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Italian Government: Another One Bites the Dust
© Peter Weber
Page 5
May 3, 2000
The event that definitely changed the political equilibrium between the two coalitions was however the reorganization of the opposition by media-tycoon Silvio Berlusconi. Since he entered the political scene with his party Forza Italia in 1994, Mr Berlusconi has done little more than cure his own business interests, refusing all the time to resolve his obvious conflict of interests. His political achievements were therefore meek.
Challenge in the regions
This time however he succeeded in putting together a coalition able to beat the paralyzed center-left. He therefore recovered his relations with former ally Umberto Bossi of the Northern League (Lega Nord), who was the main responsible for the fall of the first Berlusconi government in 1994. After six years of rivalry leading to nothing but failure and defeat for both of them, Berlusconi and Bossi have now rebuild their alliance. In view of the regional elections in fifteen out of twenty regions the partners promised their will to press for the introduction of a strong federalism in Italy.
After this preliminary success Berlusconi personally chose his party's candidates for the fifteen regions and then asked a clear choice from all voters: with his "Freedom-Pool" for liberty and prosperity or with the "Communists" led by the unpopular prime minister for distrust, social envy and state control. Challenged that way, D'Alema did not recognize the trap and entered personally in the regional election campaign. He did it in his usual awkward manner, mocking and sneering at opponents and allies all together. Fishing for a popular legitimation for his leadership, D'Alema didn't recognize that he was only adding just another voice to the chaotic concert of party leaders haggling over the candidates. Still overconfident as ever, he forecasted that, thanks to the superior qualities of his national government, the center-left would win in ten or eleven regions out of fifteen.
Northern riches and preferences
Rarely a political forecast has missed the mark more clearly than this. On 16th April Italian voters have evidenced once again that party haggling is not the right way to win elections. Of the fifteen regions eight were won by the Freedom-Pool, only seven by the Olive-coalition.
In comparison to the poll in 1996 when the left won nine to six, Berlusconi's candidates conquered now even the regions of Liguria, Latium and Calabria. The Olive-coalition was able to turn the cards only in Campania, where the popular mayor of Naples, Antonio Bassolino (DS) had put forward his candidacy against D'Alema's will. The whole north however fell to the "Freedom-Pool" and the allied Northern League who are now supposed to put into action their projects of "regional disobeying".
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