Continuity in financial politics should be guaranteed by the presence of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, still at the Exchequer. The foreign minister is still Lamberto Dini (Lista Dini). In other positions there have been many changes, Most important is the role of Naples' mayor Antonio Bassolino (DS) as labor minister and former socialist prime minister Giuliano Amato as minister for constitutional reforms.
Listening to all party leaders one of the "most urgent" issues is now a reform of the majority rule that was introduced by a referendum in 1993 and that has, thanks to a very broad interpretation, lead to an ever growing party fragmentation with now almost 40 parties in parliament.
The cause of these tendencies lies in an extremely feudalistic concept of politics that is present in Italian party structures, where democratic principles and decision making processes have been dismantled. Despite the introduction of majority rule, there are no primaries at all and candidates for national and local elections all over the country are always chosen by the leaders in Rome. As a result, however, all parties have lost a great part of their influence on social and economic development.
The proposals to resolve these difficulties never mention the real problem and often sound quite curious, like the one of Luciano Violante (DS), the president of the Chamber of Deputies, who goes on preaching that the post totalitarian parties, post-fascists and post-communists, need to legitimize each other - as if legitimization by democratic election did not exist. Francesco Cossiga took up these arguments, saying that with D'Alema as prime minister the cold war had now definitely come to an end.
Cossiga's UDR is itself a good example of the application of these strange principles. At the elections two years ago this party didn't even exist and the parliamentary group was formed by renegades from other parties. This party without the consensus of voters, however, entered now the new cabinet with three ministers, among them the defense minister Carlo Scognamiglio and the minister for telecommunications Salvatore Cardinale.
Due to Cossiga, this latter ministry should be used for a redefinition of the law on conflict of interests, and this can be seen as a clear declaration of war against opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi. Cossiga believes that Berlusconi is an obstacle to the resurrection of the Italian right and therefore he is trying to put together a new center coalition, that could become the real alternative to the Left Democrats of D'Alema.
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