ITALY:Electoral reform might be a first step towards political stability, writes Paddy Agnew, in Rome
For the 61st time since the second World War, Italians woke up yesterday to a fallen government and an uncertain political future. Following the defeat of prime minister Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition government in the Senate on Thursday night, Italians yet again find themselves faced with either an early general election or a short-term, interim government.
Even if many commentators are agreed that, given both the current domestic and international economic climates, a political crisis is the last thing Italy needs right now, at least one man was looking on the bright side last night. Centre-right opposition leader and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi called for immediate elections, saying: "Now as quickly as possible, we need to give Italians a government that works." The re-found bounce in Berlusconi's step is understandable. Opinion polls suggest that Italy's richest man would romp home if elections were held tomorrow. Italians, however, are entitled to question just how a government led by Berlusconi, or indeed anyone else, might "work".
Whichever solution state president Giorgio Napolitano opts for after a round of consultations between now and next Tuesday many believe it will matter little because neither is likely to guarantee a government that can seriously tackle Italy's chronic socio-economic problems. A survey released this week by research body Eurispes showed that only 14.1 per cent of Italians had any faith in political parties.
Had that survey been carried out after the Thursday night debate which saw Prodi defeated, the parties would probably have fared a great deal worse. Dinner time in many Italian households was marked by the unseemly sight of senator Nuccio Cusumano being so violently attacked by a party colleague that he collapsed on the floor before being carried out of parliament.
Cusumano's offence had been to declare that he would vote for Prodi. He is a member of the ex-Christian Democrat UDEUR party led by former justice minister Clemente Mastella, the party which provoked the Prodi downfall by withdrawing its support from his nine-party coalition. His decision not to tow the line prompted party whip Tommaso Barbato to rush at him, gesticulating wildly, calling him "a piece of shit", "a dirty queer" and then spitting at him. All of this edifying parliamentary exchange, of course, went out on live TV.
In many ways the UDEUR exemplifies the unresolved problems facing Italy. How come a party with just 1.4 per cent of the vote and only three out of 317 votes can decide the government's fate? Many, including Prodi, point the finger at the current electoral law introduced by Berlusconi, legislation that lowered the threshold by introducing a proportional representational vote that saw 24 different parties win seats in the 2006 election.
Prodi himself ended up with a nine-party coalition government that staggered from crisis to crisis as he tried to hold together a rattle bag of political opinions that ranged from middle of the road Catholics to unrepentant communists and Marxists. "The first thing Italy needs now is an electoral reform in order to cancel the system introduced by Berlusconi, as an act of sabotage when he realised he was going to lose power," said former Danish prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen yesterday.
For the time being, however, Berlusconi and many members of his centre-right coalition are unwilling to consider the idea, allegedly much favoured by Napolitano, of an interim government that would oversee normal business, enact electoral reform and then call an election.
Napolitano's position last night received the backing of Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, president of Fiat and of Confindustria, the confederation of Italian industry. However, referring to the recent court judgment which saw the president of the Region of Sicily, Toto Cuffaro, sentenced to five years for favouring the mafia, Montezemolo struck a pessimistic note regarding the future:
"While industrialists in Sicily are busy battling against racketeering, the president of Sicily gets a five-year sentence and yet decides to stay at his job. These are the two faces of the country and the reflection of the ever greater distance between the ruling class and the real country."