Doomsday

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

VALERIO VOLPI e-mail: vvolpi77@yahoo.it

Doomsday. I could not find a different term to define the events that took place between 13 and 14 April, 2008.

I guess there has been some (or perhaps a lot) of talk in the rest of the world about Italians going to the polls one more time (the last was two years ago) to elect a new Parliament, and, consequently, a new government, the sixty-second in 60 years of Republican history. The outgoing Romano Prodi government, in charge since 2006, collapsed after only two years, killed by its inherent contradictions. Today’s electoral outcome is largely the result of such contradictions.

Now, to make a long story short, of the many contesting parties, only six were likely to win at least one seat:

· the Democratic Party (PD), resulting from the unification of the Democrats of the Left (mainly consisting of former Communists) and the “Margherita” (“daisy”, like the flower, consisting of more progressive Catholics) and led by Rome’s former mayor, Walter Veltroni, a big fan of Barack Obama and John Kennedy’s, backed by American movie star George Clooney;

· PD’s ally “Italia dei Valori” (IDV), led by former prosecutor Antonio di Pietro, hero (or, in the opinion of many, villain) of the so called “Mani Pulite” (Clean Hands) age, when a group of prosecutors challenged the entrenched corruption of the Italian political system;

· the electoral cartel Popolo delle Libertà (PDL, Freedom People) led by Silvio Berlusconi, made up of Forza Italia (Berlusconi’s party) and Alleanza Nazionale (former foreign minister Gianfranco Fini’s party);

· Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord (LN, Northern League), allied to PDL, whose strongholds are in the Northern part of Italy;

· Pierferdinando Casini’s l’Unione di Centro (UDC), formely allied with Berlusconi, defender of Catholic values and morality: so much so, that last July one of its deputies, Cosimo Mele, was discovered to have enjoyed one entire night partying and sniffing cocaine with two prostitutes, while his pregnant wife was waiting for him at home, and the story became public just because one of the girls had OD’d and had to be hospitalized; so much so, that Sicily’s former President, Salvatore Cuffaro, better known as “Vasa-vasa” (Kiss-kiss, in Sicilian dialect, due to his habit of kissing everybody), who had been forced to resign after being sentenced to five years in jail for abetting the mafia, and was photographed while celebrating the “light” sentence with a bunch of cannoli, a typical Sicilian pastry: he was obviously the candidate leading the UDC list for the Senate in Sicily, and got elected: great job, Pierferdinando!;

· The Socialist Party (PS), which has refused to join PD;

· la Destra (the Right), made up of Fascists who had left Alleanza Nazionale, plus more tiny extreme-Right groups; and,

· Sinistra-l’Arcobaleno (Left-the Rainbow, SA), consisting of Italy’s two main Communist parties (I am not quite sure how many there are ...), the Green Party, and Sinistra Democratica, the left wing of the former Democrats of the Left, who have refused to join PD.

In Italy, dozens of parties have traditionally competed in the electoral arena, resulting in the atomizing of political representation. In the past, Christian Democrats would normally be the pivot of any majority, by means of alliances with other parties, big or small, to its left or right or both ways. Such parties, especially the smaller ones, would continuously blackmail the rest of the coalition by making demands out of proportion to their real electoral weight, actions resulting in continous power shifts and majority changes. To simplify, the situation resembled that of France’s third and fourth Republic. Thus, when the political system collapsed at the beginning of the ‘90s after the “Tangentopoli” (literally, Kickback town) scandals, the Christian Democrats, the Socialists and other traditional parties were practically erased. The blame was almost unanimously cast on proportional representation. Therefore, after a couple of popular referenda, the voting rules were changed and the so-called “Mattarellum”, as dubbed by political scientist Giovanni Sartori (that is the latinization of Sergio Mattarella, his main drafter), was passed by Parliament: its main features, 75 per cent of seats allotted through first-past-the-post, and 25 per cent through proportional vote. This new electoral law, which stimulated the creation of wide electoral alliances, seemed to be pushing Italy towards a two-coalition system, though unsteady, as the only government actually capable of lasting five years (the maximum duration of a parliamentary term) has been Berlusconi’s, from 2001 to 2006. And the Prodi government’s fall has shown its limits.

First of all, the unsolved question of the electoral system: right before the 2006 election the “Mattarellum” was changed by the Berlusconi majority, by then sure of its own oncoming defeat, obviously without the opposition’s involvement (involving the opposition should be the rule, when you are dealing with the rules of the game), and the new formula was devised to “poison the well”, that is, to make it more difficult to obtain a majority in both Houses of Parliament. However, much to the chagrin of Berlusconi, his allies and his supporters, post-election studies in 2006 discovered that the Center-right would have won with the old electoral law.

Now, the new law was dubbed by one of his creators, former Reform Minister Roberto Calderoli, one of LN top members, a “porcata” (pigswill). Thus, this law is generally known now as “porcellum”, the latinization of the word “porcello”, piglet, after Calderoli’s remark. It should be noted that this is the same Calderoli who one night sparked street riots in front of the Italian consulate in Bengasi, Lybia, with eleven people dead, many wounded, and countless cars burnt down, by showing up on a live TV show with a T-shirt depicting one of the controversial Mohammed caricatures, previously published on Danish newspapers. And it is the same Calderoli who, in order to prevent the building of a mosque in the city of Bologna, stated that he would make one of his pigs walk on the construction ground, apparently believing such an act would desecrate it. I guess that proved nothing more than Calderoli’s familiarity with pigs.

Briefly, “porcellum” works this way: the vote is proportional; parties present blocked lists of candidates, that is, voters cannot express any preference; at the House, a coalition needs to pass a 10 per cent threshold, a party within a coalition a 2 per cent one, and for a party going it alone the threshold will be 4 per cent, and whatever coalition wins the majority of votes will also get a substantial majority prize, so that it may reach 340 deputies; at the Senate, the mechanism is different: the threshold is on a regional level, and it is 20 per cent for a coalition, 3 per cent for a party within a coalition, and 8 per cent for parties going it alone, and the majority prize is on a regional level as well. Thanks to such differences, there might be a majority at the House and a different one at the Senate (even though Berlusconi this time got a wide majority in both Houses); or, the majority at the Senate might be very thin, as in Prodi’s case, as his coalition consisted of 159 senators against 156 of the opposition. Furthermore, one of the majority senators, Sergio De Gregorio, made a deal with the opposition and left the coalition right away in exchange for the chairmanship of the Defense Committee, which was supposed to be conferred upon Communist ex partisan and pacifist Lidia Menapace; two Communist senators, Sergio Turigliatto and Fernando Rossi, got expelled from their parties (Rifondazione Comunista and PDCI) after abstaining, on 21 February 2007, on a foreign policy government motion confirming Italy’s commitment in the Afghan war, an act that forced Prodi to resign (he was eventually reappointed after that episode); and one of the senators elected in South America, Luigi Pallaro, would not always guarantee his votes. For such reasons, Prodi often had to avail himself of the votes of those “senators for life”, that is, former Presidents of the Italian Republic, who automatically become members of the Senate as soon as their term ends, and people appointed by the President for particular merits (think, for example, of Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi Montalcini), amidst the opposition’s howls, probably oblivious of the fact that Berlusconi back in 1994 owed the existence of his first government to the votes of Senators for life.

Now, Berlusconi. If I were to tell you in detail about

· his conflicts of interests;

· his relationship with the mafia;

· his thousands of gaffes, like when he claimed during an interview with the London Spectator that Mussolini had never killed anybody and that by interning his opponents he was actually offering them a vacation;

· his thousands of poor, disgraceful shows, in Italy but especially abroad, as when, during an informal EU meeting in Spain, in February 2002, he extended the first and fourth fingers over the head of Spanish foreign minister Josep Pique during the ritual picture; or when in July 2003, during the opening of Italy’s semester of EU presidency (the EU presidency rotates every six months, following member states’ alphabetical order), after being questioned by German Socialist deputy Martin Schultz on his conflict of interests, he replied: “Mr. Schulz, I know of a movie director currently shooting a film in Italy about Nazi concentration camps: I will propose you for the role of kapo. You would be perfect”, to then call Euro MPs “turisti della democrazia” (I think there is no need to translate this one); or when in June 2005 Berlusconi claimed that the renunciation of Finnish claims to hosting the newborn European authority on food safety, and its consequent awarding to Italy, was the result of his skills as a playboy and his courting of Finnish President Tarja Halonen: the Italian ambassador in Helsinki was eventually summoned by the Finnish government, as it might be that in more civilized countries sexist jokes are hardly tolerated);

· his thousands of lies;

· his thousands of unfulfilled promises: one example was his hilarious “Contract with the Italians”, apparently inspired by Newt Gingrich’s Contract wth America, presented on national State TV, obviously without any opposing politician around, when he promised that he would not run again should he not be able to achieve at least four of the five goals there outlined: of course, he accomplished none, not even one, but he is still around;

· the laws passed by his majority to save him from prosecutions and trials and legally and economically favor his firms;

· the capable journalists kicked out of RAI, the State TV, and replaced by inept lackeys: among the victims, Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro, two of Italy’s finest and most loved journalists, especially the former, who received his dismissal notice through a certified mail letter, after working at RAI for decades;

· the economic disaster caused by his government: according to data from the Italian Central Bank, the country’s public debt increased again towards 110 per cent of GDP in 2005, after falling constantly for years; the primary surplus (that is, what is left before paying off the debt), which was 5.6 per cent of GDP in 2001, dropped to 0.6 per cent in 2005; the deficit/GDP ratio went up to 4.1 per cent in 2005 from 3.2 per cent in 2001 (the EU Stability Pact requires Member States not to exceed 3 per cent). Thanks to this situation Italy was constantly reprimanded by the European Union, almost on a daily basis, for five, very long years;

· Italians getting poorer and poorer, and Berlusconi and his cronies getting richer and richer;

· several individuals indicted and even convicted for very serious crimes being confirmed on party lists for public offices (mostly within his party and coalition). I would say that having a clean criminal record represents a handicap, rather than advantage, if one wants to pursue a political career in Italy nowadays;

· parliamentary committees of inquiry set up to destroy political opponents, by accusing them, for example, of taking kickbacks or having been KGB collaborators, through the hearing of “reliable” witnesses, that is notorious crooks and conmen, including a mythomaniacal self-proclaimed Polish count, guardian of the Holy Sepulchre and vice-chairman of the Vatican bank, already involved in several cases of fraud, whose real job was unloading cases at Brescia’s fruit and vegetable market. The evidence introduced by these “witnesses” was so outrageously false that it led nowhere;

· and so much more, which could certainly not be summarized here.

Books may be written, and many have, some of which absolutely hilarious, about the man who, by quoting famous investigative journalist Marco Travaglio, “has been fooling Italians for the past 12 years: Napoleon Berlusconi”, dubbed that way, undoubtedly, out of the man’s unstoppable delusions of grandeur (by the way, Travaglio is one of those people who disappeared from State TV during the five years of Berlusconi’s regime).

Now, it should come as no surprise that Silvio Berlusconi represents a massive threat to democracy. A man who owns basically everything, from soccer teams to publishing firms, from land to insurance companies, but most of all a man who owns private TV channels and newspapers and controls RAI: during his five years’ reign, he broke the unofficial agreement under which the spoils of RAI, to be carved up between parties, should be unequally divided between the majority (two channels) and the opposition (one channel), as he took everything and packed State TV with incompetent toadies, thus controlling, even during his two years at the opposition, 90 per cent of the Italian media; a man who uses his media to brainwash the people (not even Orwell would have been able to conceive some of Berlusconi’s pre-electoral TV ads in past years); a man who defines the “equal opportunity law”, a set of feeble rules aimed at counterbalancing Berlusconi’s preponderance in the media, “illiberal” and “democracy-killer”; a man who picks journalists and questions before a press conference or a TV show; a man who never conceded defeat two years ago, has been speaking of rigged elections until now, without a shred of evidence, even though the imposed recounting of large samples of ballot papers has completely belied Berlusconi’s claims (there has been a lot of speculation, and even a documentary shot by journalist Enrico Deaglio, that Berlusconi might have actually been the one trying to rig the 2006 election, as data mysteriously stopped flowing from Berlusconi-controlled Ministry of Interiors during election night, Interior Minister Pisanu left the building during the counting to have a night meeting with Berlusconi, and the number of blank ballot papers enormously dropped if compared with previous elections, thus reducing the enormous advantage that Prodi’s coalition had earlier in the day); a man who will not accept a public debate with his opponents; a man who shows his contempt for the rest of the world, whether it is the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano or the beggar on the streets: when questioned by a young female student, a few days before the 2008 election, on how to solve the problem of job insecurity, his response was: “You could either marry my son or a millionaire”; a man who accuses critics of either being anti-Italian, as the object of criticism is the leader of the government democratically elected by the Italian people (which did not prevent him from criticizing the Prodi government basically every day … oh well, I forgot, the election had been rigged …), or a Communist: even The Economist, which could be hardly defined as the Bolshevik party’s house organ, was dubbed “The Ecommunist”, after a couple of poisonous articles on him; a man who, during a press conference with Vladimir Putin in Sardinia, a few days after the latest election, raised his fingers, mimicked a machine gun, aimed at a Russian journalist who had just asked Putin a question about the credibility of rumors concerning his divorce, and said: “Pum! Pum!”, a pretty insensitive joke if you think that dozens of journalists have been murdered in Russia since Putin’s rise to power, that in most cases no culprit has been found, and that the involvement of the Putin Administration in the murders cannot be excluded with full certainty; with a man like this, such a master of gaffes and deceit, a real pro who would make Bush and his cronies pale in comparison and look like amateurs, what sort of guarantee could we have that he will put general interests ahead of his own? We have none, and experience tells us that there is no hope he will ever do. However, the Center-Left had years to solve the problem, but did not have the guts to do it. On the contrary, they helped Berlusconi whenever he was in trouble. I will try and summarize.

The first Prodi government, elected in 1996, did nothing. When Massimo D’Alema replaced him on 21 October 1998, Berlusconi was politically dead. Therefore, D’Alema had the brilliant idea of resurrecting him by setting up the Bicameral Committee for constitutional reforms, which gave Berlusconi an aura of statesmanship. Obviously, as soon as Berlusconi realized that the thing he cared about the most, the rigid separation between prosecutors and judges (in Italy both categories belong to the Bench, and enjoy the same guarantees of independence), the first step towards prosecutors’ subjugation to the executive power, he torpedoed the whole thing, including all of the other possible reforms. D’Alema was then replaced by Giuliano Amato, Bettino Craxi’s former heir apparent, after the Left had won seven regions and lost eight in April 2000 regional elections (when the Center-Left won twelve regions out of fourteen in 2005, Berlusconi obviously did not believe it appropriate to resign). Nothing happened during Amato’s brief tenure.

The presence of three different Prime Ministers in five years was certainly one of the reasons that led to the defeat of 2001. Center-Left politicians have usually found it hard to understand that progressive electors are sick and tired of their representatives fighting one another all the time, more or less secretly conspiring in order to gain power to the detriment of other party members and comrades, saying one thing in the morning to then be repudiated by somebody else in the afternoon. Animated, sometimes harsh discussions are a necessary part of a democratic party’s life; but so is transparency, on the one hand, and clarity of ideas, on the other. Discuss, make a definitive decision, and then let ONLY ONE person explain it to the people: is that too much to ask? The Left has never got it, unfortunately, and quarrelsomeness is one of the reasons why Berlusconi almost managed to be reconfirmed in 2006, though his government had caused some of the worst disasters in the history of the Italian republic. Not that Berlusconi’s coalition was not quarrelsome and chaotic, but the leader’s figure, his phony smile and his massive propaganda machinery were a pretty efficient buffer against the sorrows of reality. Prodi did not have such an advantage, and the problems of his coalition, ranging from Rifondazione Comunista on the far Left to hyper-centrists Lamberto Dini and Clemente Mastella on the Right, where all too evident, beginning with the dozens of different interpretations given to the often mystifying, 281-pages long electoral manifesto.

It is undeniable that the Prodi government obtained a few good results, especially with regard to the balancing of Italy’s disastrous finances, and the struggle against tax evasion, a real calamity in a country where the sum of resources withheld from public coffers reaches an astounding 100 billion euros per year, amounting to about 7 per cent of GDP, that is nearly what is annually spent on health care. Other important actions have been the signing of the legislative decree on security in the workplace on 1 April 2008, which innovates legislation and tries to check the endless stream of industrial deaths resulting from the extremely frequent disregard for the most basic safety rules, with 5,253 casualties between 2003 and 2006; and a batch of liberalizations aimed at increasing the power of customers as opposed to banks and businesses and the enhancement of certain services, as in the case, for instance, of taxi licenses (however, a lot more could have been done here, and the government’s action was certainly restrained by the fear of category protests, as in the case of the strike staged by taxi drivers, who, by the way, represent a very conservative part of society). The Prodi government also definitely managed to improve Italy’s international reputation, spoiled by five years of bad jokes, gaffes and back slapping, in addition to the disgraceful decision to dispatch troops to Iraq, with an overwhelming majority of Italians opposed to the invasion, just to allow Berlusconi to get an invitation to Ranch Crawford and play the important guy, even though he had not been invited to the summit between Bush, Blair and Aznar that took place in the Azorres on 16 March 2003, four days before the beginning of the invasion (and it should also be noted that Berlusconi changed his mind on this issue about 100 times in a few months, and even stated, clearly undaunted by the prospect of becoming an object of ridicule, that, before any attack on Iraq, Bush would first consult him, and that he would convince Bush not to attack thanks to his moral authority): in particular, noteworthy and appreciated by progressive voters was Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema’s “equicloseness policy” between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the frequent criticism of the former’s actions, after five years of supine uncritical acceptance of US and Israeli policies in the Middle East.

However, what was missing in the former government’s action was the resolute pursuit of those more tangible results the common people are interested in, a fact that doomed the Left, which basically abided by each and every Centrist diktat, and at times even appeared to support certain stances. It is commonly said that Italians reason with their bellies, rather than with their heads. Thus, since the tax rate on financial rents amounts to 12.5 per cent in Italy, whereas it is no less than 20 per cent in the rest of Europe, why keep postponing the equalization, and not use the accruing revenues, together with the funds obtained through the fight against tax evasion, to decrease the tax rate on the lower incomes, reducing it from 23 per cent to 20 per cent, this way creating consent among the vast majority of the population and stimulating consumption? However, such steps, repeatedly insisted upon by the Left, were never taken.

The Prodi government, though its electoral manifesto promised the opposite, preferred to increase military spending (we spend more than Germany on a per capita basis, and are the eighth country in the world for military budget, with an annual expense of some 30 billion US dollars, buy new aircraft carriers and planes, keep troops in Afghanistan and say yes to the extension of US military facilities in Vicenza, all of which was accepted by the Left out of a feeling of “coalition duty”. The Prodi government was not courageous enough to push for the passage of another of the actions promised in the electoral manifesto, that is, civil unions, because of Catholic Church diktats. The Prodi government, in spite of what promised in the electoral manifesto, did not repeal some of the Right’s worst laws: for example, the Giovanardi-Fini law on drugs, which makes it possible to be arrested for being in possession of even a single joint; the Bossi-Fini law on immigration, which, by eliminating “sponsors” and relying on repression and expulsion, has paved the way for massive illegal immigration; and all the so called “shame-laws”, rammed through Parliament for the sake of Berlusconi and his cronies and the good economic health of his firms. The Prodi government also promoted the indulto (pardon), which requires a 2/3 vote in each House and, though aiming at decreasing the unbearable number of inmates in the Italian prison system, was nevertheless directed not just at those poor devils languishing in jail for stealing a sandwich, but was extended to those guilty of financial crimes, tax-evasion, taking bribes, violation of rules on safety at the workplace and consequent injuries or deaths of workers, etc., which was a move intended to get Berlusconi and his henchmen to support the action (however, it should be noted that those guilty of such crimes hardly ever go to jail, and the extension was needed to prevent any risk of future imprisonment …). The Prodi government sparked, together with the opposition, controversies over wiretapping, whose use by investigators and prosecutors has been very important in helping to discover some of the worst frauds in Italian history, which the Prodi government wanted to limit as much as to making them useless, just because some politicians had recently been involved, Center-Left ones as well. Justice Minister Clemente Mastella hindered the request of Italian prosecutors to the US for the extradition of those CIA agents involved in the kidnapping of Egyptian mullah Abu Omar in Milan, who was then renditioned to a secret prison in Egypt where he was tortured for months. The Prodi government failed once more to solve the anomaly of Berlusconi’s conflicts of interests once and for all, thus leaving Italy in the hands of a monopolist no different, and I would say worse, than Thai media tycoon Shinawatra. The Prodi government paid for the trash disaster in Naples, even if not directly involved.

I would also like to mention one more thing. The Prodi government, except for a paltry reduction in government members’ salaries, did not seriously tackle the issue of the squandering of public money, especially the flow of cash ending up inside the pockets of elected politicians, which makes them a privileged “caste”, “La Casta”, which is also the title of a best-seller by journalists Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella, where interesting data can be found: for example, an Italian MP makes almost 12,000 euros per month, plus some 4,000 for daily allowance, plus another 4,000 for aides, plus free travelling on trains, planes, buses etc.; European MPs are paid by their own EU Member State, and therefore Italians are the most paid of all, with 149,215 euros per year, whereas German, British, Dutch, French, Spanish and Hungarian MPs make 84,108; 82,380; 66,782; 63,093; 39,463; 10,080 euros respectively. Now, it is true that Leftist MPs give no less than 50 percent of their salary to their party. However, what would you say if you were a factory worker making 1,200 euros per month, or a call-center employee making 500 euros per month with a one-year contract, and saw your representatives, claiming to have been elected to protect and improve the standard of living of the working class, voting unanimously with the Right to further raise their wages, while talking about economic justice at the same time?

In the end, we can say that the Prodi government largely disappointed its voters. It is true that it lasted only two years, but it is also true that so many of its actions broke those promises made in the electoral manifesto, which was urned into toilet paper a few days after the election. It certainly was not the Left’s fault, but, rather, the work of Centrists, Clemente Mastella and Lamberto Dini above all, who scuttled the Prodi government while throwing the blame on the Left, accused of obstructing the executive’s work, a mantra adopted by Veltroni as well in order to justify his claims that PD should go it alone without the Left, though that did not prevent him from allying with IDV and the Radicals. It would be interesting to note that the Radicals have absolutely nothing in common with the rest of the coalition, as they are stalwart enemies of the Catholic Church, favoring euthanasia, the right to abortion, soft drug consumption, and civil unions, and are extremely pro-business and pro-America, even more than Veltroni himself.

Veltroni. Like his party colleague, D’Alema, he has managed to resurrect Berlusconi, who was at loggerheads with most of his former allies and on his way to retirement, by trying to involve him in a deal for reforms, in particular of the electoral law. Obviously, Berlusconi feigned interest but then torpedoed the whole thing, as it did not tie in with his personal interests. Furthermore, Veltroni refused an electoral alliance with SA, pushed the “useful vote” mantra, and accused Bertinotti, the SA candidate, of being like Ralph Nader. So, while Berlusconi dragged in anybody and anything in his coalition, Veltroni claimed he would not, he eventually did, left SA out, and lost. Great job!

The outcome was dramatic for SA. In 2006, with an electoral turnout of 83.61 per cent of voters, the sum of the four parties exceeded 10% at the House and 11% at the Senate (a precise computation of votes is impossible as Sinistra Democratica was at the time part of the Democrats of the Left), with 2,229,464 votes for Rifondazione Comunista; 884,127 for PDCI; 784,803 for the Greens, exceeding, if we also take Sinistra Democratica into account, 4 million votes. The same was true of the Senate, where Rifondazione Comunista got 2,518,624 votes and PDCI and the Greens (forming a single list) got 1,423,226 votes.

Now, if we take into consideration the so-called “useful vote” for PD, directed at preventing Berlusconi’s victory, 6-7 per cent of votes going to SA would have been a reasonable estimate. However, in 2008, with an electoral turnout of about 80,50 per cent, valid votes suffered a 4.5 per cent decrease, equivalent to some 1.7 million fewer votes, according to the Istituto Cattaneo. Berlusconi’s coalition massively increased its ballot percentage and won a wider number of votes, enjoying a 1.5 million growth, mostly in favor of LN, which basically doubled its size, boosting its paltry 4.479 per cent in 2006 to about 8 per cent, with peaks of 25 per cent in the region of Veneto. La Destra won some 885,000 votes, whereas UDC lost 530,000. The Center-Left coalition basically held, compared to 2006. However, the presence, in Veltroni’s list, of the Radicals without the Socialists makes a precise comparison difficult, as they presented a single list back in 2006. However, if we consider, as the Istituo Cattaneo does, the votes obtained by the Socialists this year, the Center-Left apparently won some new 185,000 votes, that is, 1.3 per cent more than 2006.

Therefore, SA lost almost 2.4 million votes compared to 2006, that is, 61.5 per cent of its consent, winning only 3.084 per cent of votes cast, and collapsing even in historically “red” regions, such as Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. The result is that, for the first time in republican history, the extreme Left will not be represented in Parliament. Of these 2.4 million votes, about 208,394 went to the Workers’ Communist Party (0.571 per cent), and 167,673 (0.459 per cent) to Sinistra Critica (Critical Left), with the latter also enjoying the support of Noam Chomsky and Ken Loach. With regard to the remaining two million votes lost, according to an analysis of electoral flows carried out by Consortium on behalf of RAI and Sky TV, only 38.4 percent of traditional Rifondazione Comunista voters cast their ballot for SA, whereas 40.3 per cent shifted to PD and 6.3 per cent to IDV, for an overall 46.6 per cent; for PDCI, the figures are 20, 48.1 and 6.4 respectively, for an overall 54.5 per cent; and for the Greens 24.8, 45.1 and 11.3 respectively, amounting to 56.4 per cent. It even appears that traditional leftist voters might have directed their votes towards Berlusconi’s coalition, 5.1, 5.6 and 8 percent respectively. Thus, should such data be confirmed, it would ensue that, without the votes of traditional Leftist electors, PD-IDV would have won at least 5 per cent fewer votes, meaning that the former Center-Left coalition has lost votes in favor of UDC (13.6 per cent, according to Consortium), or Berlusconi’s coalition, including LN. Had all those votes been cast in favor of SA, Berlusconi would have still won. But at least the Left would be represented. It is better not to listen to the siren call of the “useful vote”.

Now, according to the latest comments, there is satisfaction even in the PD entourage, as the parliamentary scenario appears simplified, without the presence of SA. However, all those who have been making such claims have not fully figured out the drama of the situation, because PD won something from the Left, but lost a lot towards the Center; there will be nobody in Parliament left of PD working as a liaison with workers, especially in case of social tensions; and many workers in the North voted for a racist and xenophobic party like LN. And the scenario is not at all simplified: it has been only a few days since the election, and trouble is already under way: apparently, the Radicals have claimed they do not consider themselves bound to the electoral manifesto, though they had vowed to obey it, and IDV has affirmed its willingness to create a separate parliamentary group; on the other side, Berlusconi, Bossi and Fini have already begun to harshly quarrel over ministerial positions.

What will the Left do now? The critics of the SA project, especially those unwilling to give up the hammer and sickle, as Bertinotti had proposed, have already declared the project dead. However, I believe that having a Left split into three micro-parties and a slightly bigger one is definitely counterproductive and will cause harm to the Left itself and the country, as it will imperil the future presence of the Left in Parliament due to the threshold, which nowadays appears to be quite high, especially at the Senate, all things considered. Besides, what kind of pressure could four separate and quarrelsome little parties put on the far larger PD and its large centrist component?

This project was wrongly conceived, because it gave sympathizers, activists and voters the impression of an unconvinced scotch-taped electoral alliance between party leaders, an impression proved true by the rigid selection of candidacies, strictly proportional to each party’s electoral weight, following the best practices of Italian political carve-up. What’s more, we should not forget about the unconvinced and unconvincing candidacy of Fausto Bertinotti as Prime Minister. Why not present instead the popular President of the region of Apulia, Nichi Vendola, who is gay, Catholic, Communist, and much younger than Bertinotti, honest and charismatic and has a very strong appeal on all progressive activists and voters?

I think we can all learn from the mistakes that have been made. And I do believe that the project should be resumed and improved, taking more time and involving party activists. There is no logical reason to preserve two separate Communist, one micro-Socialist and one Green parties. The values of environmentalism, civil and social rights, economic justice, sustainable development, pacifism and opposition to the Catholic Church’s diktats all represent a common heritage of the whole Left. I believe people will continue to consider themselves Communists rather than Socialists or Greens and the other way around. It should not be forgotten, though, that there are many different ideas and factions even within those very groups called the Communist, Socialist or Green Party. Differences in viewpoints may often represent a problem, but they also constitute a source of enrichment for a party that claims to be progressive. All differences need to be worked out together, to advance a certain kind of society. It might be difficult without MPs. Nevertheless, it might even be beneficial, as those who have become too inured to leaving in the ivory towers of power will feel the need and necessity to go back to the people and the streets. At least, let us hope that will happen, because we all need the Left.