02.05.2013

Italian government: Grand coalition for austerity

Toby Abse reports on the formation of yet another anti-working class administration in Italy

The April 20 re-election of Giorgio Napolitano to the presidency of the republic has quite predictably led to the formation of a ‘grand coalition’ government within a week - the very outcome that former Partito Democratico (PD) leader Pierluigi Bersani had obstinately tried to block for nearly two months.

It was obvious from his April 22 inaugural speech, in which he verbally chastised the behaviour of all the politicians since the general election in the manner of a stern father addressing his errant progeny, that Napolitano was absolutely determined that the PD - dominated by former ‘official communists’ and now universally considered to be centre-left - together with Silvio Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PdL) and Mario Monti’s centrist Scelta Civica, should all accept such a government as quickly as possible. This meant firstly choosing a prime minister designate, who would neither cause further splits in the faction-ridden PD nor be unacceptable to the PdL, and, secondly, picking a set of ministers who would not be seen as ‘divisive’ by either of the two major parties.

Scelta Civica was judged to have very little bargaining power, both because of its poor showing in the February general election - it finished in fourth place, well behind Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) - and because as a centrist formation it was much more ideologically committed to a grand coalition than either the PD or the PdL. Both of the latter parties would have preferred either outright victory or the dominant role in a coalition that excluded the other major contender - the PdL had intermittently flirted with the idea of a second election this year to achieve these ends.

The PD’s Enrico Letta was a logical choice as prime minister of such a grand coalition for a variety of reasons. In the first place, Bersani had already resigned as party secretary after his ‘triple failure’. He had failed to form what he had called a “government of change” (a minority administration alongside the soft-left Sinistra Ecologia Libertà committed to his eight-point reform programme); he had failed to see through the election of former Christian Democrat Franco Marini as president of the republic on the first ballot, as agreed with Silvio Berlusconi and his PdL; and he had failed to ensure the election of the PD’s second, more confrontational, anti-Berlusconi candidate, Romano Prodi, to the same office on the fourth ballot. Although Bersani remains in place as caretaker secretary until a successor is chosen, he no longer has any political credibility either as a party leader or as a potential premier.

Letta, as the vice-secretary - in effect deputy leader - of the PD, was far less directly and personally implicated in any of these disasters, without appearing to have profited from them in the way that other possible PD candidates for the premiership might have done. The choice of either one of the two ex-premiers, Giuliano Amato and Massimo D’Alema, or of Matteo Renzi, the leader of the PD’s right wing, would have been far more controversial and deepened the existing factional splits within the party. So, despite the initial forecasts about Amato and Renzi in particular, their chances had receded by the time of Letta’s emergence as the front-runner on April 24.

The choice of the 46-year-old Letta, the third youngest post-war Italian premier, could be seen as a generational shift away from elderly veterans like Amato and D’Alema without inflaming all the party’s older leading members in a way that the even younger Renzi, with his belligerent talk of “scrapping”, might well have done. Moreover, in terms of the politics of a grand coalition, Letta had the advantage of being an ex-Christian Democrat rather than an ex-communist and thus closer to the centre ground. It is also helpful in terms of Italy’s relationship with other EU states that Letta has had some experience in the European parliament¹ as well as in Italian domestic politics - Bersani’s lack of competence in foreign languages had been seen as a potential drawback in a prime minister at a time when Italy has such an urgent need to negotiate some easing of austerity within the EU.

Last but not least, Letta is the nephew of Berlusconi’s longstanding political chief of staff, Gianni Letta, the respectable face of the PdL, who was always called upon to act on Berlusconi’s behalf in any delicate negotiations with either the PD or the Vatican. Not only are the two Lettas on good terms in general, but there even seem to have been some occasions over the last week when the uncle gave the nephew some direct assistance in the course of negotiations that eventually allowed a new cabinet to be put together.

Cabinet

That new cabinet includes a mixture of political and the technocratic ministers, even if the balance is clearly towards the political. Of the 21 ministers, eight are from the PD, five from the PdL, three from Scelta Civica or its Christian Democratic ally, the UdC, and four are technocrats. The remaining one, foreign minister Emma Bonino, is difficult to categorise, since, regardless of formal labels, she is one of the historic leaders of the Partito Radicale, which has on occasions allied with both Berlusconi and the centre-left, but cannot be categorised as conventionally centrist because of its anti-clerical stance on issues such as abortion, divorce and gay rights.

Although Bonino is 65 and two of the leading technocrats - Anna Maria Cancellieri, the justice minister, and Fabrizio Saccomanni,² the economics minister - are 69 and 70 respectively, the bulk of the cabinet are rather younger than most Italian cabinets in recent times. In addition seven of them are women. Two of these - both from the PD, needless to say - are of non-Italian birth: Josefa Idem, the minister for equal opportunities is of German origin, whilst Cecile Kyenge, the minister for integration, the first black minister in Italian history, is of Congolese origin.

Whilst the PD not only has the prime minister, but also a larger proportion of ministers than its rivals, the PdL has secured the ministry of the interior and the role of deputy prime minister for Angelino Alfano, the Sicilian who as Berlusconi’s justice minister was responsible for the notorious ‘Lodo Alfano’, one of Berlusconi’s legal attempts to give himself judicial immunity. This means that, although Berlusconi dropped his demands to be given a ministry when the PD agreed that its own former premiers, D’Alema and Amato, would not be given cabinet office either, he does have far more influence over Letta’s government than might at first appear from the list of ministers.

The careful choice of cabinet members meant that, despite many threats of abstention - or even in a handful of cases votes against the government - from up to 50 of the more anti-Berlusconi PD parliamentarians, in the event the PD voted solidly for the grand coalition on its first parliamentary vote of confidence. Despite the presence of the banker, Fabrizio Saccomanni, as economics minister, which is clearly designed to reassure the markets, Berlusconi seems to have secured some of his economic agenda - he is seeking some easing of austerity, but in his own somewhat reckless and demagogic fashion. Letta has agreed not to impose the June instalment of the IMU property tax, which hits all householders - although he has left it rather vague as to whether this tax will be totally abolished in the way Berlusconi demanded during the election campaign. The problem for a ‘responsible’ government, committed to ‘sound governance’, is that total abolition of the IMU would necessarily involve either the imposition of some alternative tax to make up for the loss of revenue or further cuts in public spending at a time of deepening recession and rising unemployment.

Because of the long-drawn-out political crisis, there has been some discussion of a proposal for a constitutional convention. If it were held, the PdL would doubtless try and move towards a presidential republic proper - there seems a more general consensus behind the idea of cutting the number of parliamentarians and thus the amount of public money they receive. It is possible that some of the ideas in the report drawn up by Napolitano’s ‘10 wise men’, on resolving the stalemate that followed February’s election, will be implemented. Electoral reform is self-evidently very much under discussion, but it is not clear whether the PdL will finally accept a revision of the infamous ‘Pig Law’ introduced in 2005 and agree on some more rational, even if not necessarily more democratic, electoral system.

Opposition

The main parliamentary opposition will come from Beppe Grillo’s M5S, which has, of course, denounced the coalition as the inciucio (stitch-up) it had predicted from the beginning. This glosses over the fact that, by refusing to do any real deal with Bersani for two months, M5S itself ensured that the coalitionists within the PD gained the upper hand - had M5S voted for Prodi on the fourth presidential ballot, all this could in all probability have been averted.

The other political grouping that is clearly opposed to the coalition on an anti-Berlusconi basis is Nichi Vendola’s Sinistra Ecologia e Libertà, which joined M5S in voting against the new government in its first vote of confidence. Any immediate prospect of fusion between SEL and the PD has now clearly gone and for the time being SEL will be taking up the role of a left social democratic opposition and, presumably, voting against any obviously anti-working class neoliberal measures, such as privatisations, welfare cuts or labour market ‘reforms’.

The chances of any substantial left split from the PD have diminished; the unreliability of the so-called Young Turks, who appeared for some months to advocate a more social democratic line, making at least some concessions to the interests of organised labour, was shown when in the days before Letta’s emergence as premier designate, they seemed to be seeking a reconciliation with Renzi on the basis of an apolitical alliance of the younger generation against the old guard within the PD.

The Lega Nord will be opposing the coalition from the right and has already made predictably racist comments about the appointment of integration minister Cecile Kyenge, but it chose to abstain in the vote of confidence. The only rightwing grouping that voted against Letta - or rather against the PD as such, which it still regards as heir to the Partito Comunista Italiano - was Ignazio La Russa’s neo-fascist Fratelli d’Italia, which has have now parted company with the rightwing parliamentary alliance headed by Berlusconi.

Whilst it should be stressed that the unemployed building worker who shot at two carabinieri on the day the cabinet was sworn in, after vainly trying to get close to one or more leading politicians, was acting alone and had no connections with any terrorist group, such grand coalitions are almost bound, in the absence of an effective mass party of the genuine left, to evoke such reactions. The older politicians and journalists responded to this incident by recalling the kidnapping of former premier Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades, following the installation of the ‘National Solidarity’ government in 1978.

Whatever criticisms could, and should, be made of M5S, it was obvious that the attempt by various rightwing politicians to hold Grillo indirectly responsible for this incident - claiming his wilder speeches had incited violence against politicians - is an indication of the way such a grand coalition might limit the space for democratic opposition. It is to be hoped that the demonstration called by the metalworkers’ union, FIOM, for Saturday May 18 will be the beginning of a more rational mass opposition to austerity.

Notes

1. Letta was chairman of the European Young Christian Democrats in 1991-95 and a member of the European parliament in 2004-08 for the Margherita party, which despite its Christian Democratic origins formed part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. During his time in the European parliament he sat on its committee on economic and monetary affairs - an experience, which may or may not assist him in Italy’s present situation.

2. Saccomanni is director general of the Bank of Italy and has in the past held posts at both the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.