The olive belt?
Catalan left heads for Big Bang
Rafael Ribó, President of the
Catalan wing of Spain's United
Left (IU) has called for the formation of a local version of Italy's centre-left "Olive Tree" coalition.
by Adam Novak
RIBO'S NEW STRATEGY WOULD BE A RADICAL departure from the United Left project
(known localy as Initiative for Catalunya -
IC). The movement's original Manifesto envisaged IC as a "wide, pluralistic sociopolitical movement." Not only an electoral coalition, like Italy's Olive Tree.
More importantly, most IC members, and voters, consider the movement to be Catalunya's only parliamentary anti-capitalist force. No-one in Italy would say that about
Olive Tree. Least of all the supporters of
Communist Refoundation (PRC), the left bloc formed by dissident Communists who rejected their party's evolution to the right in the late 1980s. Made in Italy
The nearest thing Olive Tree has to a detailed manifesto is Governe l'Italia (Governing Italy) the 1995 book written by party leader Romano Prodi. Governe l'Italia is an explicitly social-liberal response to Italy's very specific situation in the early 1990s, characterised by the rapid development of "Berlusconi-ism," and the rising popularity of the post-fascist movement of Fini and the right-wing separatists of Bossi's Northern League.
Most of Prodi's policy suggestions: privatisation, labour market reform, public health care "rationalisation," and his unwavering commitment to compliance with the Maastricht Treaty are clearly to the right of Spain's United Left, even its most moderate currents (Ribó in Barcelona and the New Left current in Madrid.)
So why is the leader of Catalunya's most left-wing parliamentary force so attracted to an Italian formation that, politically, has more in common with Spain's centre-left Socialists (PSOE), or Catalunya's own Christian-social nationalists (CiU), who have run the provincial government for 15 years, and, at the national scale, have given conditional support to whichever party has been in power in Madrid?
Presumably because Ribó is dreaming of a grand coalition of the Catalan opposition. It is true that, together, the Socialists, IC and the centre-left Catalan Republican Left (ERC) could potentially displace the bourgeois nationalists who dominate politics in Catalunya, and municipal politics outside the 'red belt round Barcelona.
The problem is that the formation of
Olive Tree in Italy is inseparable from the disintegration of B. Craxi's Socialist Party
(PSI). This enabled the former Communist
Party to slide to the right, re-inventing itself as the Party of the Democratic Left (PDS).
Unfortunately for Ribó, the centre-left in
Spanish politics is solidly represented by the PSOE of Felipe González and, in Catalunya, by both the Socialists and the Catalan Republican Left (ERC).
So, it is likely that the main dynamic in a
Catalan Olive Tree formation would be the self-liquidation of IC as a distinct, "real left" option, in exchange for a few shadow cabinet posts in a coalition led by the existing centre-left parties. Corruption
The political context is hardly the same. For instance, politicians are corrupt in both countries. But Italian corruption scandles have hit parties on both sides of the spectrum. In Spain, most of the ethical and legal "time-bombs" are linked to the last few years of the previous, Socialist Party government, defeated by the conservative Peoples Party in earlier this year. In Spain it would be hard to capitalise on popular frustrations with corruption and state terrorism in an "Olive" alliance dominated by those who, until six months ago, saw both types of crime as an inseparable part of "realistic" government.
Ribó is expected to formally present his project for approval at the upcoming conference of Initiative for Catalunya.
Paradoxically, the most visible result of his proposal so far has been are a new mood of unity-in-resistance at the left of IC, which may even lead to smaller anti-capitalist groups, including the Fourth Internationalist "Collective for an Alternative Left" finally joining the movement. * La fortaleza
OPEA
EXPULSAO
más
Europe *
Ten hours against neo-liberalism and for humanity
Vrij Universiteit Brussel (VUB),
Avenue de la Plaine, Ixelles,
Brussels, Belgium.
Saturday, January 25, 1997
• The neo-liberal disorder. Is work an "obstacle"?
Michel Husson, author of Misère du
Capital. Une critique du néolibéralisme,
Militant of AC (Acting against
Unemployment), France, and Pedro
Montes, Researcher at the Bank of
• The debt-empire strikes back
Do the World Bank and the IMF really want to cancel third world debt?
Eric Toussaint, Committee for the
Cancellation of Third World Debt
(COCAD).
• Resistances: liberation of indigenous peoples
Nellys Palomo, Chiapas, Mexico, and
Rosendo Rojas, Member of Parliament,
• Public services faced with neoliberalism
Brenda Silvera, teacher and trade union activist, Montevideo, Uruguay, Sabine
Dick, shop steward at Belgacom,
Belgium, and João Machado,
Economist, Brazil.
• The multinationals seen by "their"
workers with workers from V.W., Caterpillar, ICI,
SEAT (Barcelona).
• Africa under the structural adjustment plans
Binta Sarr, Senegal.
• Liberation of indigenous women
Nellys Palomo, Chiapas, Mexico.
• Exploitation of children at work
Michel Bonnet, France
• Rwanda: Genocide's creditors
Pierre Galand, President of CNCD, Eric
Toussaint and Ndoba Gasana
• Zapatismo v. neo-liberalism
Participation of a representative of the
Zapatistas (Mexico)
• I accuse neo-liberalism
Albert Jacquard, author of J'accuse
'Economie Triomphante, France.
• Limits to globalisation
Robert Went, Co-director of the International Institute for Research and
Education (IRE), Amsterdam, Anke
Hintjens (COCAD), and Nicholas
Hildyard, co-editor of The Ecologist,
Britain.
* CADTM, 29, Rue Plantin B-1070
Brussels, Belgium. © (+32.2) 523 4023 fax: 522 61 27 Email: cadtm@linkline.be http://www.linkline.be/users/cadtm
December 1996 #283 7