Home > Communist success in Italy backfires on Prodi
Edito Discriminations-Minorit. Parties Elections-Elected Italy
By Tony Barber in Rome
An experiment in holding US-style primary elections has backfired for Italy’s
centre-left opposition by denting the image of moderate reformism that party
leaders deem vital to defeat Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister, in 2006.
To the surprise of opinion pollsters, and to the dismay of many centre-left leaders,
a self-declared gay Catholic hardline communist, emerged as the winner this week
in a primary contest to choose the opposition’s candidate to run for governor
of the southern region of
Puglia in April.
The result was a propaganda gift to Italy’s ruling centre-right and to Mr Berlusconi
personally. He will stand for re-election as premier next year, and he likes
nothing better than to portray his opponents as a mixture of dangerous, unreformed communists and hapless innocents in their pockets.
In one typical comment from the government’s ranks,
Giovanni Alemanno, Mr Berlusconi’s agriculture
minister, said the Puglia result showed "a strongly
radical drift inside the centre-left".
Romano Prodi, the former European Commission president
and de facto opposition leader, put the Puglia events
in a positive light. "It was a great example of
democracy," he said, noting that 80,000 voters had
taken part in what was Italy’s first such primary
election.
But there was no disguising his surprise at the result,
nor the fears of moderate centre-left leaders about the
implications for their chances of driving the
government from power in the 2006 national elections.
To challenge Mr Berlusconi, Mr Prodi is putting
together a so-called "grand democratic alliance",
stretching from small centrist parties to communists.
But the unstated premise of his strategy is that he
will woo moderate or undecided Italian voters by
keeping the far left on a tight leash.
With that in mind, Mr Prodi, knowing he is the front-
runner, wants to hold primaries in May to choose the
opposition candidate for prime minister. But the Puglia
result is encouraging leaders of small parties to
challenge him in the hope of maximising influence on a
future Prodi government.
Candidates now include Fausto Bertinotti, leader of the
Communist Refoundation party, whose candidate won in
Puglia; Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, the Greens leader; and
Antonio Di Pietro, a former anti-corruption prosecutor
who leads the Italy of Values party.
By contrast, the two largest opposition parties - the
Democrats of the Left (DS) and the Margherita (Daisy)
party - find themselves squeezed out of the limelight
because they have allowed Mr Prodi to become standard-
bearer of the mainstream centre-left.
They now worry that the process may make the centre-
left unelectable at national level by boosting the
profile of Mr Bertinotti and hardline communists.
The centre-left kept a modest lead last year in most
opinion polls, but according to Renato Mannheimer, a
leading pollster, the 2006 election will be fought
largely on economic themes, with the result potentially
determined by a small percentage of as yet undecided
moderate voters.
In Puglia, pre-primary opinion polls indicated a
victory for the candidate whom the main opposition
parties intended to symbolise that appeal to
moderation.
But the surprise winner was Nichi Vendola, a hardline
communist, self-declared gay and Catholic believer -
although it was his deep local knowledge of Puglia that
appeared to explain his victory.
Few think Mr Vendola has much chance of defeating the
centre-right incumbent in Puglia, but all centre-left
parties have agreed to respect the primary’s result and
support him in April.
Now Italy’s opposition has opened the Pandora’s box of
primaries, it may prove impossible to close it again.