After 50-Year Wait, the Left Takes Reins in Italy

After half a century in the political wilderness, the Italian left stormed to power with centrist allies here Monday, promising a can-do reformist government to modernize Italy’s institutions and finances in line with those of its European allies.

Final returns from Sunday’s national election made plain that the center-left coalition led by the former Italian Communist Party will form Italy’s 55th postwar government.

The slim margin of victory and the uncertainties of coalition politics, however, mean that the stability of a future government remains open to question.

“It is a clear and decisive victory,” said Romano Prodi, the soft-spoken, 56-year-old economics professor who leads the center-left and will become the next prime minister. “Our priorities will be employment, education and institutional reforms. . . . People’s faith in our program gave us victory.”

Prodi, a Roman Catholic moderate who made his political debut with an issues-oriented campaign by bus across the country, built the center-left coalition from the ground up, yoking the former Communists of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) with former Christian Democrats, Greens, supporters of banker Lamberto Dini, the current caretaker prime minister, and old-line Communists.

A strong supporter of the European Union, Prodi is former head of IRI, a gigantic state holding company. He studied in England, taught for a year at Harvard University in the 1970s and likes to pedal around his native Bologna on a bicycle.

Under Prodi, the center-left promises accelerated privatization of unwieldy state holdings, more equitable taxation and a reduced government deficit and debt to enable Italy to join a European monetary union before century’s end. Eager to end decades of short-lived, weak coalition governments, the center-left also supports electoral and constitutional reforms that would transform Italy into a more presidential republic.

“For the first time, those who will go into government are those who have never governed,” said PDS leader Massimo D’Alema. The Italian Communist Party, the largest in Western Europe, became the PDS in 1990.

Under D’Alema, the party, which finished second in every election for four decades but never had any share of national power, is now respectably social democratic. The Italian right says the changes are little more than cosmetic, but the United States voices no reservations, and Italy’s European allies are more concerned with the right’s democratic credentials.

*

Italian stock and money markets jumped Monday in positive reaction to the election results. That was another blow to the defeated center-right Freedom Alliance coalition led by media mogul and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who created the Forza Italia (Go Italy) movement, and ally Gianfranco Fini, whose National Alliance party has neo-fascist roots.

After a vituperative campaign fought over personalities more than policies, Sunday’s results were the flip side of the center-right’s slim victory in the last election two years ago.

In the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies, the center-left Olive Tree, or Ulivo, coalition won 284 seats and its Communist Refoundation partner 35, enough for a narrow absolute majority. The Freedom Alliance won 246, and 59 went to Umberto Bossi’s unaligned Northern League, which seeks independence for northern Italy within a federal republic. Minor parties won the rest.

*

In the Senate, which has 315 elected seats, the center-left won 157 seats and the hard-line Communists garnered 10 to the right’s 117. The Northern League got 27 Senate seats, minor parties the remainder.

Conceding defeat Monday, Berlusconi promised a “vigilant, serious and constructive” opposition. Fini promised opposition “without extremism or indulgence,” but he pointed out that the winning coalition was too far to the left for his liking.

The key votes held by Communist Refoundation in both houses signal possible instability. The party, old-line and hard-line, broke away from the mainstream Communist Party when the latter changed its name and moved to the center.

Communist Refoundation agreed with Prodi on joint Ulivo candidate lists but also agreed it would not seek membership in any center-left government.

Rather, the party said it would support formation of the government and then vote on an issue-by-issue basis. The party calls for better pay and shorter hours for workers, greater social spending in the less developed southern part of the country and higher taxes for those with higher incomes.