Italy's new leader

Italy’s new leaders Letta in post An old president, a new prime minister—but the same troubles for Italy Apr 27th 2013 | ROME |From the print edition .. IT IS the most famous quote in modern Italian literature, because it captures so well the cynicism and conservatism of modern Italian politics. “If we want everything to remain as it is,” says Tancredi in Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s “The Leopard”, “everything needs to change.” For once, Italy’s politicians have turned the saying on its head. On April 20th they arranged for things to stay as they were in order to make them change. After repeatedly failing to get a new president elected, the heads of Italy’s two leading mainstream parties, Pier Luigi Bersani of the Democratic Party (PD) and Silvio Berlusconi of the People of Freedom (PdL) movement, went to the 87-year-old incumbent, Giorgio Napolitano, and begged him to stay on. Unsurprisingly, given his age, Mr Napolitano had discounted a second term. So he was able to make demands: he would agree only if the PD and PdL broke the deadlock that was stopping the formation of a new government. In this section Letta in post Balkan breakthrough Rainbow warriors Islamists in Russia Mortgaged to the hilt Uli, Uli, Uli Amsterdam, Nice, Lisbon… Reprints Related topics Government and politics Elections and voting Silvio Berlusconi Europe Italy Mr Berlusconi, who has argued for a left-right coalition ever since the election in February produced a hung parliament, needed no persuading. But Mr Bersani had sought a minority government with some backing from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), whose remarkable showing at the polls had given it the balance of power in the upper-house Senate. For Mr Bersani, the president’s ultimatum was a bitter pill—one of several which had prompted him only the day before to say that he would resign. The “reverse Leopard strategy”, as it might be known if Italian politics were chess (rather than something infinitely more complex), worked a treat. By the close on April 23rd, the Milan bourse was up 6.7% on its level before the presidential election and the risk premium on Italian government bonds had dropped by 29 basis points (though that also had something to do with central-bank moves in Japan and the United States). The next day the new-old President Napolitano asked Enrico Letta (pictured above), Mr Bersani’s ex-deputy, to form a government. In doing so, he deftly blunted the criticism of those such as the M5S’s co-founder, Beppe Grillo, who depicted his re-election as a manoeuvre to block the rejuvenation of Italy’s ageing political class. At 46, Mr Letta will not only be modern Italy’s second-youngest prime minister, but also one of the youngest in Europe—just two months older than David Cameron. As a Catholic and economic liberal, he is near the centre of the political spectrum. But he faces a delicate task in assembling a cross-party team that can win a majority in parliament. As markets began to grasp the extent of his difficulties, the spread between Italian and German bonds widened again (even if the stockmarket remained in celebratory mood). Mr Letta signalled that he wanted to challenge German-enforced austerity in the euro zone. And in a hint that he already has a clear programme in mind, he said he was not ready to put together a government “at any cost”. He will need to take account of the PdL’s sensitivities (Mr Berlusconi’s block won only 0.4% less of the vote in the election than the centre-left). But the tensions in his own party could be even more testing. For the PD’s ever-fragile unity has been utterly shattered by the presidential election. Mr Bersani began with a U-turn that bewildered and angered many of his followers. Instead of testing a candidate who might have appealed to the M5S, he opted for a deal with Mr Berlusconi to elect a former Christian Democrat and trade unionist, Franco Marini. But for some in the PD, Mr Marini was too close to Italy’s ageing political establishment. Others feared that Mr Berlusconi’s true concern was not to give the country stability, but to get a hand on the levers of power so as to help him overcome his problems with the law. The TV magnate is a defendant in four trials, including one in which he is accused of paying a 17-year-old girl for sex. The first round of voting, in an electoral college that included the members of both legislative chambers, saw a revolt on a scale rarely witnessed in a parliamentary democracy. In a secret ballot, more than 100 PD electors failed to give Mr Marini their support. This was the spark that ignited a civil war which lasted until the penultimate round of voting and in which score-settling mingled with, and often eclipsed, conviction. In a desperate second U-turn, Mr Bersani opted for a candidate who, although he appalled the PdL, is widely respected by the centre-left: Romano Prodi, who twice defeated Mr Berlusconi for the premiership. Bizarrely, the former president of the European Commission learnt of his candidacy at a UN conference in Mali. It was there, too, that he learnt it had been killed by another mass PD rebellion. The dizzying turns of events over just seven days ought to be good news for Mr Grillo and his less visible co-founder, Gianroberto Casaleggio. A government that brings together the PD and the PdL seems to support their argument that there is little to distinguish the right from the left in Italy and that the PD, like the PdL, forms part of one big, self-serving caste. Yet the satisfaction that brings will come at a high price. By refusing to co-operate with Mr Bersani, the M5S has lost its chance to influence government policy. That may not worry the purists, for whom the M5S exists to replace party democracy with referendums on the internet. But it may already have dismayed many who voted for the party two months ago in hopes of producing change. A regional election in the north-east saw the M5S’s share of the vote plunge by eight percentage points. The voters opted instead for a 42-year-old lawyer, Debora Serracchiani. Though from a different faction than Mr Letta, she too belongs to the economically liberal centre-left. It was the place to be in Italy this week. From the print edition: The Economist Europe Recommend 42