Italian
Prime Minister Resigns After Losing Foreign Policy Vote
By Stefan Steinberg
& Barry Grey
24 February, 2007
World
Socialist Web
Italian
Prime Minister Romano Prodi tendered his resignation Wednesday night
after losing a Senate vote on his center-left coalition government’s
foreign policy. The collapse of the nine-month-old Unione government
came amidst growing popular opposition to its right-wing policies, both
domestic and foreign.
Just four days before the
Senate vote and Prodi’s subsequent resignation, more than 100,000
demonstrated in the northern Italian city of Vincenza to protest Prodi’s
support for the expansion of a US military base there and plans to increase
the deployment of Italian troops as part of the NATO-led occupation
of Afghanistan. Demonstrators also denounced the war in Iraq and demanded
that the government end its collaboration with the Bush administration’s
militarist policies.
Prodi and Foreign Minister
Massimo D’Alema, a leader of the ex-Stalinist Democratic Left
Party and a former prime minister, had called for the vote in order
to obtain a public show of unity behind the government’s imperialist
and pro-US foreign policy from the nine parties that comprised the governing
coalition, targeting, in particular, Rifondazione Comunista (Communist
Refoundation), a Stalinist remnant of the old Italian Communist Party
that postures as a socialist and anti-imperialist party.
The main speaker on behalf
of the government in the Senate debate was D’Alema, who articulated
the duplicity of the official Italian left by asserting in one breath
that the Unione coalition “have not supported the neo-conservative
politics of the American administration and we have not sent soldiers
to Iraq,” and in the next defending Italian military deployments
in Afghanistan and Lebanon and declaring that to oppose US plans to
expand its base at Vincenza “would be a hostile act against the
United States.”
The decision to put the government’s
foreign policy up for a vote expressed its view that backing for the
expanded US military base and Italy’s military role in Afghanistan
were crucial issues upon which it would not compromise, regardless the
growing opposition of the Italian people. In taking this stand, it was
acting under pressure both from the United States and the most powerful
forces within the Italian ruling elite.
In effect, Prodi and D’Alema
were delivering a political ultimatum to the Rifondazione leadership
to rein in dissident factions that have sought to appease growing opposition
among the party’s voters and supporters to its participation in
a government committed to economic austerity at home and expanding military
interventions abroad.
Rifondazione Comunista had
indicated it would back the government in the Senate vote and all but
one of its senators followed the party line. However, the abstention
of one Rifondazione senator, Franco Turigliatto, together with the abstentions
of a Green Party senator and Senator-for-Life Giulio Andreotti, a former
Christian Democratic prime minister and long-time power broker in Italian
politics, caused the government to fall short by two votes of the 160
it needed to prevail.
Although the motion was not
presented as a vote of confidence in the government, Prodi quickly made
the decision to tender his resignation, precipitating a full-scale political
crisis and upping the pressure on Rifondazione Comunista to discipline
its own ranks.
After tendering his resignation,
Prodi declared he was prepared to continue as head of government only
under conditions where he had a “rock solid majority” and
“more room to manoeuvre.” Prodi aides have declared that
he is “ready to carry on as prime minister if, and only if, he
is guaranteed the full support of all the parties in the majority from
now on.”
Italian President Giorgio
Napolitano accepted Prodi’s resignation but asked him to continue
the affairs of government and participate in negotiations aimed at finding
a solution to the crisis. The two principal available options are new
elections or a re-jigging of the Prodi cabinet to achieve some sort
of sustainable majority. In either case, the inevitable result will
be a government of an even more right-wing cast.
Prodi has declared his readiness
to talk with conservative Christian Democrats who have broken away from
former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s umbrella organization
Forza Italia. The presence of more conservatives would increase Prodi’s
leverage over the nominal left in a refashioned center-left coalition.
Although senators from the
parties of the official right—principally Berlusconi’s Forza
Italia and Gianfranco Fini’s National Alliance—called for
a new election following the Senate vote, to this point Berlusconi has
not issued such a demand. Berlusconi was voted out of office last May
as a result of popular opposition combined with disaffection within
major sections of the ruling elite itself over his performance as prime
minister.
The London-based Financial
Times indicated the general preference of international finance capital
in an editorial posted Thursday on its web site, entitled “Prodding
Italy’s Centre Towards a Coalition.” The newspaper praised
Prodi for acting “to reduce the budget deficit” and said
his government’s “agenda of reform” had “done
much to boost confidence.”
It denounced Berlusconi’s
government for having “lacked fiscal discipline and failed to
make reforms to the Italian economy,” and urged “Italy’s
centrist parties” to “try to form some kind of coalition.”
This vote of confidence in
Prodi from the international bourgeoisie was echoed by the supposedly
anti-capitalist Rifondazione Comunista. In 1998, the party withdrew
its parliamentary support for a center-left coalition headed by Prodi,
precipitating the fall of the government. This time around Rifondazione
was eager to assure Prodi of its continued support.
According to La Republica,
party secretary Franco Giordano declared, “The government must
survive,” adding that it “will have the full support und
the unconditional confidence of Rifondazione Comunista”.
The Rifondazione web site
posted a prominent statement declaring its loyalty to the Prodi government.
In the same statement, the party attacked the stance taken in the Senate
debate by the defector Turigliatto as “undemocratic.” Turigliatto
has in the meantime announced that he is yielding up his post as senator.
The Democratic Left likewise
pledged its support for a new edition of the Prodi government. Marina
Sereni demanded that “all members of Unione not only vote ‘Yes,’
but also undertake to support future actions by the government such
as the deployment of Italian troops to Afghanistan.”
At this point it is not possible
to predict the immediate outcome of the collapse of the center-left
government. However, its record as an instrument of Italian big business
in attacking working class living standards at home while pursuing imperialist
policies abroad is a further demonstration of the bankruptcy of the
so-called parties of the left: the Democratic Left and Rifondazione
Comunista. Neither of these organizations has any genuine independence
from the bourgeoisie. Both function to throttle popular discontent and
maintain the political subordination of the working masses to Italian
capital.
Their participation in Prodi’s
right-wing regime and their efforts to resuscitate it following its
ignominious collapse demonstrate conclusively that the struggle against
war and social reaction requires a break with these parties and the
building of a genuinely independent and socialist political movement
of the working class.