Italy's Second Republic
TORTORA, VINCENT R.
THE NEXT TEST FOR BERLUSCONI Italy's Second Republic BY VINCENT R. TORTORA THE VOTE of confidence that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Right-wing government received in the Senate on May 18...
...A Southern Rightist Deputy who had been in several previous governments was overheard remarking to a colleague: "After what Italy has been through, I have been feeling depressed and humbled...
...Within the Freedom Alliance itself Berlusconi is confronted by serious difficulties as well...
...A patchwork quilt of ex-Fascists, neo-Fascists, Monarchists, and a few Irredentists, the AN was woven together by its scholarly leader, Gianfranco Fini, and neoFascist theoretician Giuseppe Tatarella...
...Respect for the Prime Minister has unmistakably grown since election day...
...But most of all, Berlusconi expressed the hope that politics in Italy would not be a tug-of-war prompted by party or private prejudices...
...His enormous business success resonated with voters, who had not seen anyone of such heroic proportions in the political arena for some time...
...The basic conflicts between the Prime Minister's Freedom Alliance partners, not to mention Bossi's forthcoming battles with the law, do not augur well...
...Their occupants are largely the untainted remnants of yesterday's dominant Christian Democratic Party and small Democratic Socialist Party...
...It is composed of the former Communist Party, rechristened the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), led by the dispirited Achille Occhetto...
...The Center in Italy today holds a mere 31 Senate and 46 Chamber seats...
...In the process, hundreds of ordinary citizens from every niche of Italian society were recruited to run for Parliament...
...Those who had been unduly harsh or rancorous in recent debates he chided with cavalier affability...
...Its present name was adopted in 1991, following a merger with like-minded organizations across the North...
...Throughout those negotiations the most recalcitrant figure was Umberto Bossi, the strident, often tactless boss of the Northern League who does not hesitate to vent his hatred of Fascists, Communists and immigrants...
...But he has not completely divested himself of financial involvement in all of his businesses...
...On the other hand, there can be no denying—or selling short —the skill, tenacity and ingenuity exhibited by 57-year-old Silvio Berlusconi in the very brief time he has been a political player...
...Hence the weeks of wrangling before agreement could be reached on the Cabinet to be presented to Parliament...
...Their place has been taken by a host of recently created, and several hastily renamed, political formations...
...He is praised for his comportment during the trials of forming a government, and particularly for carefully choosing a portion of his Cabinet from every point on the political spectrum in Parliament...
...Vincent R. Tortora, a past contributor to these pages, is a freelance writer who specializes in Italian affairs...
...Fini, too, has been issuing a string of statements he claims reflect the attitude of the majority in his party...
...This comfortable majority appears to have resulted from the fact that 51 per cent of those aged 18 to 25 who went to the polls turned to the Right...
...We well know the antilibertarian nature of totalitarianism.'' On the day of the confidence vote in the Lower House, an incident occurred that is an example of the changed atmosphere here, and of how the man responsible for it operates...
...The other night a Neapolitan man in his 50s could be heard making a prediction that is widely shared...
...The problems it faces would seem to defy even the Prime Minister's unquestionable charms and organizational talents—especially if he is determined to deliver on his campaign promises...
...The PA is greatly concerned about the ascendancy of the Right...
...Neither act, nor the spontaneous reaction that followed, would have been thinkable in the First Republic...
...In March the AN received 13.5 percent of the ballots cast...
...Many people felt his hands-on style of management was especially well-suited to Italy in its current state, and that he was too rich to end up "on the take...
...In the 630-member Chamber of Deputies the victorious Freedom Alliance (FA)—consisting of Berlusconi's Forza Italia Party, the confederationist Northern League (LN) and the neo-Fascist National Alliance (AN)—controls 366 seats...
...The first to join forces with him was the Northern League, but it was apparent from opinion polls that defeating the Leftists would require more clout...
...If would-be standard-bearers passed a somewhat cursory series of interviews and investigations intended mainly to assure that there was nothing embarrassing in their backgrounds, they were sent to special classes to learn the elements of governing and the rudiments of effective campaigning...
...Occasionally he singled out excerpts from someone's speeches or writings for praise, or merely added a comment of his own...
...The head of Italy's second-largest privately held enterprise, Fininvest, he worried that national stability, the economic boom then in progress and relations with the European Union, among other things, would be severely undermined...
...It questions the Prime Minister's own "deep down" commitment to democracy, and doubts his pledge to isolate his multifarious business interests from the political process...
...Having already been rejected by the Centrists, he could only turn to the one fairly big party that had not yet linked up elsewhere, the National Alliance...
...A fractured and fractious lot, most currently belong either to the Italian Popular Party led by Mino Martinazzoli or the Pact for Italy headed by Mario Segni...
...Bossi is frequently more vehement in his public attacks on the AN than are the parties of the Left...
...To begin with, there is the matter of securing additional parliamentary allies...
...Then Berlusconi went over to shake his hand—and the Chamber burst into applause...
...About the young people in Italy and elsewhere around the globe who think it chic to idolize Mussolini and Hitler, he said: "The youth of today must be taught history...
...Beyond preventing the Left from winning in March, Forza Italia had no clearly defined ideology...
...At his initial Cabinet meeting he appointed a committee of three distinguished jurists to recommend legislation for improving the laws regarding trusts and conflicts of interest...
...The rest are from the highest levels of industry, labor, academia, and the professions...
...The National Alliance, by contrast, draws much of its support from older Southern voters who feel such a scheme would deprive their area of funds desperately needed to build an infrastructure...
...So in January the tycoon converted his clubs into the nucleus for his own party...
...On the contrary, many Italians are already wondering how long the country's 53rd postwar administration will survive...
...Any government initiative the PA finds objectionable, it has warned, will be rigorously opposed...
...A few weeks later he told the Chamber of Deputies: "We accept democracy not only as a method of government but as a system of values...
...THE NEXT TEST FOR BERLUSCONI Italy's Second Republic BY VINCENT R. TORTORA THE VOTE of confidence that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Right-wing government received in the Senate on May 18 and the Chamber of Deputies two days later launched what is widely referred to here as Italy's Second Republic...
...As he addressed each one by name, he emphasized his or her contributions and special abilities...
...Berlusconi's appeal to the electorate is not hard to explain...
...He asked the Senators and Deputies to pull together instead, and to focus on achieving what he was sure they all would agree was critical: ending corruption, recharging the economy, sharply reducing unemployment, assuring competitiveness in the global marketplace, reducing waste, improving education...
...It would be hard to exaggerate the persisting hostility between the Northern League and the National Alliance...
...If that enables him to govern effectively, then ironically he could succeed in rebuilding the prestige of the Center after all...
...Speaking for his faction immediately after the confidence vote, Segni threw down the gauntlet: "It is we who are the true adversaries of Berlusconi, and we are able to defeat him...
...He gave the impression of being highly motivated...
...This does not mean the impressively shrewd, energetic Berlusconi is likely to enjoy an easy passage...
...Few of the principal performers on the political stage escaped direct references during the course of his remarks...
...For the Senate, made up of 315 elected members plus 11 Senators for Life, the minimum voting age is 25, and there the FA has only 156 seats...
...Earlier he placed some of his enormous financial empire in a blind trust, and put the remainder in the hands of two close associates...
...But no such accommodation can be expected when it seeks to push through its program...
...Last winter, as the polls and regional election returns showed a marked shift to the Left in the wake of the bribery, kickback and payoff scandals that had decimated the Center parties, Berlusconi decided the trend had to be reversed...
...His coalition partners are probably the most unlikely pair of political bedfellows in Europe...
...Their task was to set up anetwork of some 1,200 clubs across Italy designed to breathe new life into the Center...
...the hard-line Communist Refoundation Party, run by Fausto Bertinotti...
...The Left, though, in the form of the Progressive Alliance (PA), is the main opposition, with 122 Senate and 213 Chamber seats...
...He has formally assured the world that no one from the AN will ever hold a "sensitive" position in his government, and that no participant in World War II will ever serve in his Cabinet...
...In any case, though, the Prime Minister will have to rely on his demonstrated powers of coaxing and cajoling, of carrot-and-stick diplomacy, to muster a majority in the Senate for policies like his flat-tax system...
...The LN's strength derives from small businessmen and blue-collar workers who resent having the industrial North's taxes "feed the bureaucratic machine" in the South (from Rome to Sicily...
...But the Centrist leaders still standing were not enthused: They were reluctant to expend the little political capital they had left on an effort everyone except Berlusconi thought would be impossible to mount in four months...
...And as if that were not enough to endanger the governing coalition, the brash Bossi, after campaigning against corruption, has now been indicted on charges that the LN accepted $ 125,000 in illegal financing from Milanese businessmen...
...But Berlusconi has convinced me that he wants urgently to lead in rebuilding the economy and the political structure...
...Founded in 1979 as the Lombard League, the FA's second-ranking party shortly began scoring increasingly impressive electoral successes around Milan...
...It has long been a custom in Italy for people to gather in piazzas and cafes to discuss politics...
...Somewhat similarly, in his subsequent acknowledgment speech to a joint session of Parliament, the Prime Minister employed his low-key, above-the-fray delivery while insisting that the major objective of his administration would be solving the manifold problems of the country...
...Digging into his deep pockets, Berlusconi hired an army of analysts, publicists, consultants, and organizers...
...Its goal is confederation: the division of Italy into at least three autonomous regions (North, Central and South) that would handle their own taxes and expenditures...
...Gone from the new legislature elected March 27-28 are the old Centrist parties that had held the reins of power since the end of World War II—victims of the corruption scandals involving some three-fifths of the Parliament finally dissolved last January 13...
...The loudest grumbling relates to the FA's bringing two essentially peripheral and potentially troublesome parties into the political mainstream...
...All government-proposed legislation requires the stamp of both houses...
...He was as ingratiating when speaking to crowds as he was one-on-one...
...Concern lingers, however, about Berlusconi's declaration that he is "no longer an entrepreneur...
...On Liberation Day, April 25, he declared: "Fascism was born, flourished and finished with the death of its creator, Benito Mussolini...
...One of the Leftist Deputies leaving Parliament after the speech said he now knew why the Prime Minister is called "the great seducer...
...and the anti-Mafia Network Party, whose leader is Leoluco Orlando...
...they doubted that he understood the complexities of the political game in one of Europe's most politicized nations...
...Still, it remains to be seen whether the tycoon who would take Italy on the high road can prevail, or whether when push comes to shove the Second Republic will also settle into a pattern of revolving-door administrations...
...These Finisti',' he said, referring to the AN by the name of its leader, "are not going to be happy until they bring back memories of the worst times in our history...
...Indeed, it was the willingness of enough Centrist Senators to absent themselves and thereby reduce the quorum to 158 that enabled the government to gain approval with 159 votes, two of them supplied by ex-Presidents Francisco Cossiga and Giovanni Leone...
...Because the electoral law had been amended to let groups of parties run as alliances, Berlusconi's next step was to establish the Freedom Alliance...
...Aware that the high-profile status the FA has afforded the neo-Fascists does not sit well at home and is certainly not appreciated abroad, the Prime Minister has sought to quell everybody's fears...
...What the country needed, he concluded, was a revitalized Center...
...Its largest component is the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), which has been part of the political scene since the 1950s and traditionally drew 5 to 7 per cent of the popular vote...
...and they were not certain whether his motives were genuine or self-serving...
...PDS Deputy Giorgio Napolitano, breaking ranks with the former Communist Party's line, rose to urge acceptance of the new government...
...His fashioning Forza Italia (the name echoes the soccer chant, "Go, Italy") and forging it into the nation's top party is the stuff of legend...
...Moreover, he was convinced his experience running a company that includes three major television stations, several book publishing firms, over a dozen magazines, advertising agencies, supermarkets, and a soccer team, could help bring that about...
Vol. 77 • May 1994 • No. 5
