After the catastrophic regional elections in which the Center-left won 11 of the 13 presidencies of the regions which were up for election, Berlusconi went into a state of denial and tried to smother over any problems about the direction the country was heading in.
The Northern League (led by Umberto Bossi), as a result of the victories in Lombardy and Veneto (both northern regions with very strong Leghista followings and the ONLY regions won by the center-right) insisted on taking control of the policy agenda on issues like devolution (federalism) and tax-cutting. The National Alliance (neo-fascists), led by Gianfranco Fini, has always been wishy-washy with respect to federalism and supports state-subsidized corporatism and not neo-liberalist ideas. UDC (headed by Marco Follini), meanwhile, tends to side with the latter because of it Christian Democratic heritage.
All these differences are now coming to the fore as a result of the regional elections. The League wanted to take over the agenda, AN refused to allow this and suggested a policy more oriented to the South. UDC agreed.
Then, Luca Cordero de Montezemolo, head of Confindustria (the big business lobbying organization) stepped in and announced that the country was going down the tubes economically and it would be inappropriate to waste another year campaigning and electioneering instead of addressing the fundamental problems. All the Unions agreed.
This extraordinary amount of pressure and conflict just seems to have pushed the UDC into thinking it would be better for the nation if they were to quit the governing coalition and the National Alliance into its call for a vote-of-confidence. Berlusconi, as of this morning, still obstinately refuses to acknowledge the need for a change in course.
The situation is complicated and there’s a great deal of self-interested positioning going on as well. Marco Follini, for example, wants to preserve his ass from this mess so that he can run for President of the Republic in the future.
It’s all falling apart. Even if he manages to pull a rabbit out the hat, here, and hold onto power for another year, the government, IMO, will be a lame-duck.
According to this morning’s l’Unità:
In sum, the Berlusconi government doesn’t exist anymore. And this time an operation of maquillage will not be sufficient to hide the wounds. The president of the Republic wouldn’t accept it. A new executive is needed, a formal crisis. And it will be a crisis without a pilot, in the dark.
The withdrawal of Follini, who before moving obtained the benediction of Pierferdinando Casini [president of the Senate and top member of UDC], is explicit: “We must assume our responsibilities [for this failure in the regional elections] in the name of “the general interest of the nation which we must seek to cultivate.
This is the price that the premier [Berlusconi] must pay for his obstinacy in continuing to go ahead as if nothing had changed. Fini bowed his head. Casini and Follini didn’t.
Meanwhile, the reaction from the center-left was swift and unequivocal:
Ha ha haaaaa!!! Who told ya’ so folks? Who told ya’ so?? It’s just a matter of time now.
Wow. Help me understand what this means. I read your earlier diaries in haste, but this is a whole new ball of wax.
After the catastrophic regional elections in which the Center-left won 11 of the 13 presidencies of the regions which were up for election, Berlusconi went into a state of denial and tried to smother over any problems about the direction the country was heading in.
The Norhern League, as a result of the victories in Lombardy and Veneto (both northrn regions with very strong Legista followings and the ONLY regions won by the center-right) insisted on taking control of the policy agenda on issues like devolution (federalism) and tax-cutting. The National Alliance (neo-fascists) has alwasy been wishy washy wrt federalism and supports state-subsized corporatism and not neo-liberalist ideas. UDC,meanwhile, tends to side with the latter becasue of it Christian Demcocratic heritage.
All these differences are now coming to the fore as a result of the regional elecions. The League wants to take over the agenda, AN refused and suggested a policy
more oriented to the South. UDC agreed.
Then, Luca Cordero de Montezemolo, head of Confindustria (the big business) lobby stepped in and announced that the country was going down the tubes econmically and it would be inapproriate to waste another year campaigning and electioneering instead of addressing the fundamntals problems. All the Unions agreed.
This extraodinary amount of pressure and conflict just seems to have pushed the UDC into thinking it better for the nation to quit and for the National Alliance to call for a vote-of-confidence. Berluconi, as of this morning, still obstinately refuses to acknowledge the need for a change in course.
It’s complicated and their’s a great deal of self-intereted positioning going on as well. Marco Follini, for example, wants to preserve his ass from this mess so that he can run for Presiednt of the Republic in the future.
It’s all falling apart. Even if he manages to pull a rabbit out the hat, here, and haold onto power for another year, the governement, IMO, will be a lame-duck.
will there be a vote of no confidence, in your opinion?
I think their will have to be at some point.
The real question, which just struck me, is: why is he so afraid to step up and be reconfirmed as leader of the governing coaltion? He would almost certainly pass a vote-of-no-confidence test now, with Fini and The League still behind him. In fact, that might even bring back UDC!! Strange fellow.
It seems to me the longer he holds off on changes,the more disaffected, not only the public, but the center-right ministers will become and then he would very well lose.
Strange games they play in these parliamntary systems. I was born and lived in the states for most of my life. So it’s still relatively new to me. I’m learning my way about this as it goes along here.
provided some post-facto analysis by copy from one of my comment into the diary.
So what’s the big deal? It’s always my thoughts expressed in my own words….
Originally I thought the story spoke for itself, but actually their’s more to it…
the context helps, since we are all a little unfamiliar with the complexities of the Italian system.
Gilgamesh,
If Berlusconi falls, who’s likely to be the next premier? Name, background, policy differences?
Any info appreciated.
Thanks for the diary!
If this mess is not sorted out one way or another in a relatively short period of time, it’s quite possible that
the Presient of the Republic (Carlo Azeglio Ciampi) may step in and dissolve the parliament and replace it with a temporary, or even a series of temporary transitonal governements led by Ciampi himself. This is an exclusive prerogative of the President of the Republic under the Italian consitution and he can exercise it any time he percieves a state of emergency or national crisis based on the govrenement’s inability to govern effectively. The President is officaly non-partisan and non-ideological but it is beleived that he harbors generally moderate tendencies.
If there is eventually a vote-of-confidence in Parliamnt and Berlusconi were to lose (highly unlikely), then I honestly can’t imagine who his replacement would be. Nor can anyone else, for that matter. Consequently, this would probably result in a crisis leading to the scanario decribed above.
If he calls elections in order to prevent an insitutional crisis from arising in the first place, then the center-left would probably win the elections and Romani Prodi (leader of the center-left coalition called the Union) would be the new premier.
So it’s fairly complicated actually.
Here’s the BBC story on this development. Their article relays this comment from Silvio himself: “Mr Berlusconi told La Repubblica newspaper that he would not stand for the UDC leaving the government and then ‘blackmailing’ him on every law.”
Following a link from the Beeb’s webpage led me to this interesting tidbit: Berlusconi is selling a one-sixth stake (one-third of his personal holdings) in Mediaset, the broadcasting company controlled by Berlusconi’s holding company Fininvest. The sale yesterday generated about €2.08 billion ($2.7 billion), although according to the Financial Times, “JPMorgan, the investment bank handling the sale, was forced to cut the price of the deal amid poor demand.”
From the BBC, we also learn:
“The timing is following the recent poor performance of the ruling coalition in the recent regional elections,” he said.
Analysts had been expecting him to reduce his stake in the firm sooner.
So even if the political winds continue to blow against him, at least Berlusconi can sleep soundly at night, knowing that he has a few more billion to fall back on when he leaves office. I doubt anyone will be feeling very sorry for him.
Oh yes, we’ve been discussing the question of Berlusca’s partial sale of his ownership of Mediaset over at The New European Times . You should pop in and take a
peek.
As to berlusca, he’s obviously not giving any ground. He believes he’s indispensable to the center-right coaltion. And, of course, he’s absoluely well-founded on that. Howvever, he can’t prevent the UDC ministers from resigning (which they have) and that,in turn, puts pressure on the National Alliance to make a strong standand stop pussyfooting this thing. Without UDC, the Northern League neccesaarily becomes stronger on issue such as devolution annd tax-cuts which go against the fascist principles of nationalism and strong state intervention propounded ny AN
What an asshole!! That’s all there is to say, really.
His latest outburst:
“I’m a billionare, I don’t live off of politics like you”,
referring to members of the UDC.
I’m sure there were no politics whatsoever involved in his accumlation of wealth. 🙂
This website from ketupa.net (a resource for those interested in the media industries and the ‘information economy’ from Caslon Analytics, an Australian company) appears to be fairly comprehensive about his holdings and how he put everything together. Here’s a quick summary:
In 1974 he founded cable television station Telemilano to service Milano 2 and in 1978 worked his way around rules that gave RAI the national broadcast monopoly: his local stations simultaneously broadcast the same programs. Fininvest was founded in 1975 as a holding company. He established Canale 5 (Channel 5) in 1980, a big hit with a schedule of local game shows and US treats such as Dallas.
At the same time he established the Publitalia 80 advertising agency, one of the largest in Europe by the mid-1980’s, and acquired the other two major commercial television stations – Retequattro (1984) and Italia Uno (1983).
Fininvest moved into newspaper and magazine publishing (eg the weekly Panorama), books (the venerable Mondadori group in 1985), retailing, direct marketing, online services, cinemas (1985) and sport (the AC Milan soccer team).
So it’s pretty much the usual: greed, corruption, flagrant flouting of rules that he decides don’t apply to him, etc., etc.
ahhh,,just waking up. Good link Maven. I knew about all of those connections (Craxi, mob bosses, etc..) and the financial interests. But I hadn’t seen it laid out in a nice chronogical manner. There was an article in the Economist detailing the story (reprinted in La Repubblica, where I read it) about four years ago. That’s the great thing about you bloggers: it seems like you come up with these incredidible links almost as if you already had the reference sitting right next you on th desk or something.
I’m not that fast with gooogle for some reason. I always have to sort throuhg an enormous amount of junk before I find what I’m looking for.
i forgot to mention the most important point:he still owns majority stakes and exrecises some form of controll over many of the publications and media assets you menioned–Monadadori, Panorama, the mediaset stations, the Milan soccer team. No conflicts of interest, perhaps??
Do have a sense of how much, if any, of this recent loss and current mess can be attributed to
Or would Berlu, just because of his innate charm, have lost as heavily in the regional voting without those?
I don’t think the Iraq issues have much to do with it at all. Practically no one is mentioning them recently. This “crisis” is mostly about domestic issues, intra-coalition squabbling about policy and priorities, etc. — and the people’s dissatisfaction over how the center-right has been governing in general.
There has been almost complete silence recently about the Sgrena affair, as if it has fizzled out somewhat — probably also partly because of the importance given the whole story about the Pope — at least until yesterday/today, when there started being new news about the U.S. saying the American troops weren’t at fault in the shooting, but that it was because of Italian mistakes. But that “leak” is tempered by statements from both sides that the investigation is still going on and a conclusion hasn’t been reached.
Also Thursday, the U.S. State Department said the investigation was ongoing and denied an NBC report that the U.S.-Italian commission had completed a preliminary report clearing the Americans of any wrongdoing in the killing. link
The Italian government is resisting that finding as the investigation winds to a close, and the disagreement has blocked completion of a final report that was expected to be released as early as today, U.S. officials said.
The final conclusions of the report, including whether the soldiers will be found to have erred in any way, is a “moving target,” said one U.S. official familiar with the investigation. link
yes, I am still eating Peeps
From where I’m sitting I cannot find a single person who doesnt think the US military deliberately murder innocents. It is not just the Sgrena saga but also the bombing of Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Guatanamo, reports of the sniping of ambulance drivers and doctors in Iraq, and that is without going back into previous history of bombing the Chinese embassy and targetting the only antibiotic production plant in the Sudan. The list is nauseatingly long, so basically the report is for the US public to carry on believing the US military is an honorable organization and for the Italian government to show a culprit. Those two desires cannot be reconciled. For the rwest of the world who cares what the report says. It wont be believed.
we must never forget history. At least as far as the militray and civilian casualties are concerned, this sort of stuff is definitely not new with the GW Bush administration.
Clinton admin: Chinese embassy, antibiotics plant in Africa, Cermis incident in northern Italy,etc. etc…
Vietnam: we don’t even want to get into that do we?!!!
I agree with Donna in Rome’s analysis. “It’s the economy stupid” seems to be the dominating factor over here.
I would just add that Berlusca’s coddling up to the Northern League with his extremely radical modifications…I would almost say “rewriting”…of the Italian constitituon to arrogate more power to himself, diminish the power of Parliamant, more imporantly,
devolve exclusive powers over educationa and health care financing to the varios regions, have alienated a large part of the south perhaps permantly.
Forfot to mention the politicazation of the judiciary in the name of depoliticization. But that’s a long story.
Why did the earlier left-wing governments collapsed, and how certain are we that they will work now? Italian politics from what I know are very volatile and the average government usually lasts like a year or so…
Very good question. If you look at this from the perspective of Italian electoral history, the truly amazing thing is that berlusconi has managed to hold on to power for so long. Even La repubblica, no friends of Berlusca, had to admit that Berlusca had managed to hold together the longest consecutive administration since Mussolini.
Unfortunately, it also had to be the <u> worst </u> since Mussolini. (-;
As to your question: who knows???
as Italy tries to edge toward a bipartisan system (with two main coalitions of parties — center-left and center-right — and a majority or mixed voting system, rather than dozens of separate parties and a solely proportional system, as was once the case — the system that enabled the Christian Democrats to rule for decades with just a relative majority, with the governments falling all the time, only to be put back together with practically all the same faces, just by shuffling the deck and switching around their offices), it has turned out that both coalitions have an Achilles’ heel in one of the parties making them up.
In actuality, both of these parties are fairly small compared to the rest, but their numbers are crucial to making up the majority and consenting at least a minimum of governability, and so they can wield quite a bit of influence (perhaps comparable to blackmail, I suppose: give us what we want or we’ll pull out and you’ll no longer have the majority) and can make a lot of noise.
For Berlusconi, it’s Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord, which pulled out and made his government collapse the last time around. This time (4 years ago) Berlusconi made Bossi sign some sort of contract before the elections (signed in blood, maybe?) that would supposedly be binding — and it seems that so far it is holding (it’s not the Lega Nord making a fuss this time, at least not so far). Ironically enough, however, it’s the Lega’s demands that are at the root of one of the coalition’s problems in the current crisis, with other center-right parties seeing Bossi’s group as one of the main reasons they’ve lost votes (and they’re probably right).
For the center-left, the sore spot is Fausto Bertinotti’s Rifondazione Comunista, which was responsible for the last leftist government’s fall. Sometimes his demands are too left-wing for the more moderate members of the coalition and, vice versa, he is often dissatisfied with, and noisily critical of, the more centrist stances.
Both sides have the tough job of trying to keep together a coalition (or a government by one of those coalitions), each of which ranges politically from more-or-less-center to an extreme wing, managing to govern and keep everyone happy at the same time. They are actually two coalitions of various separate parties, but you could think of them as two parties with various internal currents. It’s not an easy trick to pull off (as can also be seen in the U.S., with the weight the extremists are gaining in the Republican party, to the detriment and dissatisfaction of the “real” conservatives of the old GOP).
yes, I explained all of that in my previous diary-primer
on the Italian regional elections which all fo you can find over at The New Euorpean Times. It’s still up over there. And I welcome everyone to helpme out or add to th discussion with your criticisms and comments!!!
URL is below:
I’m an admirer of Bertinotti, but think he screwed up royally the last time around. The stakes are too high. I know he doesn’t feel any responsibility for the collapse of the center-left coalition. Maybe he’ll rethink his strategy this time, should the center-left win.
Let’s hope this fake gov’t doesn’t last much longer.
welcome over from dkos, sneaky!! What’s you take on the recent developments?
BTW, come on over to The New European Times, I posted a couple of diaries and I’m planning to post a lot more over there. But I’m being overwhelmed by the Brits (-;.
just clikc on my sigline and then go to politics area.
Yahoo
NO!!! It was a farce!!! LOL!!!
He’s caved in to Bossi and the Northern League. This is going to prolong the crisis and hurt the nation even more. What an ASS…
The move will end Italy’s longest-serving postwar government.
Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini made the announcement in a statement after a meeting of coalition leaders in Rome.
link
good!! thank you for putting up that link. It is important but the situation is so unusual from the POV of
Americans that I didn’t know how to present it, even thouhg I read about it in fifty papers.
Basically, the situation is this:
Berluconi will hand in his letter of resignation (a formal act required by the constitution) in the process of what, I think, is called a “piloted crisis.” The President of the republic (Ciampi) will accept it and ask him to form a new governement and if he has the necessary majority in Parliament. He easily has enouhg votes now since the UDC has received some promises and ministries in exchange for it reentreance into the coalition. Berlusoni will say that he’s ready to lead the new coalition government, which is called Berlusconi-bis (from the Latin for twice).
In sum, he’s managed to survive this crisis, but his image and popularity have been irreparably damaged. So much so,in fact, that his allies will be spending the next year thinking about how to get rid of him and replace him with someone who is not damaged goods. Meanwhile, the economy will continue to deteriorate and
the antagomism between the League and the rest of the coalition will probably foment many more such crises.
enough to be able to form one, I was kind of hoping Ciampi would ask somebody else…I completely missed the point of the story, thanks for explaining how it all works!
it seems I spoke a little to soon. Their HASN’T been an accord, according to umberto Bossi (head of the Northern League) and Roberto Calderoli. These people are maintianing that this is all just a kind of charade orchstrated by the center (UDC) and Ciampi to get rid of Berlusconi and destroy their economic and political program. Bossi insits, accorfin to La Repubblica, that there can be no resignations and he wants a vote-of-confidence (which would tranform it from a piloted crisi to an out-and–out parliamentary crisis.
Interesting!! But,now, I haven’t the slightest idea what’s ultimately going to happen here.