The "machiavellian" course of the new Democratic Party's leader and new-nominated Prime Minister. Ambitions and contradictions.
It is said that an old Pravda correspondent in Rome , finding surprising and unpredictable the Italian politics, was used to say that politics in Moscow took place within the secret precincts of the CPSU; however, everything was clear , while in Rome , politics took place in the light of the sun, but it was difficult to unravel its true meaning, and what was actually going on.
I think the past year any foreign correspondent in Rome has been found in the same situation. It was difficult, on the base of a reasonable political analysis, to predict that Matteo Renzi, Mayor of Florence, harshly beaten by the Party Secretary Bersani in the primaries of November 2012, would have taken over, in the short space of a year, the Democratic Party and replaced Enrico Letta, as prime minister.
It can be said that Renzi, whose major consideration stemmed from his young age, has meanwhile proved to be a politician endowed with intelligence, timing, tactical skills, and that essential flair that, within a communication society, is taken as “charisma”. Qualities that had apparently been underestimated.
However, in the politics, as in the ordinary life of individuals, these qualities are not enough to achieve success, if the circumstances - those that the great Florentine Niccolò called " fortune " - do not play a helpful key role. In fact, a set of circumstances have clearly paved the way to the mayor of Florence. The Democratic Party had become a defenseless castle , with a drawbridge lowered , ready to be, ready to be taken without encountering significant obstacles.
To begin with, the Democrats Secretary Pierluigi Bersani, got a frustrating record in the election of February 2013, followed by the humiliation of being compelled to form a government - the Larghe Intese -based on the alliance with the Party of Liberties, whose old leader Silvio Berlusconi had been convicted of infamous crimes, and was close to “disqualification” from any public office. The militants of the Democratic Party felt themselves without compass and ready to take on a potential leader coming from outside the old oligarchy.
It was in this context that Mr Renzi found the way open to control the Party, as premise for the candidacy to the premiership, taking the place of Enrico Letta, whose government was evanescent and ineffective , faced by the worsening of the economic and social crisis. Thus, the destabilization of the PD and of Government became the cluster of the circumstances – the Machiavellian "fortune"- that cleared the way for the rise of the young mayor of Florence, even though he had not any experience of the national political business.
According to the recipe of the unpredictability of Italian politics, you should refrain from advancing prophecies about what will happen in the coming months or even years, if it would actually be carried out the Mr Renzi's ambitious project of a government lasting the whole legislature, until 2018. But prudence does not prevent us from looking at the present and the near future with due disenchantment.
Indeed, the new Renzi’s government will sail in the same waters that sank Enrico Letta, but with a main variable . Until now, the task of the electoral and constitutional reform, that is the flagship of his policy, was directly taken on by Renzi as secretary of the party, while the government was delegated to Mr Letta. Now, Renzi must simultaneously manage a double majority: one needed to implement the institutional reforms with the partnership of Berlusconi; the other one needed to conduct the government business with Angelino Alfano, as vice-premier and head of the New Right Party, born from the split of the Berlusconi’s Party of Liberties. Well, two majorities with opposed interests.
Let’s consider this intriguing situation . It is a matter of fact that the electoral reform, agreed with Mr Renzi, is vital for Berlusconi. It establishes a very high threshold to enter the parliament . As it provides the absolute majority of the seats to the winning coalition ,it obliges, if they don’t want disappear, all the right wing fractured segments to aggregate again under the mantle of Forza Italia, the renewed Mr Berlusconi’s personal party.
So, if he would win the election – which is not impossible- we would see a gentleman who, even though ineligible and disqualified from public offices, would be at the head of an army of MPs directly appointed, and therefore able to designate not only the Prime Minister, but also the President of the Republic. That would be the apotheosis of " governability ", under the absolute control of the pluri-convicted old leader.
Of course, for Mr Alfano, at the helm of the new Center-right party, and essential for the majority of the Renzi Government, the opposite is true. He will try to delay the electoral reform in order, if it is the case, to go to the polls with the proportional system, stemming from the recent sentence of the Constitutional Court.
So, on one hand, Mr Renzi needs the consensus of Berlusconi, head of the opposition, in order to implement the jointly engineered reform - both pointing out to the conquest of the absolute majority, provided by the reform, for the party/coalition reaching 37 per cent of votes!). On the other hand, Mr Renzi has obliged to try to carry on the majority with Mr Alfano for the continuity of the government. Indeed, an acrobatic exercise for the new head of government between two conflicting majorities, each one essential to implement the two faces of his platform.
It may be that the electoral reform is going to be kept on hold, waiting for the linked constitutional changes that will need a longer time. What, instead, cannot tolerate delays is the sad economic and social condition in the country, plagued by the longest post-war recession, with the unemployment rate doubled compared to the beginning of the crisis, and still bound to rise.
In effect, as it is generally recognized, the eurozone has failed the austerity policy. The only visible outcome has been a deep recession, the skyrocketing growth of the unemployment (more than 25 per cent of the labor force in Greece and Spain), along with the general increase of the sovereign debt. In this framework, the ECB monetary policy, based on low interest rates, has avoided the risk of a sudden collapse of the euro, but has not delivered the pick up of the economy .
Unlikely the Federal Reserve, which has provided a huge amount of credit to the economy through the quantity easing, and will continue to do it, possibly with greater force if necessary , under the new presidency of Janet Yellen, Mario Draghi, Mario Draghi, ECB President, is forbidden to do it for statutory reasons, or so states the European mantra, and, in any case, for the opposition of the Bundesbank and the German Constitutional Court and, ultimately, for the resistance of the German Government.
Notwithstanding the austerity’s failure, it is worth to take into account that, starting with 2015, Italy will be obliged to match to the Fiscal compact, that imposes the reduction of the current sovereign debt from more than 130 percent to 60 percent of the GDP over the next 20 years. That is, an absurd perpetuation and aggravation of the current austerity that would entail a budgetary surplus of of more than 50 billion of euro yearly, beyond the payment of around 90 billion of interest on the pre-existing debt.
The task for a functional government should be to use a sum of this magnitude to cut taxes and boost public investment in infrastructure, research , education, support to manufacturing, improvement of advanced services, environmental protection and maintenance of the cities, both subjected to a relentless decay. A policy, that boosting investment and acting as a multiplier on consumption, would result in a sustained and lasting growth of GDP, so giving room to an automatic reduction of the sovereign debt in relation to the GDP.
Unfortunately, this risks staying as wishful thinking. The European harmful austerity’s policy, is dominated by the arrogant Brussels’ oligarchy, backed by Berlin. And is not an accident that the newly appointed Treasure Minister is Pier Carlo Padoan, the former economic advisor of the D’Alema center-left government at the end of Nineties, who served until recently as chief economist and vice secretary general of OECD: a nominee clearly supported by the ECB and the European Commission.
The new government will have the privilege of chairing the European Semester starting in July . It should be a favorable circumstance and an opportunity not to be missed to put forward a radical change of policy in the eurozone, working in direction of a broad alliance with the Mediterranean countries, and with France, which risks becoming, after Italy, the new austerity' s scapegoat of the Berlin –Brussels consensus
Some economic analysts hope that he can obtain the consensus of Brussels to exceed the threshold of the three per cent of budget deficit, aimed to allow a push on public investments. But also this concession would be little more than symbolic, hovering around few decimals; and, in any case, only after accepting the endless requests for structural reforms, compulsively centered on the growing labor market liberalization, the cut of public spending, and further privatizations.
A program that hardly is going to change the gloomy economic and social prospects in a country that is already paid a huge tribute to the incredible European policy. Ultimately, a sort of irrational policy in coping with the crisis that coul be rather compared to that characterize the Republican Party in the US.
* A previous Italian version is in www.eguaglianzaeliberta.it [1] .