Region: Post-election politics breaks from Brussels

"Ungovernable." That's how many Italian and other European news media described the political situation in Italy after the country's elections in February failed to produce a majority for either the center-left or the center-right in both chambers of Parliament. The vote's aftermath seems to prove them right.

Italians elected both a new lower and upper house Feb. 24 and 25, but due to differences in how seats in the two are allocated, forming a majority government looks nigh impossible.

The left wing Partido Democratico (Democratic Party), led by former Industry and Economic Development Minister Pier Luigi Bersani, squeezed out a narrow win in the national vote over former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Il Popolo della Liberta (The People of Freedom). As a result, it automatically got the majority in the lower chamber.

In the Senate, however, winners' bonus seats are awarded on a regional basis. Berlusconi's conservatives, in alliance with the federalist Lega Nord (Northern League), which seeks increased autonomy and ultimately independence for the economically stronger north of Italy, won a plurality of the votes in several key regions, including Lombardy and Veneto in the north and Campania and Apulia in the south. Even if it lost more than 50 Senate seats compared with the previous election, it still managed to deny Bersani a majority in the upper house that has equal law-making powers to the Chamber of Deputies.

So did the spectacular performance of former comedian Beppe Grillo's anti-establishment Five Star Movement. It won more than 25 percent of the votes nationwide, relegating the centrist coalition that supported incumbent Prime Minister Mario Monti's re-election to fourth place with just 10 percent.

Between them, Berlusconi's and Grillo's parties command a majority in the Senate, ruling out the possibility that Monti's supporters could prop up a left-wing government. Bersani would have to include either of them to form a government that is supported by majorities in both chambers, but that is unlikely to happen. Top members of his own party, as well as his main ally, Nichi Vendola of the smaller Sinistra Ecologia Liberta (Left Ecology Freedom), were quick to rule out a "grand coalition" with the conservatives in the days after the election.

Grillo, for his part, hurled insults at Bersani in his blog Feb. 27, describing the left-wing leader as a "dead man talking" and a "failed strain remover" who had the "arrogance" to ask his movement for support after denouncing it during the election campaign. Bersani said Grillo's populism - he rails against the perceived ineptitude of Italy's political class, corruption and the austerity policies supposedly implemented on Germany's insistence - was "dangerous" for the country.

Although Grillo, who will not take a seat in the legislature, but lead his movement as an outsider, rejected the possibility of formally backing any ruling coalition, he said he would support legislation that fits his platform. The Five Star Movement calls for tougher anti-graft and environmental laws, greener energy and free Internet access, among many other things that defy a particular ideology. Many of the Italians who voted for it seemed to have done so out of pure frustration with perennial political corruption scandals and their country's inability to grow out of a debt crisis.

Both Berlusconi and Grillo vehemently criticized Monti's austerity policies, which included labor market and pension reforms as well as tax increases, and see little need for Italy, which has the highest public debt in the eurozone relative to its annual economic output after Greece, to adhere to European fiscal laws. Part of Bersani's own base, particularly on the far left, was highly critical of Monti's attempts to liberalize the Italian economy. Whatever government comes out of the political turmoil that the Italians produced, if any, will therefore be less inclined to pursue the policies that are currently championed in Brussels.

Nick Ottens can be reached at
news@praguepost.com