the Marini candidacy gives both Renzi and the Five Star Movement even more evidence that the barons of the center-left and the center-right still don’t understand the way that Italian politics changed after February’s election.

Rodotà, who placed second on the first ballot with 240 votes, is the candidate of the Five Star Movement, which held an online ballot to determine its preferred candidate for the presidency.  Although its top two choices declined to stand for the presidency, its third-place candidate was Rodotà.  Though Rodotà, too, is just shy of 80 years old, he’s a former deputy who stood against the Christian Democratic-dominated oligarchy in the 1980s, and he was one of the first leaders of the Democratic Party of the Left that emerged as the more moderate wing of the old Italian Communists and is a predecessor of the Democratic Party that Bersani today leads.  A legal scholar based in Rome, he’s spent much of the past decade as an activist for electronic privacy rights in Italy and the European Union.

What’s most amazing about all of this mess is that after the next ballot, which will be held tomorrow, the united centrosinistra will likely be able to push through their own candidate on the fourth ballot, which will be held either tomorrow or Saturday at the latest — they’ll be just a handful of votes short of a simple majority.  So Bersani could have probably just allowed a free vote on the first three ballots, then pushed for the consensus candidate of the center-left acceptable to Vendola and the SEL, on the one hand, and Renzi, on the other.  Instead, Bersani has weakened what’s already an amazingly weak position as the Democratic Party leader by attempting to broker a deal with Berlusconi to install an unpopular remnant of Italy’s First Republic in the presidency.  It seems incredibly difficult to see how Bersani will remain the Democratic Party leader for much longer.

What comes next?

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Chiamparino, at age 64, (pictured above) is a popular leftist from the old Communist tradition who’s a popular former mayor of Turin, gained votes between the first and second ballots, and he could well become the consensus candidate of the centrosinistra in advance of the third and the key fourth ballot, both of which will be held tomorrow — Renzi has indicated that Chiamparino is his first choice.

Other candidates likely include former prime minister Giuliano Amato, but he’s seen as a throwback to the First Republic as well.  D’Alema and Prodi remain potential candidates, though both are seen as insiders and electoral losers, though Prodi perhaps has a better shot as a former European commissioner and a two-time former prime minister who led the center-left to victories in 1996 and in 2006.

I still think that Emma Bonino, a longtime human rights champion and good-government Radical Party senator since the 1980s, would make a wonderful choice for the center-left because she has the kind of appeal that transcends ideology, which makes her very much like Napolitano, the outgoing president.  She would also be a historic choice as the first woman to become Italy’s head of state.

Another option is for the left to simply join forces with the Five Star Movement and back Rodotà, of course.

We’ll know a lot more in the hours to come.

Seven people who could be appointed Italy’s next technocratic prime minister

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With the failure of centrosinistra (center-left) leader Pier Luigi Bersani to form a government after a week of talks, Italian president Giorgio Napolitano now faces a tough 24 hours of consultations with the other key players in the Italian parliament.Italy Flag Icon

The path now becomes perilous — for Napolitano, above all, who remains just about the only respected public official left in Italy:

  • Of course, as I noted earlier today, upon further consultation with the various players on Friday, Napolitano could give Bersani, the leader of the Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party), more time to cobble together a government.  That doesn’t seem so incredibly likely to succeed.
  • Napolitano could also appoint Bersani as prime minister to try to win a vote of confidence in the upper house of the Senato, essentially daring Silvio Berlusconi’s centrodestra (center-right) coalition to reject him, though it seems unlikely that Napolitano would do so if there’s a chance Bersani would lose the vote.  If Bersani loses, he’ll be left as a discredited caretaker prime minister, and Napolitano will have suffered a political defeat as well, limiting his future maneuverability.
  • Another option is simply to leave prime minister Mario Monti (pictured above shaking hands with Italian senator Emma Bonino) in place as a pro forma caretaker — this is the ‘Belgian’ option: a parliament with no real government.  That could well cause Italian bond yields to rise or otherwise call into question Italy’s capability for long-term reform.  That’s especially true if you think the eurozone is primarily a political crisis rather than an economic one.

Another option, of course, would be for Napolitano to appoint a new technocratic prime minister, though that carries risks as well, especially coming after the political rejection of Monti’s pro-reform, centrist coalition in the February elections.  Monti was appointed as a technocratic prime minister in November 2011 with the support of both the PD and Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom).  In late 2011 and early 2012, Monti’s government instituted reforms to reduce tax evasion, increased taxes, pension reform that reduces early retirement, and he instituted some modest labor reforms as well, though they’ve not had the sweeping effect Italy’s economy may need to revitalize its labor market.

But Monti’s government stalled and Italy went to early elections in February when Berlusconi and the PdL pulled its support from Monti’s government, and Berlusconi and Beppe Grillo, leading the protest Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, the Five Star Movement) actively ran against Monti’s reforms and attacked Monti as little more than an errand-boy for Brussels and Berlin.

So if neither Bersani nor Monti appear workable choices, to whom could Napolitano turn in the event of yet another technocratic government?  Such a government would have a very limited mandate for, say, electing a new president (which the new parliament must accomplish in May 2013 before new snap elections could even be held), carrying out the execution of Italy’s 2013 budget and perhaps even overseeing a change in the election law.

Here are seven potential candidates to keep an eye on in the days ahead: Continue reading Seven people who could be appointed Italy’s next technocratic prime minister

Pier Luigi Bersani has five days to build an Italian government

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When elections were called in Italy late in 2012, the centrosinistra (center-left) coalition united around Pier Luigi Bersani thought, on the basis of polls that showed Bersani (pictured above, left) with a wide lead, that it was nearly assured that they would easily win a five-year mandate to govern Italy.Italy Flag Icon

Instead, they may have won just a five-day mandate to show that they can win a confidence vote in both houses of Italy’s parliament.

The leader of Italy’s Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party), Pier Luigi Bersani, will have the first formal opportunity to form a government after three days of talks between Italy’s president Giorgio Napolitano (pictured above, right) and the various party leaders, including former technocratic prime minister Mario Monti, who ran on a platform of extending his reform program; former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose centrodestra (center-right) coalition nearly outpaced Bersani’s coalition; and Beppe Grillo, the leader of the Movimento 5 Stelle (the Five Star Movement), who himself did not run for a seat in the Italian parliament.

Napolitano, in a rare speech today, pleaded for a solution, arguing that institutional stability is just as important as financial stability.

Yesterday, Bersani called for a grand ‘governo di cambiamento,’ a government of change that would draw from all of the parties in the parliament.  It’s not immediately clear, however, what exactly Bersani would do with such a government or that the announcement would significantly shake up the coalition talks.

Bersani will have until March 26 — Tuesday — to show that he can pull together a patchwork vote of confidence.  Otherwise, Napolitano will conduct further talks with the party leaders in search of a Plan B.

In the February 2013 elections, the centrosinistra won an absolute majority of the seats in the 630-member Camera dei Deputati (House of Deputies) because under Italian election law, the winner, by whatever margin, of the nationwide vote automatically wins 54% of the seats.  So Bersani commands a majority in the lower house, though he does so after winning a surprisingly narrow victory (29.54%) over Berlusconi’s centrodestra (29.18%) and Grillo’s Five Star Movement (25.55%):

Italy Camera 2013

The current crisis of governance in Italy springs from the fact that there’s no similar ‘national winner’s bonus’ for the upper house, the Senato, where the centrodestra actually won more seats than the centrosinistra.  That’s because there’s a regional ‘bonus’ — the party with the most support in each of Italy’s 20 regions is guaranteed an absolute majority of the senatorial seats in that region.  As Berlusconi’s coalition won so many of the contests in Italy’s largest regions (i.e., Piedmont, Sicily, Campania), however narrowly, he won the largest bloc in the Senato:

Italy Senate 2013

In the immediate aftermath of the election results, I argued that Italy faced essentially four paths for a government:

  1. A Bersani-Monti minority government. 
  2. A Berlusconi-Bersani ‘grand coalition.’
  3. A formal or informal Bersani-Grillo alliance.
  4. Snap elections (after the election of a new president).

Since then, we haven’t seen an incredible amount of action, because the parliament only sat for the first time last weekend, when it elected speakers to both the lower and upper houses.  None of those are likely to happen in any meaningful sense, but there are small variations on each that could keep Italy’s government moving forward, if only for a short-term basis to implement a narrow set of reforms (e.g., a new election law) and to elect a new president — Napolitano’s term ends in May.

So with the clock ticking for Bersani’s chances of becoming prime minister and leading a government, where do each of those options still stand? Continue reading Pier Luigi Bersani has five days to build an Italian government