Coalition Split Muddies Italy’s Political Waters

The right-wing alliance that billionaire Silvio Berlusconi led to a landmark electoral victory splintered in acrimony Tuesday, jeopardizing the stability of any new government.

Berlusconi angrily broke off negotiations to form a government alliance with Umberto Bossi of the federalist Northern League. Bossi has been insulting Berlusconi almost without pause in recent days. An autocrat, a potential demagogue, “Berlus-kaiser,” snapped the obdurate Bossi on Tuesday.

As a result of electoral reforms that made politics more transparent, such theatrics are visible for the first time to Italians weaned on back-room deals, leaving analysts to wonder whether Tuesday’s noisy split was a tactic or a symptom of a breach too wide to mend.

Speaking to a hastily summoned news conference in Milan on Tuesday after new Bossi barrages, Berlusconi called it quits. He said he expects to be named prime minister and that he will ask Parliament to ratify him and a Cabinet he will assemble. Failing that, Italy will immediately return to the polls, he said.

If President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro offered him the post, Berlusconi said, “the next day there would be a government program, a team and, without consultations, we would go directly to the Parliament” for a vote of confidence. “If that didn’t happen, then let’s go to new elections to complete the cleanup.”

Bossi said after Berlusconi’s remarks, “I think he’s lost his nerve.”

Berlusconi, 57, a media and real estate magnate who does not take criticism lightly, emerged as an overnight sensation in elections last week that overturned nearly half a century of centrist rule in Italy. Running in his first election, Berlusconi and his Forza Italia (Go Italy) won control of the powerful lower house of Parliament and a near majority in the upper in concert with Bossi’s northern-based party and neo-fascists led by Gianfranco Fini.

But trying to translate the electoral returns into a government program has short-circuited the nominal three-party alliance.

The main cause is Bossi, whom Berlusconi excoriated for an hour Tuesday without naming him directly. The rough-talking, uncompromising senator dislikes Berlusconi’s command of a large section of the Italian media and his prince’s role in big business. Bossi also dislikes the neo-fascists, junior partners in the electoral alliance.

“It’s a betrayal . . . scandalous what’s happening,” Berlusconi said. “From now on, we will not talk with the League or any other party. We will simply wait until the president announces his intentions.”

Under the constitution, Italy’s figurehead president appoints a party leader to form a government--in this case Berlusconi, as leader of the largest party.

Berlusconi charges that Bossi is “an obstacle to reform,” while Bossi terms his putative ally a self-aggrandizing autocrat who is a danger to democracy.

Bossi insists on federalism as the basis of any government with Northern League support. He hates the less developed Italian south, which he sees as draining the productive north of money and resources and the chance to be a first-row player in the new Europe.

Berlusconi, whose campaign centered around Ronald Reagan-like promises of more jobs and lower taxes, says he is ready to talk about federalism. Bossi, though, who in post-election euphoria appeared to have withdrawn objections to Berlusconi as prime minister, failed even to turn up at a scheduled summit last Friday.

Since then, Bossi, whose party claims 122 of the winning alliance’s 366 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, has railed against Berlusconi to every passing camera from his vacation home in the Italian Alps.

Fini, by contrast, whose extreme-right party was restored to respectability by the election for the first time in 50 years, strongly supports Berlusconi as prime minister. Fini expects major government participation by his newly named National Alliance, although no government post for himself.

Fini said he does not believe Bossi can defect from the right-wing alliance. “He must be with us. He has nowhere else to go,” Fini said, arguing that the backlash from frustrated voters would be disastrous for the league at any new election.

“Berlusconi was right to break off the talks. How could he continue negotiations with somebody who takes back the day after everything he said the day before,” said Fini. “Bossi has broken the eggs without making the omelet.”