Italy, the spectrum of a new ungovernability

During these last turbulent weeks of the year, Italian are getting ready to give practice to the most rooted New Year Eve’s tradition: old-stuff throwing. Before the invention of fireworks, every Italian family was indeed used to store what had become old and useless and to throw it from houses at midnight, exorcising so the bad stuff affecting them during the year.

The political scenario shaped during the last days seems going in the same direction. The year-long experience of Monti government has indeed importantly restored the approach of Italian to politics. After a long period of political conflicts’ personalization, the experience of the technical government has brought back the contents as the core of the political agenda. As a consequence, the political class, able to attract consensus during Berlusconism, has been obliged to re-think its approach to the Italian electorate, abolishing from their political manifestos abstract consensus-driven announcements. Despite the critics to the orthodoxy of its austerity, Monti government has been indeed appreciated by Italians for the accuracy and the reliability expressed during its term. Not being interested in creating consensus around its policies, Monti has allowed the Italian electorate to become much more aware of the situation of the country, honestly explaining the reasons behind its unpopular reforms. Consequentially, the vanishing of the sacrifices done in the last year due to the coming back of an irresponsible political class is what Italian fear most. In a daily-changing political scenario, this will be the criteria leading Italian at the upcoming elections of February 24. Coherently to their chances to get in power, the political parties are consequentially planning their electoral campaign around it. Three are the main coalition which will be protagonists in the upcoming electoral dispute: the Democratic Party, “Monti” coalition and the Berlusconi one. Even though their programmatic agendas differ, they share a constant: any of them will be able to get the majority of votes. Italy will so flip back to the period of ungovernability.

The Democratic Party (Pd), despite representing the widest percentage of would-be electors, will not be able to go further than a 35 percent of votes. As a consequence, the needed bargaining processes will erode the implementation of important part of its policies, leading Italian in a parliamentary mud-stucking.

The moderate coalition, gathered around the manifesto Monti settled in his Sunday resignation’s conference, will use its 12-15 percent of votes in order to support the would-be government (Pd) in the implementation of the liked reforms, playing the role of a parliamentary part-time partner. Indeed, despite the popularity around its figure, Monti will not be able to achieve the majority in the Parliament and consequentially the role of Prime Minister.

Finally Berlusconi, despite the intense effort in conducting a massive TV electoral campaign (in less than two weeks he has already been interviewed in several of the most popular talk shows), seems not anymore able to have an appeal on the majority of the Italian electorate. Proposing again himself as the perfect spokesperson of the still-existing vulgar part of the Italian electorate, Berlusconi will try to wake it up, settling an agenda based upon anti-Monti and anti-European perspectives, trying so to surf the anti-political irresponsible feelings which pervades Italian society. However, despite Berlusconi ability to drive consensus and to create meta-narrations about him, his coalition will not go further than a 25-28 percent of votes, becoming the main opposition in the Parliament. Furthermore, even though his role in the Italian political future will not be anymore the one of the protagonist, Berlusconi was again the one who determined it. Causing the resignation of Monti, he buried the soon-expected reformed electoral law, condemning Italy to a future ungovernability in a scenario which still nowadays presents a high reticence to abandon anachronistic ideological schemes and a capillary persecution of personal-partial interests. The post-electoral fragmentation of the Parliament (seven parties) will indeed distance even more Italy from bipolarism, proposing again a counterproductive intra and infra-coalitions bargaining which will strengthen the lethal interest-consensus’ practice. Furthermore, European Union will start to pressure back on the country and the financial markets will start speculating back on its insolvency. The intervention of a post-electoral technical government will be newly implemented. Italy will sadly step a year and half back.