Opinions | Columnists
Is Europe turning right?
The rightwards turn in France and Italy may be more than offset by a left turn in the United States in the November presidential and Congressional elections.
- By Amir Taheri, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:17 April 23, 2008
- Image Credit: Illustration: Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
Exactly a year after France turned right and elected Nicolas Sarkozy as president with a huge margin, Italy has also taken a turn to the right by bringing back Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister with an unprecedented majority.
There are now signs that Britain, too, maybe about to tilt to the right in a general election that most observers believe could come early next year. As for Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel appears well set to dominate the right-led coalition government even after the next general election, probably in 2009.
However, because history is always fond of ironies, the rightwards turn in Europe may be more than offset by a left turn in the United States in the November presidential and Congressional elections.
The prospect of a President Barack Obama working with a set of right-of-centre European leaders would be worth the price of the ticket to watch.
But let us return to Italy for the time being.
Berlusconi has been the béte-noire of the European left for almost two, decades. Today, there is no one that European leftists hate most. This is why they have presented his victory as if it were a hold-up.
One reads of "the media tycoon" who has just "snatched an election victory" instead of going to prison for unspecified crimes. The phrase most often used by analysts is stark: Italian democracy is in crisis!
Reality, however, is quite different.
To start with, it is fair to recall that over 80 per cent of Italians eligible to vote did so on April 13, a record for a parliamentary election in any of the mature democracies. No sign of crisis there.
The election campaign itself was the most rigorously fought in Italy since its liberation from Fascist rule in 1944. Berlusconi, often portrayed by the media as something of a clown, if not a conjurer of tricks, managed to put the case for a market-based capitalist and democratic system in simple but powerful terms.
His rival, the former Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, who led the newly created Democrat Party, was equally successful in putting the case of the alternative, that is to say a social-democratic system with the state playing the central role as a distributor of wealth and welfare.
Berlusconi spoke of discipline, family values, hard work and individual generosity.
Veltroni countered with his talk of solidarity, sharing and collective compassion.
On foreign policy, Berlusconi advocated a strategy of peace based on strength with a tough message against "all enemies of democracy across the globe". Veltroni riposted by offering a policy of " dialogue and accommodation." Berlusconi was unabashedly pro-American, promising to strengthen trans-Atlantic relations, especially in the context of the global war on terror.
Veltroni urged greater European solidarity and made most of the usual anti-American noises supposed to please the caviar-and-champagne left in the West.
Both men steered clear of mealy-mouthed generalities designed to obfuscate rather than clarify their positions. They did not try to steal each other's clothes for the occasion or confuse the voter with doubletalk and contradictory promises.
For the first time in decades, Italian voters had a clear choice. And they liked it. The People of Freedom bloc led by Berlusconi won 47 per cent of the votes, the highest score ever for a coalition of Italian political parties. This would translate into 340 seats in the national assembly.
The Democrat Party, led by Veltroni, obtained 38 per cent of the votes and 239 seats. Thus, Berlusconi ends up with a parliamentary majority of 101 seats, a record in Italian electoral history. (By comparison, the outgoing coalition led by Prime Minister Romano Prodi had a majority of one seat.)
The extremist parties of both left and right almost evaporated. The Communists, who had been one of the two largest parties in Italy for more than half a century, together with their extreme left allies, ended up with just three per cent of the votes and no seats.
The extreme right, with Alessandra Mussolini, the Fascist dictator's granddaughter and Sophia Loren's niece, as its mascot, did even worse, collecting two per cent of the votes and winning no seats.
Italy will also become the first major European nation to have no Greens in its new parliament.
Spectacular comeback
Coming so soon after the victory of the French right in both presidential and parliamentary elections last year, the spectacular comeback of the right in Italy may be part of a new European trend that is also reshaping the political landscape in Britain.
Under Sarkozy, France has decided to rejoin the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) as a full member. Sarkozy has also cancelled his predecessor Jacque Chirac's plan to withdraw French troops from Afghanistan. (In fact he has just agreed to send an extra 800 men to Afghanistan.)
Bound by a personal friendship dating back to the 1980s, Sarkozy and Berlusconi are clearly determined to strengthen the Atlantic alliance under US leadership, an objective also shared by Merkel, albeit with far less passion.
Is Italy moving towards a two-party system of the kind established in Britain and the United States since the 19th century? It is too early to tell. This week's election, however, shed that only five of the 38 parties that still compete for votes in Italy have an electoral base close to the four per cent threshold fixed by the proportional representation system.
Italy needs a stable government capable of taking tough decisions. The new government must tackle the Mafia, which has returned stronger than ever, contain secessionist trends in the north, and bring the nation's spiralling public debt under control.
Far from being in crisis, Italian democracy has its first chance of forming a stable government backed by a strong majority and checked by a robust opposition.
For all that, Berlusconi, who is to form his third government, and the 62nd in Italy's post-War history, may fail to make good use of the unprecedented opportunity given him.
If he does, it would be his own fault, not the fault of the Italian voters who have defied pundits and restored his right-of-centre movement to power so soon after his defeat just two years ago.
Amir Taheri is an Iranian writer based in Europe.
Share this article
Popular in Opinions
-
Opinions
Speak Your Mind: Tough love
What ways do you use to discipline your child?
Opinion Editor's choice
-
Dissenting neighbours
The cultural and political divide between Indonesia and Malaysia widens
-
Striving for peace
Hasib J. Sabbagh has worked for the betterment of the society
-
Mr Consul General, you're out of line sir
Is Mr Otsuka representing Japan in the UAE?
