Italian Politics: Everything remains the same (October 1995)
This is Part two of a three part series on Italian politics.
As Prince Tancredi said in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard, though referring to another epic in the history of the Italian Peninsula, "If we want everything to remain the same, everything must change." Evidently, those involved in politics in Italy must have either read the book or at least seen Visconti’s cinematographic interpretation for it would seem that they have taken those words not only seriously, but quite literally.
When the Italians went to the urns in April 1993 to vote on a referendum that would change their electoral system of government from a proportionate to a majority system, they were planting the first seeds of hope and optimism for a government that would truly allow for change and renewal.
Since the end of the second World War, the same faces had been ruling Italy. The proportionate system had allowed the same people to remain in a power in a political game that was very similar to musical chairs. However, although the faces were the same, the government was notoriously unstable. Anytime an argument arose which disrupted the numbers of the governing coalition, the government would fall, and the cards would have to be reshuffled. This is why Italy has the unhappy record of having had 50 Prime Ministers since the end of WW2. That’s an average of one per year!
During the year following the referendum which purported to change the system and prior to the first elections held under that new system, the politicians who remained as of yet untarnished by the corruption trial scandals began scrambling to dismantle their old parties in order to create "new" political organizations with new names, a vivid example of Tancredi’s dictum.
The first elections applying this new electoral system were held one year after the referendum in March 1994. One month prior to these elections, Silvio Berlusconi, media giant and the creator of three private television networks, made his decision to descend into the political arena. As an entrepreneur and one of the most influential businessman of the country, he understood only too well the danger that was facing the country at that time.
The former communist party conveniently renamed, PDS, or the Democratic Party of the Left (Communism no longer being in vogue), the hard-liners of Rifondazione Communista or the Refound Communist Party (who if nothing else at least had the courage of their own convictions to continue calling themselves by the name most representative of their ideology), and a number of other minor parties of the left had decided to join forces and form an alliance in order to present themselves on the same ticket for the up-coming elections.
The center and right political organizations were forming no such coalitions and were running the risk of handing the country over to the left, allowing a country of Western Europe to be run by communists at a moment when there were hardly any such countries left in Eastern Europe.
After forming a new political force, baptized with the name Forza Italia, Berlusconi proceeded to form a coalition of his own with Gianfranco Fini’s right-wing National Alliance and Umberto Bossi’s plebeian Northern League. Although the affinities of these groups were certainly disputable, it is evident that Berlusconi felt that this alliance was a necessary if not happy compromise, inevitable in order to acquire enough votes to keep the left wing from gaining power.
In the elections which took place in March 1994 Berlusconi’s Freedom Alliance won 58% of the votes. Clearly, it was Silvio Berlusconi’s personal diplomatic abilities which brought such differing factions together toward such a victory. Together with the fact that Forza Italia alone had gained 25% of the seats in Parliament and the Senate, it quite naturally followed that Berlusconi was appointed Prime Minister.
From the day he took office, the opposition lost no opportunity to put obstacles before every governmental initiative undertaken by Berlusconi during his brief 9-month rule. As if the obstructionism from the opposition were not enough, the Northern League’s unwieldy leader, Bossi, began a series capricious temper tantrums, totally uncongenial to his role as a small minority victor in the ruling coalition. He pulled out of the coalition giving Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro the pretext he needed to declare the country ungovernable and call for the appointment of a new Prime Minister. In January of this year, Lamberto Dini became Italy’s new Prime Minister.
Once again in total accord with Prince Tancredi’s pronouncement, all of the changes made have served the purpose of repeating Italy’s custom of changing Prime Ministers at least once a year.
October 1995
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