By Catherine Brown
Usually municipal elections don't capture much international attention. However, after the three-year Italian corruption scandal in which more than 2000 politicians and industrialists are under investigation, there was some interest as to just how badly the government parties would fare.
On November 21, 11 million Italians voted for municipal councils in 428 towns and cities. None of the four parties in the government coalition won support in double figures. The coalition's combined vote plummeted from 48.8% in the April 1992 general election to 13.4%.
Since World War II, the Christian Democrats have been a permanent, usually dominant, government partner. In the last 30 years their vote hasn't varied by more than 6%. But given the corruption scandal and alleged Mafia links, the humiliating vote of less than 10% surprised few. The other government partners, including the Socialist Party, were virtually wiped out.
The three most significant winners were the Party of the Democratic Left (PDS), the Northern League and the fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). The league is a populist, reactionary separatist movement based in Lombardy, where it is the largest party, winning 30%. The MSI won around 30% in the centre and south, polling particularly well in Naples and Rome. The PDS alliance, including the Greens and the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC), totalled 40-45%.
Before the election, press coverage focused on the MSI's hopes that Alessandra Mussolini, Benito Mussolini's grand-daughter, would become Naples' mayor. She won 29.1% to the PDS alliance's 48%.
The election results reflected a vote against a corrupt system and the parties associated with it and a vote for "clean" politics. The PDS campaigned on the slogan "Our hands are clean". The MSI projected an image of anti-corruption, order and efficiency, and captured the right Catholic vote from the CD.
Nowhere were the CD more firmly rejected than in Sicily, the Mafia heartland. In Palermo, Leoluca Orlando, the leader of La Rete (the Network, an anti-corruption movement), received 74%.
"La Rete was born from people of different parties. In a sense, it is true that La Rete is an anti-corruption, anti-Mafia party", explained Andrea Scrosati, La Rete's press officer, to Green Left Weekly. "But we also have other goals, what we call solidarity — that means social justice, peace, ecology and so on.
"Two years ago you could not speak of these problems without speaking of corruption and illegality. Italy's developed a system where it wasn't important whether the environment was destroyed, it was only important how much money the government and industry made. So, to speak against corruption also meant to speak about the environment. To speak of the Mafia is also to speak of the international traffic of arms, so you are also speaking of peace."
The PDS and the PRC both developed out of the Italian Communist Party, which dissolved in 1990. The PDS with its 400,000 members embraced social democracy; the PRC moved to the left with 100,000 members.
Other left groups impressed with the direction of the PRC and its openness to socialist renewal joined. Since then the PRC has formed a close working relationship with La Rete, a left current in the Greens Party and a left current in the PDS.
The PRC is spearheading the fight against the government's austerity budget, while the PDS through its influence in the union movement, has in effect endorsed it.
"There is no reason why a PDS-led government next year would produce policies fundamentally different from those taken by Mr Ciampi", editorialised the Financial Times. "The PDS would be unlikely to halt the privatisation programme or reintroduce the scala mobile system of wage indexation dismantled in 1992."
This was confirmed by Achille Occhetto, the PDS leader, on November 23 when he announced the PDS was committed to "guaranteeing the budget's approval by the appointed date". Occhetto also backed privatisation plans, which are viewed by many workers as a last ditch attempt by corrupt politicians and industrialists to line their pockets. In fact the austerity budget too is seen by many as the public picking up the tab for a corrupt system.