Vote Italy!

Confusing problems with symptoms

The Italian voter has heard enough about Italy’s problems – they’ve been all over the press and, he is aware, the foreign media, for years. Organised crime, a collapsed legal system, the bloated public sector with its concomitant soaring debt, most people can recite them. And they see little for all that public expenditure: Italy has low growth, high unemployment but no unemployment benefit. Wages and pensions are low. Prices are rising. To all this, a range of solutions is offered the voter each time he goes to the polls. This to an extent was what Prodi’s outgoing government was about: with little political baggage he wanted to put himself across as a technocrat who could solve the problems, one by one. And indeed a couple of reforms were implemented. But it was tinkering. You can now have a haircut on a Monday.

But the laundry list of problems has been known about for years; nothing ever seems to be done about them. Are we perhaps confusing problems with symptoms? Are they the result of some more basic malaise? Is the root of it all much deeper? This, I think, is the stage of reasoning that the Italian voter has reached. No further, regrettably, but it is a start. The first, delicate whiff of change is in the air.

Last year there emerged a new movement on the Italian political scene. It was started by a man who had had enough and was prepared to say so. His name is Beppe Grillo, a popular comedian, and he called the movement ‘Vaffanculo’ which means more or less F*** Off. The movement is an expression of rage, often more lucid than the title suggests, against Italy’s bloated, corrupt political institutions. Grillo will not field any candidates but will not endorse, for example, anyone who has been convicted of a serious crime (at least 10% of MPs have).

If it has taken a comic to instigate the climate of change in Italy, a country which has traditionally had an unhealthy respect for its rulers, others are joining. A book by two journalists ‘La Casta’, describing in excruciating detail countless examples of the dishonesty and venality of Italy’s ruling caste, its political elite, became a best seller overnight. Stories started to emerge, such as that of the senator who demanded free ice cream to help him think. Clemente Mastella, Justice Minister and head of a small party in the Prodi coalition, was found to have taken his nephew to a football match at the taxpayers expense using the presidential plane and helicopter. After an investigation into his affairs (which included those of his wife) he was forced to resign and brought the government down.

The outgoing Prodi administration is now seen as having been a function of the problem. It was a rag-tag coalition, which never really agreed on anything and therefore had no policies. It owed its existence to horsetrading and was doomed to failure, as, with hindsight, most Italian governments have been: part of the system, not a solution to it.

The present election begins in this novel political climate. Two new, larger parties are slugging it out and both quickly latched on to the new mood. Both promise a reduction in government, moving it closer to the people. This is the right talk, but who will the voters believe? Walter Veltroni, the uncharismatic but honest looking former communist youth leader, latterly mayor of Rome, or Silvio Berlusconi the billionaire property and media mogul suspected of mafia links and a regular in the courts?

Much of the foreign press, wrongly in my view, sees Berlusconi’s lead in the polls as Italy choosing the soft option: falling for the knockabout charm, hoping that the man who made billions for himself can magic up a result for them. The foreign media will be publicly outraged if he wins (although privately pleased because he is at least good copy) and will suggest Italy has become some sort of pariah. In Britain or Germany a short, slightly vulgar right wing billionaire, who sometimes seemed more of a comic turn than a serious act and did nothing in his last term except keep himself out of prison, would be an unlikely candidate. He would certainly not have the youth vote sewn up. And yet this, incredibly, is what Berlusconi has managed, and what most of Europe can’t grasp.

Young people in Italy see Veltroni as an insider, the sort of politician Italy has produced for years. Worthy, perhaps, but almost whatever he says he cannot be seen as the herald of the change they want. Against that, Berlusconi might be just like he was last time: he might talk a lot and change nothing. But, then again, he just might. He just might.