The Rise of Beppe Grillo is a Symptom of Italy's Crisis

posted by Geoff Andrews at Saturday, February 23, 2013



In September 2002 I was in Piazza San Giovanni in Rome to hear the film director Nanni Moretti address up to a million – estimates of these events always vary wildly – of his ‘girotondini’; literally ‘ring a ring a roses’ participants. This was a very civilised but indignant demonstration attended by a broad range of mainly centre-left groups opposed to what they saw as Silvio Berlusconi’s abuse of power and defence of his private interests. At the time Berlusconi was just over a year in to his second spell as Prime Minister, and momentum within the opposition had been growing among large union and anti-global movements.

A few months earlier, Moretti had walked out of another Rome square, Piazza Navona, after telling centre-left leaders they would ‘never win’. He blamed them – rightly as it happens – for failing to deal with Berlusconi ; notably for not passing conflicts of interest legislation and for lack of unity and effective leadership. Those leaders, which included Massimo D’Alema, Francesco Rutelli and others, were offended by Moretti’s action. However, history has shown him to be accurate, as Berlusconi went on to dominate Italian politics even as the worst aspects of his regime became public knowledge and the economic crisis intensified.

At the culmination of this 2013 election campaign, Piazza San Giovanni was packed once more. Again estimates of numbers varied wildly, but the tones were angrier and the rhetoric heavier. Members of the press were not welcomed by the assembly. Beppe Grillo, the comedian, blogger, and now candidate for Italy’s highest office, was making a last appeal to his supporters. Many of these were in their twenties and thirties, part of that lost generation which Italy desperately needs to bring growth, creativity and above all hope. Grillo’s support seemed to be rising fast - opinion polls stop 15 days before election day – and he was looking to end his campaign on a high.

Much of what he said, in what came over as a prolonged rant at Italy’s political class, made sense. After all, Italy’s leaders are a sorry bunch. Not only have they failed to offer a way out of the economic mess, but they have been incapable of providing wider reform of the political system or of opening up its institutions to anything remotely resembling a meritocracy. Don’t even mention the word ‘transparency’ in a society still dominated by protected interests and organised corruption. Grillo’s long-standing pledge is to tackle the criminality of Italy’s politicians and his call to ‘send them home’ got the biggest cheer of the night.

His appeal is particularly popular among younger Italians - at least those who have yet to join Italy’s growing exiled diaspora in Europe. This generation of Italians have most to fear. Unemployment, the difficulty of getting the chance to start a business or independence from their family, low wages and insecure work are common. Italy needs to find a solution for its young people.

However, Grillo is not the solution. It is true that he has been ignored by Italy’s press a lot of the time and, despite their contempt, increasingly feared by the mainstream politicians. But he has also exhausted his mission; he has become a symbol of discontent, but the need now is to get on with the alternative. His protest could yet extend to holding some balance of political power in the new government and, if so, his terms of negotiation will not be easy. But his rhetoric of all or nothing, a referendum on the euro and tarnishing all his opponents with the same brush is not, in the end, a solution. The same evening that Grillo was ranting in the piazza, Nanni Moretti was in a Rome theatre repeating his warning of 2002 and the urgent need for ‘conflicts of interest’ legislation to today’s leader centre-left Pierluigi Bersani, who now seems close to victory. The road to reform in Italy may turn out to be a quieter affair than Grillo would like.



The Italian Election: in Berlusconi's Shadow

posted by Geoff Andrews at Tuesday, February 12, 2013

This was supposed to be Italy’s new beginning. Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation from the post of prime minister in November 2011 - the fourth such departure of his dizzying career - was the definitive sign that the country was about to take a different path. The scenes of jubilation outside the Quirinale Palace as the beleaguered premier notified President Napolitano - where some of Berlusconi's opponents even sang the hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah - seemed to confirm the sense of an historic shift.


The appointment of the reform-minded technocrat Mario Monti as his successor, talk among Italy’s scattered generation of trentenni (thirty-somethings) of a return home to help renew the country, and then Berlusconi’s conviction for tax fraud and banning from public office in October 2012 - all contributed to the narrative of an Italy that was at last forging ahead and leaving behind the figure who had dominated its public life for the last two decades.



As the general election of 24-25 February 2013 approaches, however, the question of what has really changed in Italy is inescapable. True, some things are different. The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) has a new leader, the amiable (if "old school") Pierluigi Bersani, who trounced his younger ("Blairite") opponent Matteo Renzi, the mayor of Florence, in primary elections praised for involving the wider participation of the electorate. There is a new influx of PD women candidates, in a political system renowned for its low percentage of female MPs. And Monti himself has entered the political arena, attempting to build a centrist coalition for change under the banner "With Monti For Italy".



But other elements suggest less of a fresh start. Monti's main partners - Future and Freedom, led by post-Fascist Gianfranco Fini, and Pierferdinando Casini’s Union of Christian Democrats - are former coalition allies of Berlusconi. Monti's year in office, which officially ended after parliament approved Italy's 2013 budget on 21 December (and Berlusconi’s party withdrew support for his government), may have been popular amongst Italy’s European partners, but its limited reforms of pensions, taxes and public services failed to win a strong domestic consensus. Most were seen as straightforward austerity measures, and many Italians regarded him as overly cautious and afraid of upsetting party interests. On the wider issues of generating growth and stimulating competition, the main long-term weakness of Italy’s economy, Monti failed.



So if Monti's reputation among the European allies (and senior figures in Italy) is high, the harsh effects of his policies meant he couldn't win over Italy's new generation. This left him vulnerable to populism of both left and right. Beppe Grillo’s "Five Star Movement" has continued to grow - much to the disquiet of the political class - and could yet have an impact on the election result. Monti’s own support lags behind Grillo’s, and any hope of cementing a progressive centre-left alternative with Bersani has been eclipsed by wrangling and counter accusation. Monti’s likely condition for a post-election agreement seems to rest on Bersani breaking with Nichi Vendola’s Left & Ecology movement; an unlikely scenario given any possible electoral majority needs the latter's support.



But it is the shadow of Silvio Berlusconi, and the centre-left’s fear and timidity in addressing his electoral threat, that are beginning to define this campaign. Berlusconi had announced the end of his political career, and his ability once more to challenge for power is partly owed to the vagaries of a justice system where the first conviction in a case is not definitive and subject to further processes and appeals. The very fact that he is in the race will astonish many observers elsewhere in western Europe, where similar legal findings would have had serious political consequences for someone in Berlusconi's position. But in two ways, the centre-left that must take a major share of the responsibility for Berlusconi's revival.



First, in a live television debate on the independent La 7 channel, Berlusconi got the better of the host Michele Santoro, a long-standing adversary (Santoro had worked for RAI, the state broadcaster, and the former prime minister was widely alleged to have forced his removal). In the broadcast, Santoro’s guest interviewers - including the leading Berlusconi critic Marco Travaglio - were allowed to air their own agendas rather than interrogating Berlusconi on his own legal troubles and poor economic record in office. In Travaglio’s case this meant an interminable monologue which presented no difficulty for Berlusconi (whose vintage performance included demonstratively wiping Travaglio’s seat). In a single programme on his favoured medium, he managed to revive his fortunes at the invitation of his lamentable opponents.



There are many excellent journalists in Italy, but the inability to employ rigorous interviewing that can hold those in power to account has often been apparent. This reflects a wider failure of the free media in Italy, namely to practise its wider constitutional role of facilitating information and transparency. In this particular case, Berlusconi had apparently been able to set down his own rules beforehand on what could or could not be covered in the "interview".



Second, the decision by the centre-left president of Rome's newest art museum, Giovanna Melandri, to suspend the screening of a documentary film in Rome until after the election - on the grounds that it was "over-political" - is another example of the mixture of extraordinary timidity and party-based machinations that operates in Italy's public life. The film - Girlfriend in a Coma, made by Annalisa Piras and Bill Emmott (and based on the former Economist editor’s book Bill Emmott, Good Italy, Bad Italy: Why Italy Must Conquer its Demons to Face the Future [Yale University Press, 2012]) - is intended to open up a debate about Italy, in particular the kind of economic and political reforms necessary for its revival. That it should be banned by opponents of Berlusconi, who in office owned or controlled up to 90% of Italian TV, is remarkable enough. Even more, because the film, which includes interviews with a range of critics, including Roberto Saviano, Nanni Moretti and leading industrialists, is a serious contribution to national debate and in no way party-political. In part it is a call to recognise that Italy’s hope rests increasingly on a growing diaspora, waiting for the chance to bring their talents and innovations home.



It is this hope that has been extinguished, seemingly with the active help of the centre-left, at least from Italy’s immediate future. Berlusconi may be unlikely to win an overall victory in the election, though he has closed the gap as the campaign has progressed and could still affect the outcome. Moreover, in the complex electoral system which he himself created, it is quite possible that the centre-left will fail to get a majority in the senate, the upper house. And then? The shadow of Berlusconi will ensure that Italy’s problems continue.