02.06.2016
Divisions continue to multiply
Berlusconi shows all the signs of being a spent force, writes Toby Abse. But overall, politics still moves to the right
The forthcoming municipal elections in Milan, Turin, Naples and Bologna will all give important indications of the national balance of forces between Matteo Renzi’s Partito Democratico (PD), Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S - Five Star Movement) and the various contenders on the traditional centre-right. However, it is the Roman contest that will in all probability be the best indicator of whether Renzi will still be Italian prime minister by the end of this year, as well as whether M5S stands any chance of becoming a credible contender for national office in a general election in 2017 or 2018.
The municipal election campaign has exposed the divisions in what is conventionally labelled the ‘centre-right’ (even if some of its com-ponents are better characterised as far-right). From 1994 until the autumn of 2013, Silvio Berlusconi had been the dominant figure in this part of the political spectrum and had generally succeeded in holding together its constituent components - his own Forza Italia, the neo-fascists originally represented by the Alleanza Nazionale after the Fiuggi congress of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), and the regionalist Lega Nord.1 However, Berlusconi’s conviction for tax fraud and consequent exclusion from parliamentary office, together with his increasing age and declining vigour (he will be 80 in September), have drastically undermined his political authority. His resurrection of Forza Italia, in the wake of a split in the Popolo della Libertà (PdL) that gave rise to Angelino Alfano’s Nuovo Centro Destra (NCD - New Centre Right), has not proved to be a winning formula, as he had fondly imagined.
Further splits at a parliamentary level have left Forza Italia with roughly half the representation in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate that the PDL had immediately after the February 2013 general election and now it often barely reaches double figures in the opinion polls. Whilst some of the splinters from the PdL (such as the NCD and Denis Verdini’s ALA) have moved to the centre in order to reach formal or informal deals with Renzi’s PD, the most serious challenge to Berlusconi’s old dominance has come from the populist far right - from two parties that at the European level are aligned with Marine Le Pen’s neo-fascist Front National. These are the more traditionally neo-fascist Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) and the Lega Nord, under its new younger leader, Matteo Salvini. The Lega Nord has more or less abandoned the aggressive regionalism (sometimes mutating into outright separatism) of its founder, Umberto Bossi, playing down its old fierce anti-southern prejudices, whilst stepping up its traditional Islamophobia and anti-immigrant racism and adopting a new Europhobic line.2 Salvini has allied himself with the FdI’s leader, Giorgia Meloni, and this duo has undermined Berlusconi’s leadership, preventing a unified nationwide centre-right challenge in the coming municipal elections.
In some cities Forza Italia and the FdI are united behind one candidate, so that Milan, for example, looks like being a close-run contest between the centre-left and centre-right, with both the PD and Forza Italia fielding rather technocratic centrist candidates: respectively Giuseppe Sala, the chief executive officer of the Milan Expo of 2015; and Stefano Parisi, former city manager of Milan in 1997-2001.3 Elsewhere this is not the case; in Turin Forza Italia and the Lega have rival candidates - Alberto Morano and Osvaldo Napoli4 - although it is likely that the PD’s sitting mayor, Piero Fassino, will be re-elected, even if in the run-off ballot rather than the first round, where he faces a challenger on the radical left.
Rome
However, the major focus of attention has been Rome. For a period Berlusconi thought he had got Salvini and Meloni to support Guido Bertolaso, who played a key role in civil protection during Berlusconi’s last government, having been in charge of coping with the earthquake in L’Acquila, the rubbish crisis in Naples and other similar emergencies. Needless to say, he like so many of Berlusconi’s cronies, is still facing criminal charges, in his case in relation to some of these infrastructural projects.5 Giorgia Meloni had origin-ally ruled herself out as a mayoral candidate after in January very publicly announcing her pregnancy at this year’s Family Day - a mass rally in Rome of hard-line Catholics and far-rightists against same-sex partnerships and other alleged threats to the traditional family.6
Bertolaso had always faced a certain amount of competition from Alfio Marchini, a construction magnate, who had stood as an independent candidate for the Roman mayoralty in 2013. Whilst Marchini’s dynasty of entrepreneurs originally had some links with the Roman federation of the Partito Comunista Italiano, initially as a result of his grandfather’s resistance record, by this year Marchini’s campaign was tilted towards the right in contrast to his centrism on the previous occasion. Indeed Berlusconi, as a man who had made his initial fortune in construction in the Milan area, had originally wanted to back Marchini and only enlisted Bertolaso as a candidate because Meloni vetoed the adoption of Marchini as an official centre-right candidate.
Salvini started to turn against Bertolaso, because in the view of the Lega leader one of Bertolaso’s speeches showed a certain sympathy for the gypsies’ plight; Salvini has always been notorious for his immediate bulldozing of gypsy camps, whether in Rome or anywhere else in Italy, and has on occasions arrived at such camps accompanied by Lega thugs, deliberately seeking to provoke clashes with gypsies or radical left defenders of their rights.
In March Meloni belatedly decided to stand as a mayoral candidate after all, easily gaining the support of Salvini and the Lega, and Bertolaso suggested somewhat crassly that she should concentrate on being a full-time mother. Berlusconi, a man with some form as far as misogynist remarks were concerned, backed this up, adding that somebody who had never run a newspaper kiosk lacked the practical experience of Bertolaso. Meloni, as a shrewd 21st century neo-fascist, played the feminist card, gaining solidarity from Italian female politicians across the political spectrum, regardless of her own appalling bigotry on so many social issues.
However, Berlusconi, as an expert in marketing, avidly followed the opinion polls, including the private ones he had commissioned himself. It became all too apparent that Bertolaso was getting roughly similar percentages to Marchini and coming far behind Meloni, the only avowedly rightwing candidate who stood a chance of getting through to the second round. Some leading Forza Italia figures in northern Italy were urging Berlusconi to switch horses and back Meloni instead of Bertolaso - some because of their own original ideological background in the neo-fascist MSI/AN, others out of an opportunist belief that it was necessary to keep the Lega Nord onside in the northern regions, especially Lombardy and the Veneto. A smaller faction within Forza Italia urged Berlusconi to adopt the more centrist course of switching his support to Marchini.
For a period Berlusconi - unwilling to be humiliated by the young challengers, Salvini and Meloni - stuck by his old friend, Bertolaso, but in the end he threw him to the wolves, although not before giving the former candidate the right to make the decision on whom to endorse in his place. Needless to say, Bertolaso chose Marchini, for whom he had already expressed some sympathy in press interviews - in part because he felt a greater affinity with somebody in the construction industry and in part because of sheer personal detestation for Meloni. In theory Berlusconi’s backing should have doubled Marchini’s vote share, but in practice it has made little difference - whether because most Forza Italia voters switched to Meloni or because some of Marchini’s original supporters became less enamoured with him when he ceased to be ‘an independent without a party’ - as his campaign posters all over the city had proclaimed - is not clear and indeed it might well be a mixture of the two factors. This outcome seems the definitive proof that Berlusconi’s political marginalisation is now irreversible.
Whilst Meloni at the time of writing is definitely amongst the top three candidates in the first-round contest, it is not at all clear if she will make it into the run-off ballot. Contrary to widespread earlier expectations, Roberto Giachetti, the PD candidate, seems to have gained ground over Meloni, despite the demoralised state of the Roman PD in the wake of the Mafia Capitale scandal and the Ignazio Marino saga, as well as the presence of a serious competitor to his left: Stefano Fassina of Sinistra Italiana.7
Still in first place is the Roman-born lawyer and member of the outgoing municipal council, Virginia Raggi of M5S - although her lead over her main rivals has narrowed, perhaps as a result of the scandals surrounding M5S mayors in Livorno and Parma. Raggi has so far refused to participate in face-to-face debates with her rivals and on at least one occasion a television debate starring the other principal contenders went out with the classically symbolic empty chair.
Raggi’s professional background as a lawyer in the practice of the notorious Cesare Previti, the appallingly corrupt defence minister in Berlusconi’s first government, who was eventually convicted, even if his age ensured he spent no more than a few days behind bars, is a very clear indication that she is not a woman of the left.8 Her gaffes as a candidate - making it far too obvious in public statements that, unlike Parma’s rebellious mayor, Federico Pizzarotti, she would take her instructions on all major matters from the national (Milanese) leadership of the party (ie, Beppe Grillo and Davide Casaleggio) - seem to have disheartened Grillo, who is not going to attend her closing rally in Rome for “personal reasons”. This despite the original expectation that he would be leading the M5S campaign in the manner of the 2013 general election, where his Roman rally played a crucial role. Internal rivalry within M5S’s Roman membership also seems to have weakened Raggi’s position.
All this means that, whilst an M5S triumph in the second round of the Roman contest is still a real possibility, it is by no means a certainty.
Notes
1. At times this bloc also included fragments of the right wing of the old DC (Democrazia Cristiana) - under a variety of names, including the Unione di Centro (UdC). But its presence was not a constant feature of Berlusconi’s coalitions, as it sometimes acted as the right wing of a centre-left coalition or took a neutral position between the two main blocs.
2. Originally it tended to argue that an independent, economically and culturally advanced Padania should be part of the EU, whilst Italy’s allegedly ‘African’ south was best excluded.
3. There were three major candidates in the centre-left primary, but the PD’s left was split between Francesca Balzani with 33.92% and Pierfrancesco Majorino with 23.1%. This allowed Renzi’s favoured candidate, Sala, who had no previous track record in left politics, to win with a 42.33% plurality in this first-past-the-post contest.
4. Morano also has the backing of the neo-fascist FdI, whilst Napoli is supported by the centrist Area Popolare (which includes the NCD).
5. Whilst Bertolaso was allegedly reluctant to return from his charitable work on development projects in Africa to contest the Roman mayoralty, and had earlier in his career obtained an MSc from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine as a supplement to his original Italian medical degree, it is hard to believe that this renewed interest in tropical issues was altogether unconnected with his legal problems at home.
6. As far as I am aware, she is not married to Andrea Giambruno, by whom she is expecting this baby, but rabid homophobia seems to be more important to the ‘traditionalists’ than conformity to the institution of marriage.
7. The 26-year-old candidate of the Partito Comunista, Alessandro Mustillo, is not a serious competitor. The Partito Comunista is a neo-Stalinist splinter from the Partito dei Comunisti Italiani with some links to eastern European parties of a similar persuasion.
8. This statement may seem self-evident to readers of my earlier Weekly Worker articles on M5S, but, given the perverse and thoroughly misleading categorisation of M5S as somehow akin to Corbynism, the Sanders campaign and the French Parti de Gauche in Susan Watkins’ ‘Oppositions’ (New Left Review March-April 2016), it has to be forcefully reiterated.