Corruption in Italy
Barkan, Joanne
What boggles the mind is not the pervasiveness of corruption in Italian society, but its thorough institutionalization. So when magistrates exposed the nature of the rot (their ongoing inquiry...
...For the first time, former Communists/PDSers are implicated in major scandals...
...Sometimes the money comes as cash in an envelope...
...But sensible folks, especially leftists, also worry about what will fill the political void and whether the left will survive in decent shape...
...On the most significant question—instituting a winnertakesall (single member district) electoral system for most Senate seats—an astounding 82.7 percent voted yes...
...To finish this sketch of the so-called "alternative system of party financing," just multiply the railway board scenario by the total number of government contracts offered in every domain, from the cleaning of nursing homes to the procurement of electrical power and personalized stationery to the construction of sports stadiums and highways...
...So far, magistrates have arrested or put under investigation more than 2,500 business people and politicians, including over 200 deputies in Parliament...
...Last winter, new information tying major political figures to organized crime (of the mafia sort) further rattled Italians...
...Some observers expected the parties to get the message, but they couldn't stop bickering in Parliament long enough to heed the growing demand for reform...
...To be sure, Italians live in a pluralistic democracy where civil liberties are protected...
...He gives these names to the party treasurer...
...In mid-May, he lived through one of his worst nightmares: the historic leader of the Communist left, Pietro Ingrao, quit the PDS...
...The people will vote eventually under revised laws, and at that point, they'll usher in a new era...
...a friend of mine once railed...
...No one can describe its content or spirit yet...
...They doubt that the squabblers in the Chamber will agree on a law...
...Although talk linking Christian Democrats in southern Italy to the underworld has been around for decades, several mafiosi cooperating with the state created a sensation when they testified about former prime-minister-many-times-over Giulio Andreotti...
...One group stood with a noose outside the luxury hotel where Craxi sojourns in Rome...
...Mario Segni—ex-Christian Democrat, architect of the referendum campaign, and one of the few politicians with widespread support in Italy— recently joined the Democratic Alliance...
...From the director of the construction consortium, he gets the names of companies that will "compete" for each contract...
...More generally, and with some justification, they fear that the current political upheaval could produce a large centrist bloc, which would prevent the left from becoming a majoritarian force...
...sometimes it's deposited in a Viennese bank...
...The immense Communist party (second in strength only to the Christian Democrats) was not allowed to govern at the national level...
...Public Pressure In the parliamentary elections of April 1992, voters punished the old guard of the party-ocracy (Christian Democrats, Socialists, former Communists, and Social Democrats...
...Meanwhile—and this is perhaps the most striking feature of the system—the contracts not handled by the Communist board member fall to the other party representatives on the board in proportions agreed upon by all...
...The demonstrations reminded anyone who needed reminding that Italy must get sweeping change in order to refurbish its democracy...
...So when magistrates exposed the nature of the rot (their ongoing inquiry began in early 1992), perhaps no one should have been surprised that the political system fell apart and that both state and economy were threatened...
...The organizers of the Alliance (like almost all of Italy's political movers) have concerned themselves more with recruiting notables and carving out a niche than defining policies...
...There's now a risk of major hemorrhaging from the party's more radical side...
...At an upcoming convention, however, they plan to begin developing a program...
...Most immediately what's required is comprehensive electoral reform followed quickly by voting...
...PDS secretary Achille Occhetto is losing a three-year battle to hold together his party (the largest on the left...
...The procedure is flexible...
...Some parties know that they'll drop off the map under a winner-takes-all system...
...Now various pols have proposed the White Thing (a new Catholic party), the Black Thing (a right-wing coalition including the neofascists), and the Pink Thing (a centrist reformist thing) Another proposal, which this writer can't resist mentioning, has been named after a cartoon character called Eta Beta who has a big brain and a pocket full of solutions to all problems...
...It fed on a more fundamental organization of postwar Italian life known as the partitocrazia (party-ocracy) in which the political parties over the course of four decades engulfed government, state, and economy...
...Everyone understood that the yes vote on Senate reform was shorthand for three demands: equivalent electoral reform for the Chamber of Deputies, an end to party-ocracy, and new faces on the political scene...
...The terminology these days harks back to 1990 when the Communist party proposed dissolving itself in order to be reborn as a broad left force, popularly known as the Thing (la Cosa...
...As the political map gets redrawn with new coalitions, much of the left is busy doing what seems to come naturally—self-destructing...
...It's doubtful that a court will convict Andreotti on the basis of an ex-mafioso' s testimony (which is why Andreotti asked to have his parliamentary immunity lifted), but the specter of such intimate relations wrecked what little confidence people still had in politicians...
...Finally toss in the fact that some agencies regularly paid for goods and services never delivered and construction never completed...
...others have hooked up with the Democratic Alliance...
...Some leftists worry that he will shift it to the right, which makes their own decision about affiliation problematic...
...some parliamentarians want another year on the job in order to collect a pension...
...Still, many commentators despair of seeing electoral reform...
...Italian democracy of the cold war era provided fertile ground for the party-ocracy for several 280 • DISSENT reasons...
...Most Italians now claim to be shocked by the extent and routinization of the corruption as revealed by the never-ending investigation...
...A quick sketch of one pervasive type of corruption may help to clarify the picture...
...In the meantime, both the Christian Democratic and Socialist parties are collapsing under the pressure of the corruption investigations...
...For the moment, the most serious effort seems to be the Democratic Alliance, which brings together activists who worked for the yes vote in the referendum, some progressive Catholics, exSocialists, some members of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS, which is one successor to the Communist party), and various Greens...
...This notion of a reformist group is the creation of former Prime Minister Giuliano Amato who, because of his diminutive stature and large ears, is known all over Europe as "Topolino," which is Italian for Mickey Mouse...
...Citizens seem to be particularly upset by revelations that the "pillars of society" such as Fiat and Olivetti have been handing over bribes like everyone else...
...It's based on testimony given to magistrates in Milan and reported in the magazine L'Espresso (May 23, 1993...
...Many Americans find it difficult to fathom how Italy functioned (or malfunctioned) and why an investigation should rock an entire system...
...Many pundits already put the SUMMER • 1993 • 281 Social Democratic and Liberal parties in the zombie category—dead but still walking around...
...State Department, deprived Italy of the alternation of office holders that characterizes most other democracies...
...A new Parliament would, one hopes, have a stable and politically coherent majority that could address problems of massive structural unemployment, industrial restructuring, suffocating national debt, and an overhaul of social services...
...The system is collapsing at last, but who can take, or wants, credit for the implosion...
...Now would the old crop of pols get it...
...And last, the state ran the banking system and acquired over time almost 50 percent of large industry and a chunk of other economic activities...
...Italian leftists always hoped to transform a corrupt order radically by winning elections and implementing fine programs...
...Sometimes contributions take the form of extravagant numbers of subscriptions to L'Unita, the party newspaper, or advertising at a party festival...
...282 • DISSENT...
...Public pressure for a series of referenda mounted, and when Italians voted in April 1993, they pretty much closed the book on Italy's first republic...
...Italy needed a total shake-up...
...Or they ignored what they heard because reform means giving up power and privilege...
...Every day brings new proposals for broad alliances that might compete more effectively in a system that will reward only the largest vote-getter...
...Since many parties shared the spoils, the institutions of civil society and the economy were sliced into pieces like so many pies...
...Everyone knew at least something about it...
...The Communist railway board member guarantees that 20 percent of all construction contracts will go to "friendly" co-ops...
...Alternative Party Financing" It's 1986, and the Communist party, like other major political players, gets its man onto the board of directors of the state railway system...
...The party-ocracy functioned somewhat like the nomenklatura system of the former Soviet Union where Communist bosses and functionaries determined who got the job, the apartment, the truckload of cucumbers...
...He acts as intermediary between the treasurer at Rome party headquarters and the director of the consortium of "red" cooperatives in the construction industry...
...Although the following story focuses on the now disbanded Italian Communist party, it should be noted that the Communists were involved in relatively few cases of corruption compared to other parties and that none of the current cases has yet gone to trial...
...This rule of the game, certified by the U.S...
...Some of these ex-Communists want to join with left Socialists or ex-Socialists...
...Occhetto inclines to equivocation...
...Consider what might become of the Republican party in the United States if the Democrats, no matter how many votes they won, could never occupy the White House...
...He then asks representatives of the construction companies to drop by the office of the party treasurer in Rome with their "contributions...
...He hopes to have an electoral law passed by the end of the summer, with balloting to take place soon after that...
...Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, former governor of the Bank of Italy, heads up the current cabinet approved by Parliament shortly after the referendum...
...Just eleven days after the referendum, the Chamber of Deputies voted by secret ballot not to lift the parliamentary immunity of former Socialist party secretary Bettino Craxi, who is under investigation in over a dozen corruption cases...
...The political manipulation and corruption metastasized, becoming a national disease...
...Some observers applaud the process...
...Local activists who believed their party to be fundamentally different from the others feel betrayed...
...There was the question of the infamous bacio: did Andreotti or did he not meet with and kiss superboss Toth Riina...
...With the political class in rout and the left unable to rally, Italy stumbles forward into something unknown...
...The Christian Democrats established a permanent regime...
...This was "kleptocracy" Italian-style—the relentless, systematic rip-off of an entire society...
...The secretary of each group has called for a constituent congress that would give birth to a new formation with a new name...
...Sometimes the railway board member deals with companies outside the network of cooperatives, including major corporations such as Fiat...
...But political machines gained a stranglehold on daily life...
...Parliament regularly housed a dozen or more squabbling parties, which made for unstable coalitions and favored trafficking in state goodies—contracts, jobs, and power...
...People took to the streets to protest the vote...
...When a position at the University of Rome in, say, microbiology became available, party loyalists (who had divided up all previous jobs) decided which political group was in line to fill the new post ("As if there were such a thing as a Christian Democratic microbe...
...Italy's unrestricted form of proportional representation aggravated the situation...
...Lots of "Things" The prospect of winner-takes-all elections has set off a frenzied effort to redraw the political map...
...To complete this list of woes, the corruption investigations have smudged the party's long-time reputation for clean hands...
Vol. 40 • July 1993 • No. 3
