Electoral reform is not a priority for Italy

 

The main obstacle to a realignment of Italian politics is Silvio Berlusconi. As long as he is in place, there will be no realignment of Italian politics. But this is desperately needed. Romano Prodi’s government is effectively finished. This is not only the comment of a cynical journalist, but this is what ministers and senior party folk inside the government are saying themselves. They also say that they do not believe that the Prodi administration can last for much more than a few months. At present there is simply no alternative. A grand coalition would bring Mr Berlusconi back into power, and this is, by general consensus, the worst option of all. Mr Berlusconi’s continued leadership of Forza d’Italy is, in fact, the reason why many politicians of the centre-right are also opposed early elections.

 

So the single most important priority of Italian politics at this moment is not a new election law but a realignment of the right. The fundamental trouble with the right is that Forza Italia, Italy’s single largest political party, has a disreputable leader, While the disreputable Alleanza Nationale has a highly respectable leader in Gianfranco Fini. Fini himself regards himself as the natural successor to lead a united centre-right party. There may be challengers, such as Giulio Tremonti, a former finance and deputy prime minister under Berlusconi, but at this stage Fini appears to be the strongest candidate. The trouble is: someone has to tell Berlusconi that he should go. But a united centre-right party under Fini would be something else, a potentially powerful force for change.

 

The centre-right’s strategy is to let the Prodi government make a mess for another year or two, by which time it hopes to be ready to take over. From a party political perspective, this may make sense. But it is not the best strategy for the country as a whole. Italy needs a strong government to implement a whole series of important economic reforms, to the pension system, to the public sector, to the corporatist institutions – which the Prodi government is not capable of undertaking. Only a Grand Coalition could achieve this, given the present majorities.

 

The heated debate about the ideal voting systems, which is raging among Italian academics – whether to return to a first-past-the-post system or whether to adopt a French-style second round run-off system or some hybrid system – is no doubt important, but it will take time to implement. It is tomorrow’s problem. The most urgent problem today is to get a government in place that solves Italy’s problems.

 

In my view, the next generation of leaders of the centre-right and the centre-left should get together, send Mr Berlusconi and Mr Prodi into their well-deserved retirement, and start a grand coalition among each other, with a time-limited mandate to implement reforms, perhaps one year. By all means, let’s fight the next election under a new electoral law. But let us be pragmatic in the meantime. That, to me at least, seems the most sensible way forward.

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