The states of western Europe continue to resist harmonisation. On the
same day last week that the chicaneries of every antiquated careerist
vying for the New Labour deputy leadership were made public, each
justifying his or her grotesque decision to support the war and
occupation of Iraq, the centre-left Italian government - not yet a year
old - fell after a debate on foreign policy in the upper chamber.
It was not Iraq that was at issue here. Unlike New Labour (protected by
undemocratic electoral laws and MPs unmoved by the suffering in Iraq),
all of the Italian left and 80% of the population opposed that war. The
dispute concerned two issues: Operation Enduring Freedom - the
satirical self-description of the Nato occupation of Afghanistan - and
the expansion of the US military base in Vicenza in northern Italy.
Two leftwing senators voted against the government in the Italian
senate after the prime minister, Romano Prodi, and his foreign
minister, Massimo D’Alema, had made the vote an issue of confidence,
arguing that Afghanistan was a legal war because it was supported by
the UN. Prodi’s arguments failed to sway the two dissenting senators.
He might still have won, but three of the seven octogenarian life
senators abandoned him as well. One was in bed with flu. Giulio
Andreotti (a former prime minister and one of the most corrupt)
abstained because he was unhappy about gay marriages, and Ferrari
designer Sergio Pininfarina, transported to the senate from the airport
in a government limo, also abstained, possibly by mistake since he is a
rare visitor to the senate.
As a result, a weakened Prodi, prudent spokesman of an immoderate
bourgeoisie, resigned. His popularity was already on the wane, as was
that of his neoliberal finance minister, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, whose
attempts to increase short-term contracts for workers have also divided
the government - indeed, many of its supporters and a few ministers
participated in the protests of last November in defence of universal,
publicly financed social services.
Could it be that they wanted to be defeated so as to rejig the
coalition by attracting a moderate centre-right party to join their
ranks and dumping the Refounded Communists? It’s a risky operation,
especially as the RC leader, Fausto Bertinotti (drunk with happiness at
becoming a dignitary of the state) has kept his principles under heavy
wraps.
When Prodi was asked to form a new government last Friday, he insisted
all the constituent parties of the centre-left Union should sign up to
12 points, which included neoliberal “reforms” and unconditional
support for his foreign policy, but, mysteriously, not gay
partnerships. Bertinotti signed without hesitation and instructed his
enforcer inside the Refounded Communist party to remove the dissenting
senator Franco Turigliatto from the party without further ado
(ironically, the same enforcer, Guido Cappelloni, expelled the
dissident “Manifesto group” from the old Communist party in 1969).
And all this in the face of endless intrigue against the ruling
coalition’s policies by elements from Prodi’s own centrist political
base. Only a week before the crisis erupted, Prodi had explicitly
forbidden any member of the cabinet from participation in the mass
protest at the extension of the Vicenza base. Now the crisis within the
left is out in the open. Sixty-two per cent of Italians and 73% of the
government’s supporters want to withdraw all Italian troops from
Afghanistan. Like centrist politicians elsewhere, Silvio Berlusconi,
Prodi and D’Alema are united in ignoring public opinion. Were it not
for factional divisions on other issues (especially patronage and
corrupt commissions) the opposition would have voted with Prodi.
It would be mistaken to imagine that hostility to US imperial
adventures comes only from the left. The positive response to the
European parliament’s report denouncing 1,245 CIA flights from Europe
included figures from the centre-right. Gijs de Vries, the EU’s
anti-terrorism tsar and, till recently, staunchly pro-Washington, will
resign in March because he has “lost faith” in his US partners. Sergio
Romano, a leading centre-right figure, publicly declared he was opposed
to all US bases on Italian soil. Why? "We know very well that the
Americans used their bases in Djibouti to attack al-Qaida in Ethiopia
this year ... If they decide to attack Hizbullah, God forbid, they’ll
be using Italian bases to do it. And we won’t be told beforehand. We’ll
learn the next day. And you become complicit in such things."
Prodi’s 12 points notwithstanding, Italian politics remains volatile:
Prodi faces a new knife-edge confidence vote tomorrow and another vote
on Afghanistan next month if he survives that. Grandees of the
centre-left and centre-right exude the stench of putrefaction.
Nor is this just an Italian disease. The fact that the leaders of the
Refounded Communist party cave in to the Washington consensus in return
for government posts reflects a far wider problem. Increasingly,
official politics in the west ignores public opinion at will. Britain
is a striking example. Mass hostility to Blair’s wars and the
replacement of Trident barely finds an echo in parliament. The BBC had
to be neutered and only 12 Labour MPs managed to vote for an inquiry
into British involvement in Iraq. It is the increasing distance between
rulers and ruled that threatens the functioning of democracy and leads
to desperation.