ITALY: Il Cavaliere takes control

May 30, 2001
Issue 

BY TERESA FOARD

As a result of the May 13 elections, Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing La Casa delle Liberta ("House of Freedom") coalition will hold 177 seats in the 315-member upper house and 368 seats in the 630-member lower house of Italy's parliament.

Berlusconi's coalition includes former fascists led by Gianfranco Fini as well as the leader of the Northern League, Umberto Bossi, whose past statements have been veined with anti-immigrant, anti-homosexual sentiments, akin to those espoused by Austria's Jorg Haider. It is the volatile Bossi who is largely responsible for perpetuating the view that if Italy south of the Po river would conveniently float off to Africa the country would be a good deal better off.

It is not just Berlusconi's alliances with characters on the extreme of what is "acceptable" in the European Union that has caused a barrage of anti-Berlusconi views in the European press and the prediction that Italy may now be ostracised within the EU. It is also the issue of the conflict of interest between his business dealings and the fact that he now controls the Italian legislature.

Berlusconi — also known as il cavaliere ("the knight") — is Italy's richest man and has a personal fortune estimated at US$12.8 billion. He has made much of his wealth by creating Italy's first commercial television networks, introducing striptease quiz shows and American soap operas to Italian viewers. He owns Italy's three private TV networks and the country's largest publishing house.

In 1994 Berlusconi founded the Forza Italia party with its full-blown-Thatcherite economic solutions and a mantra of representing Italians who "work" as opposed to Italians who "talk".

The formula worked well enough to win him the 1994 elections but his government fell after only seven humiliating months in office amid corruption charges, which led to three convictions, but which he still dismisses as cooked up baseless accusations by "left-wing" magistrates. These charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. However, several more cases — on charges ranging from false accounting to bribery and tax fraud — are still pending for il cavaliere.

In the lead up to the May 13 elections, two organisations that track the amount of time dedicated to candidates on television found that Berlusconi's three channels gave him four times more coverage than his centre-left opponent, Francesco Rutelli. Other reports have put the imbalance at as high as 11 to one in favour of Berlusconi. Furthermore, the news on Italia 1, one of Berlusconi's three Mediaset networks, depicted a country overrun by criminals and illegal immigrants — echoes of key themes in il cavaliere's own election propaganda.

The "alternative left" Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC), led by Fausto Bertinotti, obtained 5% of the national vote and will hold 11 seats in the lower house and three Senate seats in Italy's 59th parliament since World War II. It is the only political party in Italy that is not part of a coalition and one of only five parties to obtain more than 5% of the national vote.

(The Italian electoral system has been undergoing "reform" since 1993, moving further away from the progressive proportional voting system implemented with the Italian Republic in 1947 to a system of "first past the post". This reform has made it increasingly difficult for minor parties to enter parliament.)

In the PRC journal Liberazione, the Berlusconi victory is explained as a preference among Italians for individualism over solidarity, individual choice over community welfare and private enterprise over workers' rights.

Berlusconi has promised to resolve his conflicts of interests within 100 days of taking leadership of the country as well as its three national television channels. He plans to do this by appointing a panel of international experts — possibly the likes of his friend Rupert Murdoch — to propose a solution to the conflict.

Berlusconi's main problem now, however, is that of conquering social resistance to his neo-liberal policies. It is one thing to win the poll, but quite another to defeat the militant Italian working class. This is particularly the case as Berlusconi's win was not as overwhelming as predicted and his allies in the National Alliance and the Northern League both actually lost support.

Moreover, the PRC result against the strongest possible odds vindicates its stand of opposing both of Italy's variants of neo-liberal austerity — the now-ousted social-democratic-led Ulivo (Olive) coalition and the Casa delle Liberta coalition — putting them in a strong position to be the parliamentary voice of mass resistance to Berlusconi's Thatcherism.

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