The Italian elections: A Communist victoryFinally! (May 1996)
They spent the entire night celebrating in Piazza dei Santi Apostoli in Rome and they had good reason for jubilation: The Communists have been waiting for 40 years for an election victory. With cries and crowds and banners waving, the atmosphere wasn’t much different from the scene of victory after a European or World Cup soccer match. Difficult not to be swept away by the sheer colorful choreography of the banners: The red PDS flag with its white circular center and its oak tree symbol. The Olive Tree coalition flag with its olive branch symbol on a beautiful warm green background.
Massimo D’Alema, leader of the PDS party, the former PCI or Communist Party, took the platform, bent over into the crowd, grabbed one of the flags, and pointed to the old Communist Party symbols under the olive tree and declared, “This is one of the last times you’re going to see this. We are going to get rid of the hammer, as well as the sickle.” That must have put a cold chill through the warm festivities of the crowd. How could the leader fail to understand the importance of those symbols in the hearts and minds of the very constituents who were responsible for his victory? The gaffe must have been perceptible even to the insensitive D’Alema, who felt obliged to come back with a reassuring, “But of course we are proud to have carried our original leftist flag to power.”
There is no denying the victory of the left, but it is questionable whether the results can be considered a triumph for the Italian people. Although the Communists have never had enough votes to form a government, i.e., make up the ministery of the executive office, they have been an important part of the Italian political scene since the end of WW2 and certainly can’t make any claims to being new or modern. The Liberty Pole, on the other hand, with its major party being Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, is a political force born out of nothing just two years ago. For a long standing political group like the Communists to have gained an extremely marginal victory over a newly born political force like Forza Italia, is perhaps less of a conquest than it seems. Especially considering the fact that their victory was due to the formation of a coalition made up of many factions with very little homogeneity, who will have a difficult time agreeing on policies among themselves, never mind the problems they will have with a strong opposition. There is a very good possibility that a stalemate will result and, if this is the case, it could be a blessing in disguise for the Liberty Pole. As several on the losing side have noted, if you have to win or lose by a very small margin, it’s perhaps better to lose and be part of a strong opposition than be part of a very weak wining majority.
The results of these elections are certainly not what was needed to bring the constitutional changes necessary to convert this country’s archaic governmental institutions into a country with modern, agile, and functional ones. One striking example of the difference between the dynamism of the Liberty Pole and the paralysis of the leftist Olive Tree coalition is in the formation of a government. Had the Liberty Pole won, Italy would already have a government. Berlusconi had announced and presented most of the elements of his cabinet of ministers during the election campaign. The leader of the Olive Tree coalition, Romano Prodi, hopes to be presenting his cabinet by mid-May. However, since the coalition is representative of so many essentially disagreeing groups, many consider this estimate overly optimistic.
As French diplomat and philosopher, Joseph de Maistre once said, “Every country has the government it deserves.” That may be so. A large number of Italians, although complaining relentlessly about their government, have, essentially, voted for maintaining the same people and the same policies that have been in vigor for the last 50 years. However, due to an anomalous system of vote counting, which combines majority and proportional methods, a paradox similar to the American electoral system has come about, where the winner can actually be the political force who got less votes in number. There were more individual Italian citizens who voted for the coalition which represented a complete change from the past. They certainly merit more than the patience they are going to have to muster to bear the machinations of the old system for another 5 years!
May 1996
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