Italy's elections: a left victory?
Rifondazione candidate Livio Maitan analyses the results of last rifondazione
April's parliamentary elections EVERYONE SEEMS TO THINK THAT THE April 21 elections will have unprecedented consequences. The Financial Times, usually sober in its assessments, spoke of a "historic outcome" (April 23). Alain Touraine, in a commentary appearing in the newspaper of the Italian business class, wrote that "the political reconstruction of Europe begins, once again, in Italy." (Il Sole-24 ore, April 25). Many have pointed to a parallel with the victory of Mitterand and the French Socialist Party in 1981.
Such commentaries only partially represent reality. Considering the changes that have occurred on the political chessboard during the last two years, comparisons between the current results and those of the last legislative elections are not very relevant. A confusing electoral system
The complicated Italian electoral system allocates 75% of seats in single-seat constituencies. In March 1994, this system favoured the right. This time, it time allowed the center-left to obtain a majority of seats.
The centre-left Olive Tree coalition and the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) agreed on a "mutual stand-down" policy for the single seat districts in the Chamber of Deputies, and for elections to the Senate. As a result, Olive Tree won 42.2% and the PRC 2.7% of the vote for single seat constituencies, compared to 44% for the rightwing Freedom Pole.! In the election to the 25% of seats allocated through national proportional representation, Olive Tree won 34.7% and the PRC 8.6%. The Freedom Pole won 40%. The candidates of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) won 0.9% of the vote for proportional representation seats (but up to 4% in districts where it had candidates).
The regionalist Northern League of Umberto Bossi won 10.1%, compared to 8.6% in 1994. The League is now the leading party in Venice, Friuli and a part of Lombardy.
Not only did the right lose its parliamentary majority, but the vote for the two main right forces, Forza Italia (FI) and the National Alliance (AN) declined?.
But while the Olive Tree has a majority in the Chamber and (with the PRC) ahere is neither a center-left ra center-left-plus-PRC majority
A majority sector of those bourgeois layers which have been hegemonic over the last decades has finally opted for the center-left. Their motivation? A distrust of Berlusconi, judged as too directly representing sectoral interests, politically inexperienced and often maladroit; persistent reservations regarding the AN, despite the competence and flexibility of its leader, Gianfranco Fini; the taking of outrageous positions by Berlusconi's spokespeople concerning recent judicial decisions [on corruption]; and the Freedom Pole's second thoughts about the "convergence criteria of the Maastricht Treaty.
The moderate centrist inspiration of the Olive Tree platform and the leadership role of Romano Prodi, practicing Catholic, longtime member of Christian Democracy (DC) and, for many years, a top manager of nationalised companies, have also contributed. The PDS is fully integrated into the intensifying shift toward the center. And the departing prime minister, Lamberto Dini, has given the formation his stamp of approval.
And since the conflict over social security reform (which provoked a massive mobilization of workers, but was finally adopted as a result of a government compromise with trade union bureaucrats), an additional guarantee in the eyes of the bosses is that the leaders of the three largest labor federations - the Italian General Labor Confederation (CGIL), the Italian Federation of Free Trade Unions (CISL) and the Italian Union of Labor (UIL) — had rallied to the coalition. The major financial markets seemed of the same opinion. They were "calm" before the vote, and decidedly positive afterwards.3
The new government represents an convergence of different social and political sectors: hegemonic sectors of the bourgeoisie which had always supported the centrist goverments led by Christian Democracy, (sometimes in coalition with the Socialist Party) coalition governments, major petty bourgeois layers, the traditional clientele of the center, center-left and even center-right parties, and popular layers which still represent the majority of the electorate of the PDS. They naturally accept the totality of economic and social choices fixed by the
Italy le lotte
Be le destre Maastricht Treaty, the "philosophy" of privatization and the body of international alliances symbolized by NATO. Limited success of the center-left
The relief and satisfaction that many people expressed when the results were announced are fully legitimate. If the right had succeded in winning a majority, an extremely neoliberal socioeconomic orientation would have appeared, even more aggressive toward the working class and its gains, and favoring an authoritarian, presidentialist institutional direction. The framework of a center-left government, even one visibly displaced toward the center, could in principle prove more favorable to the workers' movement, at least ensuring a respite: allowing the recomposition of the workers ranks and creating better conditions for a relaunching of the movement.
The defeat of the right marks the failure of the attempts by Berlusconi and his allies, since 1993, to build a new bourgeois leadership, to fill the space left by the crisis of the old establishment and the collapse of ChrisLivio Maitan is a leading member of the Fourth International. He was the PRC candidate in Bolzano. Translation by Michael Pearlman
International Viewpoint 3
* Italy tian Democracy. A stabilization of the regime - via "renovation" a la Berlusconi or rampant technocratic bonapartism a la Dini -is not in the cards in the near future.
The Prodi government will not have an easy job. As we have seen, it is largely the product of a very particular electoral system and not the clear victory of one force over another in the bipolar system the partisans of the abolition of proportional representation predicted. The political recomposition has not yet simplified the sitation very much and it is difficult to believe that things will radically change any time soon. It is more likely that new ruptures and new convergences will occur against a background of persistent differentiations and conflicts.
The parliamentary majority is far from clear and solid. The Prodi government, at least in the Chamber of Deputies, needs the votes of the PRC, which contested the election with a program which differed from that of the Olive Tree on almost all important points. Unless the PRC takes a sharp turn to the right, its support for an Olive Tree government will be on a case by case basis. On some questions, the Olive Tree will need