Unlike in France, regional elections in Italy have consolidated the power of the ruling party, writes PADDY AGNEW
CENTRE-RIGHT Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has proved once again that when it comes to an election, no one does it better. How else to explain the outcome of last weekend’s regional elections?
Even though the final count saw the centre-left win one more region than the centre-right, seven to six, the results represented a major success for both Berlusconi’s People Of Freedom (PDL) party and, above all, for his federalist, xenophobic ally, the Northern League.
Five years ago, in these same regional elections, the centre-left registered an overwhelming 11-2 win.
On this occasion, the centre-right managed to regain four of the regions it lost in 2005 with wins in Calabria, Campania, Lazio and Piedmont.
Little wonder Berlusconi yesterday commented: “This result is an acknowledgement of the good work done by the government.”
On paper, last weekend’s elections looked like a potential banana skin for Berlusconi and his allies. Mid-term elections in these times of global economic recession, as French president Nicolas Sarkozy recently discovered, rarely reward the sitting government. For much of the last year, too, Berlusconi has been involved in a series of personal scandals ranging from a very public and embarrassing divorce to revelations he routinely liked to invite glamorous young women to unorthodox evenings in his private residences.
He has regularly been caught in the eye of a seemingly perennial judicial storm, with allegations he bribed his British lawyer, David Mills, to commit perjury returning to haunt him. And his PDL party then botched the registration of its candidates in the Lazio region.
However, when it comes to snatching defeat from the mouth of victory, no modern political party can match the Democratic Party (PD), Italy’s biggest opposition group.
The comedian and blogger Beppe Grillo, someone prevented from contesting the PD primary elections last autumn, picked up half a million votes and four regional council seats with his largely web-created Five Star Movement.
Remarkably, though, the current PD leader, Pierluigi Bersani, yesterday suggested the weekend’s vote had not been a defeat, saying: “I’m not claiming a victory, but I wouldn’t call it a defeat.” Not many would see it that way.
The populist Northern League was certainly claiming a major victory, pointing out that its nationwide vote had gone from 8 per cent at the 2008 general election to 13 per cent. The rise of the League could yet cause problems for Berlusconi as it flexes more muscle pushing its federalist programme.
As for Berlusconi, whose active campaigning for the centre-right candidate Renata Polverini may well have swung the balance in a tight contest in Lazio, he may well interpret the result as the legitimisation of his aspirations towards a presidential style of government.