Italian Government Crisis: Revenge of the Dwarves
Author: Peter WeberPublished on: Oct 30, 1998
Romano Prodi had become more than just another Christian democrat in the long list of Italian post-war prime ministers. In 28 months his Olive-coalition (center-left) had led his country from an almost hopeless financial situation to become a fully respected partner in European Currency Union. Then a coalition crisis caused by the Communists and a negative confidence vote in parliament forced him to step down. Unwilling to face new elections, the major government forces proposed an enlargement of their coalition to forces of the right center, excluding at the same time the most unreliable part of the Communist Party. New prime minister Massimo D'Alema is the first ex-communist leader to govern in a Western European country.
The circumstances of this crisis highlight the reasons for the enduring political instability in postwar Italy, a country that has seen 55 different governments in 53 years.
Finally there seemed to be an Italian prime minister to last. European leaders had learned to value his reliability in the Euro-process and citizens in the partner countries started to remember his name. "Are you still there, Romano ?" the eternal chancellor Helmut Kohl used to joke, who surely never would have thought, that their destinies could be in some way connected. But only two weeks after Kohl's electoral defeat in Germany, Prodi lost his majority in parliament and was forced to step down by just one vote missing. His government reached the second position for durability in Italian post-war history, beaten only by socialist leader Bettino Craxi's first cabinet, which resisted for almost three years between 1983 and 1986.
Under Prodi's leadership Italy seemed finally on the way to regain its political dignity. After years of corruption scandals ("Tangentopoli") that destroyed the rest of the already small reputation of Italian parties, the Prodi-experience appeared as the beginning of a new and more honest relationship between citizens and parties. In fact, Prodi had taken office with a clear mandate given to him and his Olive-coalition (L'Ulivo) by voters in the 1996 elections. The only problem was the fact that the winning center-left-coalition lacked a clear majority in one of the two chambers of parliament, which led to the necessity of asking the Communist Party lead by Fausto Bertinotti to lend their support.
Another handicap of Prodi's government was, that when he started his experience in 1996 not a single party leader of his coalition wanted to join his cabinet. This is quite normal in Italian politics, because nobody can ever say how long a cabinet will resist and therefore in Italy party leaders generally enjoy a greater prestige than ministers. Thus Massimo D'Alema, leader of the Left Democrats (Democratici di Sinistra, DS) - a party which abandoned communism in 1991 and is now the biggest party in the government coalition - preferred to engage himself in constitutional reforms and party unification. Both projects, however, were failures, mainly because of the resistance of minor parties against any reform that could diminish their power.
Despite these difficult circumstances Prodi however showed his ability and his will to resist, putting together a cabinet of great experts, first of all his minister of the Exchequer, former president of Banca d'Italia Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Under Ciampi's rule Prodi's government adopted in 1996 and 1997 two "blood, sweat and tears-budgets", that helped to reduce inflation and financial deficit to a level within the criteria of the Maastricht treaty. The fair reward for these efforts was the admission of Italy to the Euro-club in may 1998.
This positive though unexpected outcome became, however, the signal to open fire on the successful government. While party politicians like D'Alema failed to reform the constitution or even their own parties and while opposition leaders like Silvio Berlusconi (Forza Italia) were mainly occupied with legal prosecution, Prodi and his ministers had grown in their prestige, especially in the European partner states, to an extent that started to put into the shade the party leaders, who considered themselves still masters of the situation.
A first attempt to overthrow his government had shown the real power of Prodi. In autumn 1997 Communist leader Fausto Bertinotti (Rifondazione Comunista, PRC) had already withdrawn his support from the government, but then was forced by his own companions and by marching workers to move back. This year Bertinotti, a bizarre and eloquent former union leader who is proud of never having signed a single wage agreement, had learned the lesson, acting before popular protest could grow.
When Prodi and Ciampi presented their budget for 1999 he asked them to introduce measures like the assumption of 200.000 workers in the underdeveloped South and at their refusal he decided to withdraw his support in parliament. Even this time Prodi seemed to have another ace in his pockets. because the communist party president and founder Armando Cossutta refused to follow the line of the secretary. The conflict between Bertinotti, who got the support of the Trotzkist party wing, and Cossutta's Stalinists provoked a party split with most of the communists in parliament following Cossutta. At this point the numbers seemed to be sufficient to reconfirm Prodi in a new confidence vote, but with two defections in the last minute the situation became again critical.
Prodi fell just one missing vote. When he left his government seat he again showed great style and composure. But when a few days later somebody sustained, that he wasn't even able to count his supporters, he refused vigorously this definition, claiming that his first care had always been fidelity to the pact with his voters. It was clear that Prodi and his supporters pointed to new elections to renew their mandate.
The coalition leaders however didn't consider this a wise strategy. Their first interest was in fact in electing the next State president in May 1999 still with the actual majority in parliament. So they started talks with the UDR (Unione Democratica per la Repubblica), a new center party founded by the former State president Francesco Cossiga (1985-1992). This minor force had not been present in the 1996 elections, but had been formed by 70 years old Cossiga as a reaction to the "political analphabetism" of opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi, an entrepreneur with three national TV-stations, who has never learned to divide his private interests from the public one.
Because this enlargement wasn't in line with his electoral mandate, Prodi, who had been invested by State president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro for a second try, didn't quite seem the right person to guarantee such "newly defined political balance".
Prodi's opponents in this phase were D'Alema (who probably felt his last chance to come into office at the same rank as his socialist partners Blair, Schroeder and Jospin), Cossiga (who hoped to change the political balance entering the coalition as the new leader of governmental Christian democrats) and, last but not least, Franco Marini, the leader of Prodi's own party PPI (Partito Popolare Italiano), who hoped to guarantee the election of a Christian democrat as the next president of the Republic, a solution that seemed quite improbable as long as Prodi remained in office. Moreover, a new government lead by Prodi would have given him the opportunity to grow even more as a leader, while all other party politicians considered him already too big to fit in their games.
After the death of postwar leader Alcide De Gasperi (DC) in 1954 Italy has had only mediocre politicians, who have always been careful not to allow anybody to grow out of rank. The end of the Prodi government was again one of these moments that could be defined as the revenge of the dwarves, and therefore it was quite clear, that Prodi wouldn't get a second chance.
Scalfaro invested then the DS-leader Massimo D'Alema with the task of forming a new government. All previous resistance now vanished in a haze. The parties, whose greatest fear was new elections, met within a few days and D'Alema formed a new government including, as well as the Olive-coalition, Cossiga's UDR and Cossutta's new communist splinter party PDCI. The cabinet of this new ten-party-coalition grew from 20 to 25 ministers.
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.
The "Freedom Pool" opposition formed by Berlusconi's Forza Italia and his allies Gianfranco Fini, leader of the post-fascist National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN), and the center-right Christian Democrats of Pierferdinando Casini (CCD), paradoxically underlined the coherence of Romano Prodi by highlighting the fact that the new government hasn't had an electoral mandate. On the day after the confidence vote in parliament, Berlusconi, Fini and Casini gathered with hundreds of thousands of supporters in the center of Rome to ask for new elections.
The other two opposition forces are, however, definitely not of the same opinion. Weakened by the Cossutta split, Communist leader Bertinotti has promised a "constructive opposition" to this first government lead by a former Communist, which (to his "great surprise" !) has revealed itself to be even more on the right than its predecessor. Even the leader of the Northern League Umberto Bossi (Lega Nord) has given credit to D'Alema. Following a split in his party in Venice he abandoned his claim for secession and announced his desire to lead his party back to participation in government. Party games have definitely been reopened in Italian politics.
Prime minister : Massimo D'Alema (DS)
Vice President : Sergio Mattarella (PPI)
Secretary of the prime minister : Franco Bassanini (DS)
Foreign Affairs: Lamberto Dini (RI)
Exchequer and Budget : Carlo Azeglio Ciampi
Finance : Vincenzo Visco (DS)
Industry : Pier Luigi Bersani (DS)
Justice : Oliviero Diliberto (PDCI)
Home Office : Rosa Russo Jervolino (PPI)
Defense : Carlo Scognamiglio (UDR)
Transport : Tiziano Treu (RI)
Public Works : Enrico Micheli (PPI)
Foreign Commerce : Piero Fassino (DS)
Constitutional Reforms : Giuliano Amato
Culture and Sport : Giovanna Melandri (DS)
Sanity : Rosy Bindi (PPI)
Environment : Edo Ronchi (Greens)
Public Services : Angelo Piazza (SDI)
Communications : Salvatore Cardinale (UDR)
Education : Luigi Berlinguer (DS)
Scientific Research and University : Ortensio Zecchino (PPI)
Labor e Southern Affairs : Antonio Bassolino (DS)
Equal Opportunities : Laura Balbo (Greens)
Social Solidarity : Livia Turco (DS)
Agriculture : Paolo De Castro (UDR)
Relations with the Parliament : Guido Folloni (UDR)
EU-Politics : Enrico Letta (PPI)
Regional Affairs : Katia Belillo (PDCI)
D'Alema with his European colleagues Schröder, Jospin and Lafontaine (right to left).
More articles on the same subject: