08.01.2015
After old man Napolitano
As the Italian president prepares to step down, Toby Abse looks at the likely contenders
Giorgio Napolitano’s new year’s eve message explicitly confirmed his intention to resign as president - an office he has held for almost nine years.1
It is widely believed that he intends to quit on January 14, the day after the last speech required of him as Italian head of state in relation to Italy’s presidency of the European Union. However, if the Partito Democratico (PD) prime minister, Matteo Renzi, had any residual belief that he could persuade Napolitano to remain in office a little longer to ensure the smooth passage of the proposed constitutional and electoral reforms through both chambers of the Italian parliament, the televised address indicated that the old man, who will be 90 in April, has had enough. Given his age when he agreed to serve a second term in April 2013, his resignation - although coming unprecedentedly early2 - seems far more defensible than his allegedly reluctant acceptance of what was nominally a seven-year mandate at the age of 87.
There is no reason to doubt Napolitano’s claim in his farewell message that he felt he no longer had the capacity to continue - “I say simply I have the duty of not undervaluing the signs of fatigue”, as he put it. He emphasised that it was a personal decision on the grounds of health and age, not one intended to influence the government or parliament, nor one influenced by them. Whether or not there is any truth in the rumours that he was increasingly irritated by the reluctance of the arrogant young Renzi to accept his advice in the way that Renzi’s immediate predecessor, PD premier Enrico Letta, had, it would be wrong to see Napolitano’s resignation as primarily motivated by such tensions - his farewell address clearly endorsed both the constitutional and the electoral reforms, even if he spent less time on them than might have been expected, and showed a greater awareness of Italy’s deteriorating economic situation.
Napolitano’s references to the “regression in productive activity and consumption”, the “fall in the national income and family incomes”, the “emergence of serious phenomena of environmental degradation and, above all, … the spread of youth unemployment and the loss of jobs” were in stark contrast to Renzi’s relentless and facile optimism. This was particularly noticeable in the premier’s Christmas Eve press conference - about the imminent end of the Italian recession and the ‘recovery’ to be expected in the coming year.3
Insofar as Napolitano’s speech had any political content - as opposed to moralistic appeals to all citizens to do their duty, of a kind reminiscent of Christmas messages from pope Francis or our own queen - it emphasised national unity and the importance of the European Union. It specifically attacked those who want to abandon the euro and any continent-wide economic strategy, even if neither Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement - M5S) nor Matteo Salvini’s Lega Nord - the two major Italian political forces with a Europhobic orientation - was actually named.4 Napolitano’s enthusiasm for the EU was qualified by his approval of Renzi’s efforts during the Italian presidency of the EU to obtain some change in economic policy to assist the “relaunch” of “our economies”; needless to say, no mention was made of the failure of these efforts to have any discernible impact on Angela Merkel or Jean-Claude Juncker, who remain committed to endless austerity, as the recent statements of both the German chancellor and the president of the European Commission about the coming Greek election have made only too plain.
Succession
Napolitano’s official farewell was in no sense a genuine surprise - rumours of his imminent resignation had been rife for at least a month and speculation about the succession had been a major topic in all the Italian dailies for some time. Renzi seems very keen to achieve a consensus between the PD and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia on a mutually acceptable candidate rather than to hope that on this occasion the PD could elect its own chosen candidate.5 The treachery of the 101 PD parliamentarians who stabbed Romano Prodi in the back in the April 2013 contest is in everybody’s mind. Prodi himself has claimed that he has no interest in making a second attempt, but his name is still one of those most frequently cited in press discussions.
Initially Berlusconi gave the impression that almost any other PD candidate would be acceptable to him, but that Forza Italia would do its utmost to veto Prodi, who was Berlusconi’s one consistent adversary in what became the PD - and the only centre-left leader to defeat him in a general election (indeed two general elections: 1996 and 2006). More recently Berlusconi, however, has encouraged rumours that he may actually favour Prodi on the grounds that you can only make a lasting peace with your real enemies - the implication being that only somebody with a reputation for intransigent anti-Berlusconism could dare to give Berlusconi some sort of pardon which would override the six-year ban on parliamentary office or candidacy imposed upon him, after his definitive tax fraud conviction in 2013.
Berlusconi’s only real concern in the coming presidential contest lies in its impact on his own current and indeed future legal and financial situation.6 Some in Forza Italia and others in centre-right groupings like Angelino Alfano’s Nuovo Centro Destra (NCD - New Centre Right) or Pierferdinando Casini’s Unione del Centro (UCD) argue that it is time for an avowedly Catholic president, since both Napolitano and his immediate predecessor, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, were laici (secular). They say this is a breach of the tradition of the cold war years of the ‘First Republic’ (1946-92), with its rigorous alternation between Catholics and laici as head of state. But this is of no interest to Berlusconi - a factor which seems to have reduced the chances of potential PD candidates like Dario Franceschini, the only PD secretary before Renzi who came from a Christian Democratic rather than ex-communist political background. Admittedly Prodi himself could in fact be seen as a Catholic candidate, but it is unlikely that those who have raised this issue had him in mind.
Quite apart from the objections that many on the centre-right might raise to his anti-Berlusconian record, Prodi has never enjoyed much support from the church hierarchy - at least during the Wojtyła/Ratzinger years - despite his greater personal commitment to live by Catholic concepts of family values, demonstrated by his long marriage and large family, than the divorced UCD leader, Casini, or the libertine, Berlusconi. The latter was favoured by the Curia until the advent of pope Francis - an outsider who finds some of the hypocritical traditions of the upper ranks of the Italian church rather distasteful and seems set on promoting more congenial cardinals from the third world.
Another potential candidate is the PD’s founder, Walter Veltroni, whose deliberate avoidance of personal attacks on Berlusconi during the 2008 general election endeared him to the tycoon, but probably helped him to lose the election by a large margin. However, whilst this craven record of sycophancy towards the felon might make him one of Forza Italia’s favourites amongst the potential PD candidates, the deep involvement of his right-hand man during his years as mayor of Rome, Luca Odevaine, in the Mafia Capitale scandal has probably lessened his chances. Berlusconi’s initial enthusiasm for former premier Giuliano Amato may have done the erstwhile Socialist protégé of Bettino Craxi more harm than good - although Napolitano himself, who always had a weakness for the Socialists in the Craxi era, is supposed to have some sympathy for his candidacy and played a key role in his appointment to the Constitutional Court.
Inevitably in this epoch of neoliberal technocracy, some bankers have been mentioned as allegedly less partisan choices.7 European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has repeatedly disclaimed any interest in the post of president, but Renzi’s current economics minister, Carlo Padoan, seems to have more credibility.
In the 2013 contest M5S intransigence played into Berlusconi’s hands - whilst the M5S favourite, Stefano Rodotà, was probably the best of the serious candidates, there was no hope of electing an honest and intelligent constitutional expert from the PD’s left wing if the PD itself opposed him. A more constructive engagement by either M5S or the growing group of parliamentarians who have been expelled or have resigned from M5S may tip the balance on this occasion. Whilst Renzi favours a deal with Forza Italia over one with M5S or ex-M5S dissidents, there is no guarantee that an official PD/Forza Italia consensus candidate could in a secret ballot actually achieve the score such a person ought to have on paper.
The problem of disloyalty within the PD has already been mentioned - whether or not the phenomenon of the 101 traitors who destroyed Prodi’s chance in 2013 is repeated, there is a large amount of hostility to Renzi on the PD’s left. Indeed those who lacked the courage to rebel when it really mattered - to the working class at any rate - over the Jobs Act might be more inclined to express clandestine dissent in a secret ballot. Only the fearless maverick, Pippo Civati, who probably will leave the PD sooner or later, has publicly stated that he would vote for Prodi or Rodotà, but not for a candidate chose by the PD in conjunction with Berlusconi. However, Berlusconi no longer has the control of Forza Italia’s parliamentarians that he used to enjoy before his own exclusion and the restrictions of his community service order. This order does not expire until February 15 - in other words, too late to impact on the presidential contest, which everybody expects to take place at the end of January.
Raffaele Fitto has been a constant thorn in Berlusconi’s flesh as a result of the large number of preference votes he gained on the Forza Italia list in the May 2014 European elections. These enabled him to win followers amongst Forza Italia’s parliamentarians not just in his native region of Puglia, but also elsewhere in the south. Despite some verbal threats by Berlusconi a few months ago, it is quite obvious that his loyalists do not have sufficient control over the party to move towards Fitto’s expulsion without risking a serious split. In addition Berlusconi also has a problem with some of the old guard of Forza Italia parliamentarians like Renato Brunetta, who, despite personal loyalty to their patron, have no liking for the pact with Renzi, the Patto del Nazareno, and might well be tempted to express their hostility to the PD leader in a secret ballot.
Nichi Vendola, the leader of Sinistra Ecologia e Libertà (SEL - Left Ecology and Freedom) has voiced public support for Prodi’s candidacy and urged the PD to ally with SEL in backing him. This was obviously intended as a means of undermining, if not destroying, the Patto del Nazareno, and instead reviving the alliance between the PD and SEL that former PD leader Pierluigi Bersani entered into for the February 2013 general election. Renzi subsequently rejected it by pursuing an aggressively neoliberal programme culminating in the Jobs Act, with its attack on the workers’ rights embodied in article 18 of the 1970 workers’ statute. However, SEL’s capacity to influence the outcome of the presidential election is minimal, unless there is a much larger rebellion against Renzi within the PD than at present appears likely, or M5S proves far more willing to form a tactical alliance against Berlusconi and Forza Italia than it did in 2013.
Worst outcome
The worst outcome would be the election of a banker, who might well act as an agent of Brussels, Berlin and Frankfurt, preventing any lessening of the deflationary death spiral of current austerity policies. The second worst outcome would be the election of Giuliano Amato - not called Dottore Sottile (Doctor Subtle) for nothing, Craxi’s former right-hand man has never been charged with financial wrongdoing and currently enjoys high judicial office, but reeks of the very worst king of ‘First Republic’ politics, proving a dismal purveyor of anti-working class austerity policies during both his short premierships.
Whilst Stefano Rodotà might perhaps be the dream candidate, in reality Romano Prodi is probably the best we can hope for, whatever some British Europhobes obsessed with Prodi’s period as European commission president might claim. With any luck he might still want to get his revenge on Berlusconi and he has no liking for Renzi, whose extreme ideological neoliberalism is not really to the taste of a man whose intellectual formation was based on Catholic social teaching and whose early career was in state industry.
Notes
1. www:repubblica.it/politica/2014/12/31/news/il_commiato_di_napolitano. Napolitano read it out word for word, giving rise to some criticism from those who would have preferred an improvised - or more likely memorised - speech.
2. Although he is not the first Italian president to resign before the end of his official term, the other instances were due either to evident extreme physical incapacity (Antonio Segni) or to the sort of allegations of serious wrongdoing that would have given rise to impeachment in American context (Giovanne Leone and Francesco Cossiga).
3. Italy is in the third consecutive year of a recession with a GDP now lower than it was in 2000. The figures for the last three years were all negative: -2.4% in 2012, -1.9% in 2013 and -0.4% in 2014. The growth forecasts for 2015 range from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s 0.2%, through the government’s 0.6%, to the International Monetary Fund’s 0.8%.
4. Needless to say, both Grillo and Salvini were vociferous in attacking Napolitano’s farewell message - after announcing a boycott in advance, which in Grillo’s case consisted of delivering his own address to the nation simultaneously and in the case of the Lega’s Radio Padania of broadcasting an old new year’s eve message by the long dead Socialist president, Sandro Pertini.
5. On paper the PD is very close to having an absolute majority in the electoral college - recent regional elections, as well as parliamentary defections to the PD from SEL’s right wing, have given it slightly more grand electors than it had in 2013.
6. Leaving aside Prodi’s reluctance to grant Berlusconi any pardon, he is probably the only serious candidate who might be seen as favouring legislation about either a conflict of interest between concentrations of media ownership and political office or television monopolies as such.
7. The first banker to be elected president was Luigi Einaudi, so this is not such an innovation in historical terms. More relevantly, Napolitano’s immediate predecessor as president (1999-2006), Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, was a former head of the Bank of Italy.