Election result may condemn Italy to weak, short govt.

Saturday, 2 March 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Reuters: Italy’s electoral earthquake seems to have condemned the country to the thing it needs least - a short-term government and new elections in as little as six months or a year.

A huge protest vote in the Feb 24-25 election produced the worst possible result for Italy’s stagnant and recession-hit economy - a parliament in which no single group has a workable majority and populist leader Beppe Grillo has the whip hand.

Global markets plunged immediately after the election before calming on Wednesday. But there are deep concerns that sustained instability in the euro zone’s third largest economy could reignite Europe’s debt crisis.

Italy has a long history through decades of instability of finding a way out of apparently intractable political stalemate but there appear to be only two options this time and neither of them looks very easy.

The first is a government led by centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani, who has a majority in the lower house but not the Senate, and backed by Grillo’s 5-Star Movement.

The second is an alliance between Bersani and those on the opposite side of the political spectrum, the centre-right of Silvio Berlusconi, who staged an astonishing fightback to recover from scandal and humiliation and come within a whisker of beating the centre-left in the election.

However, Grillo has dismissed the first option and there is great opposition among the centre-left rank and file to any alliance with Berlusconi, who often dismisses Bersani’s supporters as communists.

Berlusconi, a 76-year-old billionaire media magnate, has been uncharacteristically quiet since the election, but appears to favour a pact with Bersani to stay in the game. Bersani’s leftist ally, Nichi Vendola, has brusquely ruled such a “grand coalition” out of court.

“Over both scenarios hangs a shadow of inescapable uncertainty,” said respected commentator Massimo Franco.

Grillo said on Wednesday he would not support a vote of confidence in any government.

He appears to want the right and left to discredit themselves further in an ineffective and fractious joint government - their only option without his support - before a new election in which he will score an even bigger victory. He expects it to take no more than a year for such a government to fall.

To make things worse there will be a constitutional vacuum until after March 15, which is the earliest date that President Giorgio Napolitano, the head of state, can start consultations with the politicians aimed at finding a government.

Napolitano himself leaves office in mid-May, adding to the uncertainty that has seen Italians faced by political deadlock and the shock resignation of Pope Benedict all at the same time.

With a sophisticated campaign on the Internet and in a tour of Italy in which he shouted himself hoarse insulting the politicians, Grillo scored one of the biggest ever victories for a populist party anywhere, taking 25 percent of the vote.