05.02.2015
Renzi in command
There is no doubting who the main loser is following the election of the new president, reports Toby Abse
The election of Sergio Mattarella as the 12th president of the Italian Republic on January 31represented a defeat for Silvio Berlusconi. It suggests that the infamous Patto del Nazareno - the secret agreement made last January between Berlusconi and the man who a few weeks later became prime minister, Partito Democratico (PD) leader Matteo Renzi - is now of diminishing importance. Whilst Renzi has presented the election of Mattarella as a personal triumph, since his candidacy - unlike Romano Prodi’s in 2013 - commanded the unanimous support of the PD on the fourth ballot1 and divided the ranks of the opposition, it is unlikely that Mattarella will be a compliant figurehead of the type that the arrogant young premier might have hoped for.
Renzi’s main concern over the fortnight leading up to the presidential election was to ensure the unity of the PD behind an agreed candidate. Whilst some have suggested that Renzi played a role in the treachery of the 101 PD grand electors, whose failure to vote for Prodi in the fourth round of the 2013 contest destroyed the former premier’s hopes of gaining the presidency, he certainly did not want any repetition of such chaos in the PD’s ranks to mar this year’s contest. If Renzi did indeed help to orchestrate the 2013 rebellion, it would not have been because of any personal vendetta against Prodi - of the kind that led to the widespread suspicions that Prodi’s arch-enemy, Massimo D’Alema, played a leading role in that episode - but because he wanted to discredit and topple his own rival, the then PD leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, who resigned shortly after the April 2013 debacle.
So Renzi was aware that his own leadership of the PD and his own premiership would be put at risk if he failed to ensure that on this occasion the PD’s parliamentarians and regional representatives in the electoral college voted as a solid block for the agreed candidate. Renzi had needed some votes from Berlusconi’s Forza Italia to ensure the passage of his electoral reform - the Italicum - through the Senate in the days leading up to the presidential contest, so he feared that, if some PD senators were willing to rebel in an open vote on the Italicum, far more PD parliamentarians would take advantage of the secrecy of the presidential ballots to express their discontent with his leadership (rather than with the chosen candidate).
There was some overlap between the potential rebellion within the PD and Silvio Berlusconi’s own schemes in relation to the 2015 presidential election. Berlusconi’s favoured candidate in the fortnight leading up to the election was Giuliano Amato, Bettino Craxi’s former right-hand man, nicknamed Dottore Sottile (Doctor Subtle) because of his skill in getting out of difficult situations and avoiding taking any of the blame for the malfeasance of those around him.
Only the incurably naive would imagine that Berlusconi’s motivation was based on Amato’s alleged merits as a former premier or, more recently, as a constitutional court judge and had absolutely no connection with his own past links with Craxi, the notoriously corrupt Socialist premier, whose made-to-measure legislation had first allowed Berlusconi to legalise his nationwide commercial television empire. However, Amato’s second premiership - in 2000-01 - had been as the head of a centre-left government, including all the forces that subsequently became the PD. In fact Amato, a great friend of the outgoing president, Giorgio Napolitano (who arranged his appointment to the constitutional court), is now a member of the PD. Therefore, it was possible for elements within the PD to argue that Amato should be adopted as the party’s official candidate.
There would obviously be a certain logic in the by now elderly remnants of Napolitano’s rightwing current in the old Partito Comunista Italiano - the so-called miglioristi, always known for their Craxian sympathies - taking this position. It was very indicative of the degenerate character of most of the PCI/PD old guard that much of the PD’s so-called ‘left’ - not just that tinpot Machiavelli, Massimo D’Alema, but perhaps even, if some accounts are to be believed, Pierluigi Bersani himself - favoured Amato’s candidacy in the weeks leading up to the presidential election.2 Whilst Renzi’s lack of enthusiasm for adopting Amato as PD candidate owed nothing to principle, one should at least give him some credit for understanding how unpopular Amato was with a wider public. He was identified with Craxi, with austerity governments and with allegations of corruption - considerations to which many on the PD left’ were oblivious.
Whilst Berlusconi’s ostensible objection to Mattarella was based on Renzi’s method in putting him forward (obtaining unanimity amongst the PD’s caucus before consulting the other party leaders, rather than agreeing a name with Berlusconi beforehand), this severe blow to his pride, indicating that Renzi is now the dominant partner in their alliance, is not the only reason for the old felon’s irritation with the course of events. Berlusconi is unlikely to forget that Mattarella was one of a small group of Christian Democrat ministers who resigned from a coalition government in protest against the Mammi law that legalised his virtual monopoly of Italian commercial television.
Sicilian, but …
Moreover, the first Sicilian president of the Republic is, as far as Berlusconi is concerned, the wrong sort of Sicilian - almost the polar opposite of Berlusconi’s own Sicilian former right-hand man, Marcello Dell’Utri, now serving time in jail for his links with the Mafia. The new president’s elder brother, Piersanti Mattarella, was killed by the Mafia in front of his own house in Palermo, as he was driving his family to mass in January 1980. This assassination of a Christian Democrat president of the Sicilian region was the first sign of the escalation of Mafia attacks on major political figures that marked the next 12 years.
Piersanti was particularly hated by the Mafia. Not only had he, following his election to the Sicilian presidency in 1978, tried to clean up the notoriously corrupt Sicilian Christian Democrats and distance them from the Mafia, to whose tame building firms they had previously awarded public works contracts on a regular basis. But also he was the last person from whom they had expected such opposition. In short, in their eyes he was a traitor and had to pay the penalty.
The father of the Mattarella brothers, Bernardo, had been a central figure in Sicilian Christian Democratic politics for decades and had been frequently accused of having Mafia links by such figures as the writer and activist, Daniele Dolci. It seems reasonable to suppose that Piersanti’s rise to the summit of Sicilian politics had been assisted by friends of his father, some of whom were presumably expecting a rather different outcome.
The impact of Piersanti’s death on Sergio should not be underestimated - indeed the badly wounded Piersanti died in Sergio’s arms. Whilst Sergio has always attempted to defend his father’s reputation, the new president’s attitude to the Mafia has been in keeping with his brother’s stance. It is worth pointing out that the rather reserved and shy Sergio only entered active politics after the violent death of his much more extrovert and gregarious brother.
Catholic, but …
Whilst Sergio’s involvement in full-time Christian Democratic politics came relatively late for such a political dynasty, his devout Catholicism was evident from his youth.
However, the nature of his Catholicism was not quite what those in Forza Italia, the Nuovo Centro Destra (NCD - New Centre Right) or the Unione di Centro (UCD) had in mind: they argued that it was now time for a Catholic president after 16 years of the two laici3 - Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (1999-2006) and Giorgio Napolitano (2006-15). The degree of sincerity of most of the centre-right advocating a ‘Catholic’ president can be seen by their first choice for this position: the divorced UCD leader, Pier Ferdinando Casini. Casini cannot receive the sacraments, but is always to the fore in public advocacy of, and mass demonstrations about, ‘family values’ - maintaining a ban on in-vitro fertilisation and blocking civil partnerships. For these sanctimonious hypocrites who see religion as a means of keeping the masses in line, a sincere believer is always a bit of an embarrassment.
Moreover, whilst it would be wrong to exaggerate Mattarella’s religious radicalism, he was friendly towards the Palermo Jesuits loathed by Józef Wojtyła (pope John Paul II) and is seen as an enemy by Comunione e Liberazione (CL) - the rightwing Catholic fundamentalist grouping. CL was promoted by Wojtyła and his successor, Joseph Ratzinger, and it not only became influential in first Christian Democratic and subsequently Forza Italia and NCD politics, but has also built an enormous economic empire out of publicly subsidised private healthcare, characterised by inefficiency and strange accounting procedures, particularly in Lombardy. The appallingly corrupt former Lombard regional president, Roberto Formigoni, made no effort to conceal his utter detestation of Mattarella. Formigoni - currently contesting numerous criminal charges from a new privileged position inside the current parliament - is CL’s leading political representative, and it seems very probable that it was CL’s members and supporters within the NCD parliamentary group who disobeyed NCD leader Angelino Alfano’s belated instructions to vote for Mattarella and instead cast blank ballots on Saturday.
Sidelined
Alfano, like Berlusconi, has been sidelined by the outcome of the presidential election. Alfano as a Sicilian and a former Christian Democrat, who by his own account made his first political speech as a teenager in favour of Mattarella, may well have a personal liking for the new president - the political problem was that the NCD, like Berlusconi, was not consulted in advance by Renzi before the premier got the PD caucus to endorse Mattarella.
Until the day before his election, there was supposed to be a bloc between Forza Italia and the NCD for the fourth ballot. Forza Italia’s official candidate was Amato and the NCD’s official candidate was Casini,4 but they had agreed in principle that the two parties would vote the same way on the day, which might have meant voting for one of these two or casting blank ballots together. Renzi made it clear to Alfano on January 30 that if he expected to carry on as interior minister he needed to vote for the incoming president of the republic. The humiliated Alfano reluctantly told the NCD parliamentary caucus that they were to back Mattarella - only to lose further authority within his party when a substantial block rebelled and cast blank ballots in the secret vote. The last few days have seen a few individual parliamentarians leaving the NCD, and a major split is quite possible.
Berlusconi now has much the same problems with Forza Italia as Alfano has with the NCD. It is quite clear that a substantial number of Forza Italia parliamentarians voted for Mattarella instead of casting blank ballots, as Berlusconi had instructed them to do, since there were only 105 blank ballots and there were 142 Forza Italia grand electors. Moreover, the rebellion was probably greater than the numerical discrepancy, since, as I have pointed out above, a section of the NCD cast blank ballots instead of voting for Mattarella: in other words, rebelling in precisely the opposite way and cancelling out some of the Forza Italia rebellion in numerical terms. Informed sources estimate the Forza Italia rebels as closer to 60 rather than 40.5
The rebels led by Raffaele Fitto look like becoming an increasing problem for the elderly delinquent, since Berlusconi’s weakened position in relation to Renzi makes it impossible to stamp down on them, while at the same time giving them little material incentive to behave themselves. This became obvious when Berlusconi abandoned the tactic of calling upon the Forza Italia delegation to walk out during the vote rather than merely cast blank ballots; whilst this would have ensured unanimity had the party still been under his control, the danger was that the rebels would refuse to leave the room and make their dissent public. The rebels, like some loyalists, are calling upon Berlusconi to abandon the Patto del Nazareno and return to all-out opposition.
However, Berlusconi has little choice but to accept the role of Renzi’s lackey rather than his master or his equal partner: even if the tycoon’s chances of a serious political comeback are clearly fading, he needs political protection against potential criminal charges he is still facing, as well as against any future possible legislative attacks on his media empire - something which his longstanding business associates like the Confalonieri group, as well as his own children, keep emphasising.
Notes
1. The fourth ballot is the first where a simple absolute majority (50% plus one) is sufficient. The first three ballots all require the successful candidate to obtain a two-thirds majority.
2. It should be stressed that the smaller, more genuinely leftwing PD group around Pippo Civati did not endorse Amato and, like Sinistra Ecologia e Libertà, dreamt of forming an alliance with the right-populist Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement). The idea was to elect Prodi as a means of destroying the Patto del Nazareno, Renzi’s political career and Berlusconi’s chance of making a political comeback.
3. Literally ‘secular’, but in this context it meant men from parties with a secular orientation, rather than men whose own position was atheist or agnostic.
4. There is supposed to be a sort of centre-right, broadly neo-Christian Democrat alliance between the UCD and the NCD, although so far fusion does not seem imminent.