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The year that just closed saw many Italians on a rather embarrassing spot when trying to explain to foreign observers the particular singularity of the current Italian political situation. Where does this embarrassment come from? Not from the fact that there is a center-right governing coalition that, without any notable merit, won political elections three times in the last fifteen years. This can also include a demerit of the left. But this shouldn’t be considered particularly surprising indeed. Like it or not, the European Union, with its twenty-seven member countries is an area ruled by a large majority of center-right governments. Were it only for having a center-right government, our country would be in good company. So, where does this Italian “exceptionality” come from?
If you asked French, German or Swedish nationals, to name inhabitants of just three countries which, in many ways, are among the most representative of the European Union, about being governed by center-right coalitions, they would feel hardly any embarrassment to speak of, more or less critically. In those countries alternation of political coalitions in power is part of the democratic play. Angela Merkel did not appeal to the 45 percent of Germans who voted for the SPD, the Link and the Greens. But Germany is the country where unemployment - through the contingent reduction of working time with wage compensation paid by the State - has so far remained almost stable, increasing by half of a percentage point over last year, less than in any other Western country. Sarkozy's France is the country that, overall, better than any other has faced the crisis among all industrialized countries, and today the French example is regarded as a successful model even by the Anglo-Saxon press, accustomed to consider France as a prototype of inefficiency and of European conservatism.
The actual difference cannot lie in the recurring Italian center-right governments. The actual, embarrassing and difficult to explain difference is the identification of the Italian center-right coalition with the person of Silvio Berlusconi. And he is, by natural vocation, anti-institutional, ruthlessly bent on disrupting democratic rules and on the destabilization of institutional, political and social relations. The idea that Berlusconi is what Italians actually deserve doesn’t explain this state of affairs either. Firstly, because it is an opinion unsupported by facts. At the recent European elections, Berlusconi sought a plebiscite on his leadership, abusively running throughout all of the country’s electoral districts, yet his party received only 35 percent of the vote. Mr. Berlusconi's government also reflects the alliance with the Northern League, a xenophobic party, nearly secessionist, led by reactionary populists – a party which is able to blackmail the government and to add discredit to Italy’s standing in Europe.
A common assertion is that at the origin of the drift of Italian politics, there is a conflict of interest between a very rich man (and owner of a media empire) and his function in government. There's no doubt. But even this isn’t sufficient to explain the 'exceptionality' of the Italian case. There is a second node that lies beyond Berlusconi's overbearing conflict of interest. This is a direct expression of the political perspective of his leadership. He came into politics to personally free himself from the legal entanglements hanging over his head but also cultivating a vision of comprehensive reform of politics and institutions, based on its own experience and, albeit controversial, success in the business affairs.
Over the past fifteen years Berlusconi has openly manifested not only his central aim to sidestep legal prosecution, he has also shown to ambitiously aspire to his own place in history. He wants to be remembered as the best “statesman” (as he likes to be called) of all - in the more than a century of history of the Italian state – or rather as the only Italian politician actually able to change Italy. And by change he means a harsh, all out, assault on the Italian Constitution and its democratic institutions, in order to concentrate political power at the level of the Executive and thus with the head of government, conceived as president-CEO of a large firm. On this road he has indeed moved ahead, issuing challenges, both when he was under check by a judicial order and when he was not.
It has been a mistake, from the very beginning, to underestimate his disruptive vision of politics and of institutions. When a part of the center-left opposition today says: Let's free the head of the government from the worries of judicial trials and discuss institutional reforms with his government, it persists in making a double error. The first is the enduring conviction that Berlusconi might be a normal political partner interested in a process of reform that strengthens and "modernizes" - as he says - democratic institutions. In reality, over the past fifteen years he has offered ample proof to want to upset them. In all his experiences of government, and even more so in the current one, he has relegated Parliament to the role of dumb executor of governmental edicts. He considers the President of the Republic as a substantially pleonastic power, if not an illegal one, since the people do not directly elect the President in Italy. He assails the Constitutional Court, which in all democracies, is the supreme guarantor of the separation of powers and of institutional relationships. And he leads a relentless fight against the Judiciary with the aim to reduce it to a body without a "voice", subservient only to those who can afford a legion of lawyers turned legislators and/or powerful advisors.
Despite it all, a part of the center-left opposition still nurtures the temptation to deny the lessons of experience and to obstinately start to trust, once again, in Berlusconi’s pledge to make institutional reforms. It is about the irresistible appeal of the addiction of Dostoyevsky’s Gambler. To come to the rescue of Berlusconi, in the hope to appease him, means to under-estimate the risks, and thus make two mistakes. The first is to open new divisions within the opposition – something to which unfortunately we are already accustomed. Equally serious, the second would fix the wounds that now threaten Silvio Berlusconi’s rule by neutralizing the rift currently unfolding also at the core of his coalition.
An opposition force has many extraordinary tasks and commitments to make good on in a phase of economic and social crisis, which like the current one, will strain the country for a long time to come. But today the Italian opposition is called to fulfill its role on the ground of the defense of Democracy. The job for Mr. Bersani, the newly elected secretary of the Democratic Party (PD), is not easy indeed, given the divisions within his party. Yet, now there is a new man (not new to politics) at the leadership of the largest opposition party, which in the last political elections polled a third of the national vote. The hope is that he could have the desire, the temperament and the will to avoid past mistakes and lead a serious fight against the arrogance and the menace to Italian Democracy that Mr Berlusconi truly represents.
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