Jesus. Talk about an ass-kicking. Because they came in at 3.1% and under the 4% threshold, the Communist Left will not hold any seats from a democratic election in Italy for the first time in more than 100 years.

What did they do to deserve this? They didn't even really support the do-nothing government of Romano Prodi.

In addition, you-know-who is back in power for the third time, while the barely left-of-centre Democratic Party lost a tonne of seats and even the liberal Italy of Values Party just squeezed over the 4% mark.

[ 15 April 2008: Message edited by: Sean Cain ]

one historic consequence: a much simpler, more centrist Left/Right political landscape:

Experts on the left and the right said — and in some cases lamented — that the election had shown a shift toward a more American- or British-style system of two dominant middle-ground parties.

“It’s a Waterloo,” said Tuesday’s headline in the moderate left daily Il Riformista.
http://www.ilriformista.it/news/rif_lay_home_01.php?id_cat=4

Its editor, Antonio Polito, a departing senator from the now-defunct Margherita Party, said, “The left is disappearing for the first time in history.” Referring to Mr. Veltroni’s party, he added, “The only party that managed to save itself after two disastrous Prodi years is a party that is modeling itself after the Democratic or Labor Parties” in the United States and Britain, respectively.

Mr. Berlusconi’s spokesman, Paolo Bonaiuti, echoed the analysis. “Italy has rewarded a simplification of the political panorama,” he said.

[ 15 April 2008: Message edited by: Geneva ]

In the 1948 election defeat however, a certain foreign power sailed an aircraft carrier (or two) to the coast of Italy and carried out the usual covert operations to influence that election ...

quote:

---

It means an utter divorce between the workers' and social movement and parliamentary politics, and a long road to rebuilding a class-struggle left.

---

If anything, Italians seem even less interested in this than North Americans. And with the passing of our demographic [55+] it will be in the dustbins of history.

[Which is not a comment on the potential for some kind of revoutionary movement, just for that backward gazing one.]

Meanwhile: yes, the near term prospects in Italy look pretty daunting. It doesn't help that ALL Italian electoral politics is in such disrepute, and really is at BEST nepotistic and peronal self-serving, when it isn't downright corrupt. The extrapaarliamentaries need something to connect to.

[ 15 April 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]

quote:

---

It is dreadful, but not surprising, given how timorous the Prodi government was - not standing up to the Vatican on LGBT and women's rights, support to imperialist "missions" in the Middle East and Central Asia... unlike the Zapatero government in Spain which has proven far more forthright.

---

quote:

---

The coalition comprising Berlusconi’s centre-right Partito della Libertà (PdL), Lega Nord and Movimento per l'Autonomia (MpA) has 340 out of 630 seats in the chamber of deputies, or lower house of parliament. PdL took 272 seats, the Lega Nord 60 and MpA 28.

Instead the centre-left alliance comprising former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni’s Partito Democratico (PD) and Antonio di Pietro’s Italia dei Valori (IdV) took a total of 239 seats: 211 for the PD and 28 for IdV.

Pier Ferdinando Casini’s centrist Unione di Centro (UDC) took 36 seats while two have gone to the Partito Popolare Sudtirolese (SVP) and one to Aut.Lib Democratie.

In the senate, or upper house, the PdL-Lega Nord-MpA alliance won 171 out of a total of 315 seats, 144 for Berlusconi’s party, 25 for the Lega Nord and 2 for MpA.

PD-IdV took a total of 130 seats, 16 for the PD and 14 for IdV. UDC has 3 seats, SVP 2, SVP-Insieme per le autonomie 2 and Vallée d’Aoste 1.

The 18 seats reserved for the four overseas constituencies – 12 in the chamber of deputies and 6 in the senate – still have to be assigned.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
But then why didn't Italians rally to the "Refounded" Communists and/or Greens who demanded these kinds of policies? Instead they were the big losers in the election.

---

right, Italians did not vote for them: Italy has been trending towards a simpler, two-party political alignment for decades, and the eclipse of these now-minor parties was just the end of the long process;

remember, already in the mid-1970s, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) had become the party of much of the Italian progressive, urban middle class; the elegant Enrico Berlinguer was visibly choking on the yoke of the hammer and sickle until, at the end of the Cold War, it was all thrown overboard by these de facto reformists

a guy like Walter Veltroni - a pro-American, Robert Kennedy-loving, basketball-fan, modern-guy European - came up through the PCI, too, and like the rest of society, dumped Marxism Leninism in the 1980s, so he could address more realistically the problems of modern post-industrial Italy

so now he is the head of the Italian "Democrats", the clear alternative to the Italian "Republicans", in an era when not one in 100 Italian voters is waiting for the Revolution anymore

conclusion: a clear response to the voters' clear political demands
-- they just want the garbage picked up

[ 15 April 2008: Message edited by: Geneva ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Geneva:

remember, already in the mid-1970s, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) had become the party of much of the Italian progressive, urban middle class; the elegant Enrico Berlinguer was visibly choking on the yoke of the hammer and sickle until, at the end of the Cold War, it was all thrown overboard by these de facto reformists

---

"Liberal communists" of this sort are about as successful as liberal protestants. They are generally approved of (but seldom joined) by the same relatively affluent, well-educated demographic but have little contact with the lives of the vast majority and even less with the lives of the very poor; these generally ignore them, seeing them more or less for what they are.

(It would be wrong to construe the above as an endorsement of some kind of fundamentalism, religious or political. There are other possibilities.)

[fixed typo]

[ 15 April 2008: Message edited by: RosaL ]

quote:

---

conclusion: a clear response to the voters' clear political demands
-- they just want the garbage picked up

---

Meanwhile in Germany the Left Party openly questions capitalism and the New World Order. They are offering a different path and the people are responding. Their numbers have risen so much that even the neo-lib parties are forced to talk about the minimum wage, imperialism and corporate corruption instead of the usual crap about tax cuts and "reforming" the system.

Yes the Italian left got trounced (they were doomed from the start with the previously disastrous "professor" in charge) and they will continue to be as long as they continue to believe that neo-liberalism is better than neo-conservativism.

[ 15 April 2008: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by N.Beltov:
Wilf, do you have anything more to say about the right wing strategy of hindering the fragmented left?

---

quote:

---

Under the system that was adopted just in time for the last elections (April, 2006) by Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition, the electoral rules are strongly majoritarian. Of course, the media always blame proportional representation for Italy’s short-duration governments. However, few systems are actually more majoritarian than what Italy currently has: Any pre-electoral bloc of parties that can obtain a plurality of votes over any other party or bloc is guaranteed at least 55% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Only then does the proportional element come in, as this majority bloc of seats is divided proportionally among the parties in the alliance that won the vote plurality. (And the remaining seats are similarly divided among the rest of the blocs and their component parties.) The Senate allocation formula is essentially the same, but allocation is carried out on a regional basis, rather than nationally. The regional element in the second chamber, as well as the presence of some lifetime senators, is what results in Prodi’s majority being narrower in the senate than in the chamber (158 seats won out of 301 in 2006, compared to 156 for the opposition).

The current system was put in place by Berlusconi and his allies in the expectation that it would be impossible for the center-left to unite, and thus the right could win a large majority of parliament even if its aggregate support declined from the previous election. It almost worked, as the election was razor-thin in the votes (49.7% to 49.5%). But with virtually all parties having combined into one of two big blocs, and with the center-left being just ahead in votes, it was the center-left and Prodi that came out ahead.

Before this week, Prodi had already survived one crisis in the Senate, when he resigned in response to losing a vote on NATO troop deployments (and which was not, in fact, a confidence vote). He was able to come back from that bit of brinkmanship stronger than he had been before it. This time seems quite different.

A proportional representation system – an actual PR system – could make Italy much more governable than the impostor the country currently has, especially if it had a 3-5% threshold. To the extent that small parties in the governing coalition have been a problem under the current system – and they certainly have been – it is worth noting that these parties are boosted by the current electoral system’s non-proportional provisions. For instance, the second largest party in Prodi’s alliance, the Communist Refoundation, won only 5.7% of the votes in the 2006 election. Yet it has 6.5% of the seats in parliament. Every other party in the alliance has less than 3% of the votes, yet each is over-represented. Collectively, the seven parties other than the largest (L’Ulivo) and Refoundation, have 10.6% of the votes, yet 12.9% of the seats. The party that left the coalition this week, the Popolari-UDEUR, won only 1.4% of the vote (both houses) and has 10 seats in the Chamber and only 3 in the Senate. Given the narrower margin in the Senate, that was a pivotal share. Under a PR system, especially with a modest threshold, these small parties would have to combine with others or be out of parliament. Then there is the likely fact that a PR system would mean some parties would leave their current bloc and be available to support either major party and its allies in government. That would be an asset, not a flaw, of a new PR system in Italy.

Will the center-left parties have to contest an election under the current system, which would almost certainly then play out the way Berlusconi had intended the 2006 election to play out? Or can they agree on a different system being passed by a temporary government, thereby delaying the election and perhaps snatching victory from the jaws of this week’s big defeat?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by N.Beltov:
I thought the "Red" Brigades were simply fascists, or provocateurs, possibly mixed in with some legitimate anarchists, dressed up as leftists to discredit the latter?

---

In Italy you have the following combine: neo-fascist autonomists + anti-immigrant sentiment.

And the centre-left itself is so diluted by neoliberalism, that the electorate no longer sees much difference.

quote:

---

And the centre-left itself is so diluted by neoliberalism, that the electorate no longer sees much difference.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

If they really wanted something different, they could have voted for the Communist/Green "rainbow alliance" - but they didn't.

---