More than half of Italians voted for Silvio Berlusconi or Beppe Grillo
By J.H. | ROME
AMID the chaos of Italy’s election night, with projections contradicting exit polls and partial results confounding projections, three facts stood out.
The first was the spectacular advance of a movement spun out the internet just over three years ago, which is fronted by a comedian and has no comprehensive plan for running the country. The Five Star Movement (M5S), founded by Beppe Grillo in 2009, secured the ballots of roughly one in four of the Italians who voted, more than went to any other party. It was an astonishing result that will dismay chancelleries and scare markets, all the more so because of the second fact.
This was that, because of Mr Grillo’s success, neither of the two main alliances (of centre-right and centre-left) obtained an outright majority in the upper house, the Senate. Though at least one M5S official was not prepared to rule out a deal with one of the other coalitions, Mr Grillo himself however was adamant: there would be “no stitch-ups and no little stitch-ups,” he declared.
This is crucial to Italy’s stability because, unlike many other countries, the two chambers of its parliament have equal powers. Without control of both, a government cannot legislate.
The third fact was that, in both houses, Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative alliance ran the centre-left far closer than had been expected. With all but a tiny percentage of the ballots counted, it looked as if the centre-left would win the lower house by less than half a percentage point, and despite a fractionally higher proportion of the vote, slightly fewer seats in the Senate.
The likely outcome bore witness to the inaccuracy of the polls (including those conducted on the very eve of the election) and Mr Berlusconi’s brash campaigning skills. But more than anything else it was testimony to the effectiveness of a highly questionable pledge.
The former prime minister promised not only to abolish, but give back the revenue from an unpopular tax on primary residences imposed last year by Mario Monti’s outgoing "technocratic" government. Mr Berlusconi has claimed, improbably, that he can offset the impact on Italy’s public finances with the proceeds of a deal with Switzerland on cash stashed away there by Italians. It is precisely the kind of fast-and-loose approach to the government’s accounts that explains why investors are so wary of Mr Berlusconi and alarmed to see him climb back out of what had seemed like his political grave.
There are several ways of looking at this mess. All contain an element of truth. The most generous is to see the huge vote for the M5S as encouraging: a sign that many Italians, and particularly younger ones, have had enough of the sleaze, cronyism and sheer immobility of Italy’s aged political class. The people who belong to Mr Grillo’s movement are idealists. The M5S refuses to accept public money. Its elected representatives agree to take only part of the salaries to which they are entitled and stand down after two terms. The movement espouses many good things, along with others that are impractical and some that are troubling (such as its opposition to the easing of citizenship requirements for the Italian-born children of immigrants).
Another way to interpret what has happened is as an example of Mr Berlusconi’s thoroughly malign effect on Italian public life. The reason parliament has emerged deadlocked from this election is because of the absurd electoral law his government introduced in 2005 as a way of minimising its defeat in the election of the following year.
Yet another, equally valid, approach is to regard the outcome as a victory for populist candidates on the one hand and irresponsible voters on the other. It is entirely understandable that, after more than a decade of economic stagnation, Italians should shrink from yet more austerity. That helps explain the dismal result for Mr Monti and his allies, who were hard put to scrape even 10% of the vote. But there was a perfectly respectable, if somewhat humdrum, alternative in the form of the centre-left and its leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, who offered a more growth-oriented strategy.
Instead, more than half the electorate opted for Mr Berlusconi or Mr Grillo (who, among other things, promises to close down the tax collection agency and call a referendum on whether to abandon the euro). They clearly felt it was an easy way out. It was not.
