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Socialist Review, September 1994

Notes of the Month

Italy

Mr Clean’s dirty hands

 

From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

The first 100 days of the new Italian government have proved one thing. Far from representing a radical break with the past, as some have claimed, the Berlusconi regime has been rapidly exposed as the reincarnation of the Christian Democrats. The only real difference is the gloss provided by the new prime minister’s control of the media.

Some even on the left saw Berlusconi’s election win as a triumph for ‘new politics’ – a break with the politics of class.

In fact the depth of corruption in the old regime meant that a donkey could have become prime minister so long as they could pose as untainted by graft and bribery. The fact that Berlusconi’s company, Fininvest, controls the largest private television network helped him project the necessary clean image, but this has lasted less than three months.

It was only a matter of time before the judges investigating corruption would have a go at Fininvest, a company with debts estimated at $3 billion. As the threat increased the new prime minister issued a decree suspending the right of the judiciary to hold people in custody when inquiring into corruption. This would have brought the entire investigation of corruption to an end, by allowing businessmen, politicians and their hangers on to block and delay inquiries indefinitely, or flee to their comfortable villas abroad, like the former prime minister Craxi.

The huge outcry and wave of protest demonstrations forced Berlusconi to back down. It was all a mistake, he announced, the decree had been ‘hastily drafted’.

The only reason that Berlusconi might survive is the dreadful weakness of the opposition. Most of the Christian Democrat machine has now reinvented itself inside the Forza Italia movement. Forza Italia was an empty shell which allowed Berlusconi to present himself as a new leader, above the sordid world of politics, determined to restore ‘Italian self respect’. The vacuum has inevitably been filled by those who have run the system for the past 45 years.

But the former Communist Party, the PDS, and to a large extent the harder left leaders of Rifondazione Communista have refused to go for the jugular.

If anything they have allowed the fascists of the MSI, inside the governing coalition, to pose as a ‘clean’ force for change. As Berlusconi’s popularity in the opinion polls has slumped dramatically, so Fini of the MSI has emerged as a credible alternative. The MSI is posing as the ‘guardian of the people’, opposing the plans to slash the state pension, intervening to resolve disputes at Alitalia and on the railways.

Working class organisation remains strong and reasonably solid. Despite Thatcherite rhetoric the employers are fearful of breaking the consensus with the union leadership. The revival of the Italian economy gives some immediate breathing space. But this cannot last for long: the crisis of state finance is such that something has to give.


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