The Italian elections of March 4, 2018 are novel and important in that they will mark the end of political bipolarism (Partito Democratico vs. Forza Italia) because of the role that two populist parties, Movimento 5 Stelle (Movement 5 Stars) and La Lega (no longer Lega Nord) will play, as well as for the effects they will have more generally both on Italian politics and on European politics.

Sunday is both the day of Italian parliamentary elections and the day of the referendum count in the SPD (German Social Democratic Party) on whether to approve or reject the Schulz-Merkel agreement. This conincidence emphasizes the centrality of the European theme. In Germany approval of the referendum in support of the Grosse Koalition between CDU and SPD could relaunch the European economy after years of financial rigor (just think of the ceding of the Ministry of Finance to a Social Democrat). But a failure will prolong German internal uncertainty and accelerate the disintegration of the EU. To consolidate the shaky agreements on monetary policy and restore popular vigor to the idea of Europe by blocking the development of populism fascistoids, as well as to address the most important issues that can no longer be solved strictly on a national level, a political and democratic architecture must be completed for the European Union and there must be regulatory unification – particularly fiscal.

In the European Union (EU) the agreement Merkel/Macron can open a new phase in the development of the EU and Italy has all the cards to play among the leading countries on this new course, provided that a reliable majority that is pro European prevails in the national elections.

Unfortunately, it seems that in Sunday’s Italian elections for the first time in thirty years we will not see the left and its allies contend for the government. Though the present party of the government, the Partito Democratico (PD), presents, in comparison with the demagogic programs of Berlusconi, Salvini and M5S, a more reliable program, it is in great difficulty, while LEU (Liberi e Uguali), which collects the exiles of the PD and the former Sinistra Italiana (Italian Left), does not seem able to be able to gain ground and collect all the dissatifaction from and disaffection with the Ex Premier and present PD party secretary, Mateo Renzi.

For its part, the PD is suffering from the unpopularity and rejection of Renzi himself aroused by the numerous errors committed by his government (the first of which is having lost the constitutional refendum in December 2016 which seemed on the merits to be winnable), his presumptuous attitudes and his failure to prevent the rift in the party (to the dismay of all the “noble fathers” of the PD, Napolitano, Prodi, Veltroni …). It is no accident that the PD prefers to identify today with Prime Minister Gentiloni and not the “rottamatore” (“Scrapper” of the political establishment) Renzi, the Party Secretary.

At the moment therefore the 2 movements that are contending for first place are the coalition of the Right and the M5S, but it is unclear whether either bloc can arrive at 40% of the vote, the share necessary to trigger the award of additional deputies in order to create a parliamentary majority and a government. The Camera dei Diputati has 630 members so a majority is 316.

The right is thought to be the prevailing alliance (Forza Italia, Lega, Fratelli d’Italia and other small groups belong to it). But this is a fake alliance. The parties that make it up have radically different positions. Let’s take the two main ones: the Lega di Matteo Salvini wants to abolish the Fornero law that brought high health care spending under control. Forza Italia is against the abolishment of Fornero. Forza Italia proposes a flat tax at 25%, which Salvini instead would like to see at 15% (“I’ll give you more” says an old Italian song that summarizes the faulty logic of so much Italian politics, often also on the left). The conflict on the right is clearly about which of the two, Salvini or ex premier Silvio Berlusconi, will lead the coalition (Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), Giorgia Meloni’s party takes second seat). And above all, the Lega is anti European (but Salvini is mitigating a bit of his hostility), while Berlusconi has represented himself as of the EPP (European People’s Party), a group of which Forza Italia is part of in the European Parliament, as though FI is the guarantor of Europeanism in Italy. As much as the Italo Right transformation reminds us that even to get money and power you can give up everything and say anything, it seems that especially on Europe the break will be difficult to overcome when the EU has to impose austerity on the easy spending of a right-wing government.

There remain allegations and illusions about the possibility that Renzi and Berlusconi can agree on a sort of big coalition in the name of the EU: after all, it will be remembered that the Renzi government was blessed by the Nazarene pact (Aggrement between Renzi and Berlusconi to mutually support consitutional reform of the Senate and electoral reform) – January 18, 2014 – with Berlusconi! The electoral projections at the moment make this perspective problematic: the PD is at 21.5%; FI at 18%. The PD will hope that its allies do not reach 3%(the threshold for seats in parliament) and then, as the electoral law just approved mandates, give their votes to the PD. Salvini is rising in the polls, and FI will rely on a fringe in the League led by the former President of the Lombardy Region, Maroni.

It is more difficult to evaluate the M5S, polling in the last surveys at around 29%. The fact that the right-wing coalition led by FI and La Lega is the main competitor means that M5S tends to turn to the left to attract votes. On paper it could turn out to be the top vote getter, and the President of the Republic could grant it the exploratory task of the formation of a government, but the M5S refuses to make alliances, in order to enhance its image as an antisystem force, and perhaps it hopes to find agreement in parliament on individual issues. The premier candidate, 32 year old Luigi Di Maio, has started to make public the names of the prospective members of his government, proposing the General of the Carabinieri Sergio Costa, the mover of the investigations on the Land of Fires (the story of toxic waste buried in the agricultural fields of Campania by organizations related to the Camorra ), for the Minister of the Environment. Other names will be made public in the coming days. The program has been refined and made more specific in contrast to the very demagogic initial buzzwords, but the weakness of the M5S remains the unreliability of its precarious process of selection of political personnel through the online network and under the control of the Casaleggio company (Casaleggio Sr. was a computer whiz and the founder of M5S with comedian Beppe Grillo).

Among the many other parties in the running, it is important to highlight above all LEU (Liberi and Uguali) led by Pietro Grasso, President of the Senate, and by the President of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini. The backbone of this formation is however made up of by exiles from the PD, first and foremost Bersani and D’Alema , and cadres from Sinistra Italiana (Italian Left). The latest polls (after the 17th of February opinion polls can no longer be disclosed) gave them 5.4%. It is difficult to hypothesize their political role after the elections, except in the case of the impossibility of forming a new majority, and therefore in external support of the current Gentiloni government if it were extended by the President of the Republic with the task of making a new (again!) electoral law with which to hold new elections (this was a point D’Alema made in a recent interview).

Another new party that has aroused some interest on the left is Potere al Popolo (Power to the People), a formation born of a lively movement from below to redefine leftist politics and initially led by two civil society personalities, Anna Falcone and Tommaso Montanari: the former then joined the lists of LEU, while the latter is mentioned by some press as a possible Minister of the M5S. Potere al Popolo is polling at 0.8%

The most attentive readers will note the absence in this piece of mine of the immigration theme that also inflames all the “apolitical” transmissions of Berlusconi’s networks and the actions of the League and feeds the aggressive climate enabling the reappearance of fascist violence (see city of Macerata massacre carried out by an ex Lega party candidate against African immigrants earlier this year)). This is a very serious issue, but unfortunately it has been used mainly for political propaganda, although most of the parties, especially those who protest most vehemently, do not have viable positions (only the watchwords: “let’s send them all home, block them at sea”, etc.) . This time the PD, thanks to the Minister of the Interior Minniti, can show the results of the initiation of a policy of departure control from Libya that, although implemented late in the game, nevertheless is the basis for an immigration policy on which the EU also agrees, as evidenced by the recent informal meeting on EU immigration policy in Brussels between Gentiloni, Macron and Merkel.

Now, as is obvious in a predominantly proportional system, all evaluations are postponed until the numbers come out of the March 4 elections. We shall see……

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