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North-south divide gives Berlusconi the edge

“Look at him, just look at him! He is like a tailor’s dummy — false hair, face lift, fake teeth and all those slick clothes. There is nothing real about this man. He is a dream merchant. All his life he’s sold dreams and become a billionaire in the process and I cannot imagine how my compatriots can vote for him — not for the first, not the second, but the third time!” Paola Liveriero, 67, standing in front of a billboard spattered with election posters, has particularly harsh words for Italy’s richest man Silvio Berlusconi whose smooth, tanned, 72-year-old face smiles down at her seductively.

Paola was once a schoolteacher. Now, after retirement she helps out in her husband’s modest electrical goods store which also provides employment to their only son. “At thirty-two he still lives at home. We cannot afford to pay him more than the minimum wage and who can live in Italy today with a thousand euros? Inflation has galloped — bread, pasta, even the barest necessities of life have tripled in price. For the past half century we have been governed by goons — selfish, corrupt and inefficient. I have always voted Christian Democrat but for the first time I may not vote at all,” she says.

Italians are usually enthusiastic voters — the participation rate in the last general election in 2006 was 84 per cent — but this time there is a clear sentiment of malaise. Fifty million voters are voting on Sunday and Monday with huge question marks in their minds. Are they going to bring back media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi who left the country’s economy in a shambles (economic growth was zero per cent) while protecting and promoting his own interests or will they veer to the left by bringing in a reformed communist, Walter Veltroni, the popular former mayor of Rome?

For many like Paola, a practising Catholic, the communist threat in Italy has been very real and had led, during the days of the partitocrazia, when the spoils were divided between the Socialists and the Christian Democrats and two smaller left and right wing parties, to the survival of many corrupt politicians. Now an unsatisfactory electoral law throws up equally improbable and ungovernable coalitions. “We knew politics stank, but we held our noses and voted Christian Democrat anyway because we wanted to keep the reds out. Even now, Walter Veltroni is being pushed as an alternative. But can you trust a former communist?” she muses.

Italy’s problems are very big and very real. Economic growth this year is predicted to be 0.5 per cent — down from the 0.6 per cent forecast a couple of months ago. The gap between the rich industrial north and the poor, mafia-ridden south is widening while incomes have stagnated in the face of galloping inflation, the worst in ten years.

Silvio Berlusconi who commands a slender lead in the polls has stitched up a coalition of the right and the extreme right. But his partners include such divisive and some say, even destructive figures as Umberto Bossi, the boss of the xenophobic Northern League. Mr. Bossi wants the rich industrial north to stop subsidising what he terms the “corrupt and indolent” south and has demanded a restructuring of the tax system so that the north’s revenues remain with the north. Another of Mr. Berlusconi’s partners is Gianfranco Fini, who inherited Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s MSI party which he re-baptised the Alleanza Nazionale (AZ) and which has now merged with Mr. Berlusconi’s Forza Italia to give birth to the new PDL (Party for People’s Freedom). Another line of support comes from the Duce’s grand-daughter, Alessandra Mussolini and her extreme right wing AS party.

Facing Mr. Berlusconi is Mr. Veltroni, who many believe could form a “grand coalition” with the media baron if he manages to obtain a significant percentage of votes. With over 100 parties in the fray and 32 candidates proposing themselves as Prime Minister material, it is unlikely that a single party obtains an absolute majority. The division between north and south goes to Mr. Berlusconi’s advantage for he is able to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. And as for Mr. Veltroni, while he has managed to create a centre left “reformist pole” he has not been bold enough to ditch his centre-right ties. This robs him of credibility with both left and right wing voters.

But the eventual formation of a grand coalition along the German model has been sharply criticised by many. Left wing paper La Reppublicca calls it a “disastrous” idea. To suggest that Mr. Berlusconi and Mr. Veltroni have interchangeable politics is both dangerous and disingenuous, the paper said. German politics have long been marked by a spirit of negotiations and compromise that is entirely absent in Italy. The idea of a “Veltrusconi” government therefore is more worrying than reassuring.

But the sharpest criticism of Italian society today came from Oliviero Toscani, the renowned photographer and activist who declared in an interview with El Pais, the influential Spanish daily: “The Italy of yore has disappeared. For the last 50 years there has been no evolution in architecture while mediocre intellect has become the norm; Italian Mamas continue to castrate their sons; teachers earn less than workers, no one respects the school and one has to defend the teachers against stupid parents. It is not possible to renew this country because the decadence is not economic – it is moral and is re-transmitted day and night by television. We have been defeated by vulgarity. We will die elegant, dressed in the latest style, vulgar empty and stupid.”

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