Election Loser to Lead Italy Opposition

Francesco Rutelli, who lost the race for prime minister of Italy, collected a consolation prize Tuesday as the center-left Olive Tree coalition chose him to lead it into opposition, eclipsing a former Communist who has dominated the political bloc during its five years in power.

The choice was in line with a shift by Italian voters in Sunday’s election toward moderate, pragmatic candidates at the expense of more ideologically driven ones on the right and left.

Rutelli, a popular two-term mayor of Rome, lost the election to media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, whose center-right House of Freedoms alliance gained control of both houses of Parliament. Berlusconi is expected to take over as prime minister next month.

The loss was humiliating for the heirs to the Italian Communist Party. Excluded from power for more than four decades after World War II, the party shed its Marxist ideology and entered government in 1996 as the Democratic Party of the Left, Olive Tree’s biggest branch. Now it is out again after one term.

But the 46-year-old Rutelli, a telegenic and pragmatic liberal who was never a Communist, gained a moral victory by waging a stronger-than-expected campaign against Berlusconi, who vastly outspent him.

In naming the former mayor to lead the new Parliament’s opposition bloc, leaders of eight center-left parties in effect sidelined ex-Communist Massimo d’Alema, who had been Olive Tree’s most powerful figure.

D’Alema, who was prime minister from late 1998 until last spring, came under criticism for failing to campaign vigorously for Rutelli and for appearing eager to push him out of the limelight after the election.

Confirmed in his leadership role, Rutelli promised “intransigent” opposition to “a right wing we do not trust.” He recalled that Berlusconi had dismissed him as D’Alema’s “mask” and spokesman and refused to debate him.

“Now he will have to face me in Parliament,” Rutelli said in a televised interview. “It will not be simple for him. The confrontations will be daily--civil but very severe.”

Final unofficial returns Tuesday gave Berlusconi’s forces a shade under half the popular vote but comfortable majorities of 177 of the 324 seats in the Senate and 368 of the 630 seats in the lower Chamber of Deputies. Olive Tree will have 128 seats in the Senate and 250 in the chamber.

A Berlusconi ally was elected mayor of Milan, while center-right candidates forced their Olive Tree rivals into runoffs in Rome, Naples and Turin.

D’Alema barely won his parliamentary race, but seven Cabinet ministers in Prime Minister Giuliano Amato’s outgoing government lost theirs. As the center-left searched for scapegoats, two ministers came under criticism for costly miscalculations.

One was Environment Minister Willer Bordon, who tried to score with voters by threatening to shut down Vatican Radio over allegedly hazardous electromagnetic radiation from its transmission towers. His politically risky move divided the government, which eventually overruled him.

More serious was the Interior Ministry’s failure to cope with Sunday’s voter turnout. People stood in line for hours at overwhelmed polling stations. Some collapsed in the heat while others started riots, overturning tables and scattering ballots. Many voters gave up and went home.

At fault was a government decision to save money by closing down a third of the stations. Because about 15% of Italian voters make up their minds at the last minute, anger over the delays may have contributed to the government’s defeat, pollsters say.

Interior Minister Enzo Bianco, who took the blame and apologized on TV, lost his parliamentary race by a landslide.

“Everyone wants to hang Mr. Bianco,” said Franco Pavoncello, a professor of political science at John Cabot University in Rome. “This kind of fiasco happens when you have a political elite that is tired of ruling and gets very sloppy.”

The center-left ran on a solid economic record but was hurt by its failure to reform Italy’s fractious politics. Many voters doubted that Rutelli could survive the intrigues within the coalition that had produced three prime ministers since its 1996 win at the polls.

Rutelli’s supporters lay the blame on D’Alema, who helped oust Olive Tree’s first prime minister, the popular Romano Prodi, and failed to hold then-opposition leader Berlusconi to a bargain that would have created a stable, American-style two-party system.

Voters punished D’Alema’s former Communists by cutting their share from 21% of the ballots in 1996 to 16% on Sunday. Rutelli’s new, more moderate faction of Olive Tree, a four-party grouping known as Daisy, captured a surprising 14.5%.

On the right, Berlusconi’s centrist Forza Italia (Go Italy) party got nearly 30% of the vote, drawing support away from its more ideological partners--the formerly neo-fascist National Alliance and the once-separatist Northern League.

“Both sides are moving toward the center,” said James Walston, a British-born political scientist affiliated with Olive Tree.

“Italians are telling the politicians they want a more mature democracy with leaders who are not tied down by one extreme or the other,” he said