AND THE WINNER IS .... REFLECTIONS ON THE ITALIAN ELECTORAL RESULTS

This Aricle was published by "Open Democracy" on February 28, 2013

Italians woke up on the morning of Tuesday, February 26^th with the realisation that not one of the numerous opinion polls set to predict the outcome of the  elections held between Sunday and Monday  had been correct, and that the country was probably facing a period of turbulence without parallel in its post-war history

In 1948 all the opinion  polls published in the United States had assured that  President Truman could not possibly win the  presidential elections. Truman responded  by stating that the opinion polls were “eyewash” and proceeded to win, rather comfortably. In his  Genoese dialect,  Mr. Beppe Grillo, the  undisputed winner of these elections, is probably echoing the same thought.

There are many amazing results from this electoral exercise, amazing even in a land of paradoxes such as Italy, the principal one being the fact that  the ostensible  “winner” (i.e. the coalition that  has the  largest number of  elected officials in Parliament, the “Democratic Party” and its allies) is, in reality, one of the principal losers, having gained the  smallest percentage of the total vote in its history, and finding itself in a position which  will make it well nigh impossible to govern according to its electoral commitments.

These elections have, in fact, produced only one undisputable winner,  the totally unpredictable maverick “Five Stars Movement” created and headed by former  comedian Beppe Grillo. This extremely populist movement, which has refused  all financial aid and has  never appeared on  the innumerable Television programmes much favoured by its rivals,  ended up  with around 25% of the popular vote, making it the  largest single Party represented in Parliament.

Another surprise “winner” is certainly the much reviled  Silvio Berlusconi, who also ran on an incredibly  naïve  populist  campaign, and who, after having been virtually written off both by Italian and foreign observers, has almost pulled one of his   miraculous comebacks,  with  his coalition losing out to the Centre Left by only a handful of votes. Berlusconi also, however, can be termed a “loser” if  his  results are compared to those obtained previously

The biggest loser, however, is certainly outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, who entered the political fray against the advice of many, including  an astute  veteran political figure such as the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, a former Communist octogenarian who  has been active in Italian politics for all of his adult existence. It is said that he advised Monti to play  the role of Cincinnatus, and to let the active political parties and coalitions tear one another apart in what promised to be a very intense battle, with the possibility of emerging, once again, as a possible solution to the country’s instability.  Monti was convinced, instead,  that  his “Centrist” movement would give him a sufficient number of  votes to  guarantee him  a fundamental  role  in the post-electoral political spectrum, whereas, in reality,  the coalition just barely scraped through to collect the minimum number of votes needed to get into  Parliament.

Two questions arise: firstly we need to ask ourselves the reasons behind such an unpredictable outcome, and secondly, whether there is any hope to form a reasonably stable Government in the next weeks or months. The situation is complicated by the fact that president Napolitano, finding himself in the last  six months of his mandate,  does not have the Constitutional power to dissolve Parliament, and it would therefore be difficult to  return to a new electoral process before the nomination of the next President at the hands of a joint session of Parliament, augmented by  other institutional  figures.

 These  fundamental queries can be approached only after an analysis of the winning movement’s power of attraction to people of various age groups and former political allegiance. In European politics the  term “populist” can be misleading, and  brings to mind some extreme right-wing movements, bordering on the neo-fascist, which exist  elsewhere. Grillo refuses  to be cast in a “right wing” or “left wing” role, and, in fact, his basic ideas are slightly more to the left of Centre, without, however, allowing the conservative parties to raise the spectre of Communism. Even his anti-European stance is not really all that absolute, and is rather a criticism of  the heavy handed nature of EU interference than a desire to quit the Euro-zone or the Union itself. His common sense approach seems to attract his voters: everyone, for example,  has been claiming that   elected politicians are overpaid, but no attempt has been made to remedy the situation. Grillo’s elected officials have voluntarily docked their own pay, and this has scored many points in his favour.

The feeling is that the electorate wanted to punish the two most powerful political coalitions – Berlusconi’s to the right and Bersani’s to the left – for their inactivity during  the thirteen months of Monti’s “Technical Government”, a period which could have been dedicated to  the carving out of essential systemic reforms and was instead spent  in totally  vacuous political  posturing and  sparring.

The way the  electoral campaign was conducted is also indicative of the vast difference in approach between Grillo and his adversaries. While the traditional parties campaigned almost exclusively on Television, as guests  in the many available “talk-shows”, Grillo  undertook what he called a “tsunami tour” of the entire country, with no barriers  between himself and the people, and was seen addressing ever larger crowds which turned out in all weather conditions and kept showing undiminished enthusiasm.

The present situation appears almost hopeless: the writer of these notes has been following Italian politics since 1948, and does not recall a state of comparable confusion.

The  Left has a comfortable majority in the Lower House of Parliament, but the Senate is totally deadlocked. Italy is very dissimilar to Germany, and the idea of a “Grand Coalition” for the sake of stability and progress would be unlikely to  function, since it would have to bring together the two factions which have been at loggerheads for the past  two decades..

The Democratic Party could court Grillo and ask  his movement to join forces, but Grillo is unlikely to fall for  the traditional Siren Song (a few  ministerial positions in the future Government) at the risk of being  trapped in the quagmire of Italian politics and losing his popular momentum.  If he does collaborate, it will be at a price, and this price  may not appear acceptable to all the components of the  majority coalition, which could end by splitting up.

The justified fear is that, as has happened in the past, diverse groups will glue together a clumsy, unworkable governing coalition which will stagger through the coming months, unable to complete the reforms initiated by the Monti administration. The result could well end up in disaster.

The question remains open, and only the next few days will give an indication of what the outcome could turn out to be.

Carlo Ungaro

THE POPE IS OUT. LONG LIVE THE POPE

Published by "Open Democracy" on February 22, 2013 

The imminent resignation of Pope Benedict XVI was announced on February 11, and the choice of dates, as always in matters concerning the Vatican was  certainly not coincidental. February 11 is, in fact, the anniversary of the  1929 Lateran Pacts, which put an end to almost sixty years of the Holy See’s virtual and  largely self imposed diplomatic isolation which had followed the irrevocable 1870 declaration of Rome as the Capital of the  newly emerged Kingdom of Italy.  Any pretense to real temporal power had been lost for ever, but  February 11, 1929 signified the Holy See’s return as a fully recognized actor on the International scene,  deprived though it may have been of some of the more visible  indications of temporal power such as a national territory and a military defense force.

The flurry of comments  following the historic announcement,  include a number of interesting and thoughtful  assessments of Pope Benedict’s Pontificate, and the general evaluation has been preponderantly, in some cases even scathingly, negative, or, at best, critical. The most noticeable in this negative evaluation has been the German press, which, at the time of his nomination had been rather optimistic, at times even lyrically enthusiastic..

At this stage, however, such assessments could well be premature, influenced, as they inevitably are, by the contrast in style, although  much less in substance, between Benedict and his predecessor.

 There are, nonetheless, some fundamental aspects  that need to be examined, considering the historical impact of the decision, an extremely rare event in the history of the Papacy.

It would appear particularly relevant objectively to analyse the  veritable reasons  which induced the Pope to  announce this decision, which, it is said, took even some of his closest aides by surprise. Those who have had the opportunity to meet Benedict in recent weeks have been unanimous in their assessment that he indeed appeared  ailing, weakened and, above all, fatigued,  so that the  motivation given for the decision is certainly to be accepted, also in consideration of the fact that Benedict himself had been  considerably shocked by John Paul’s insistence  of continuing in the fulfillment of his mandate until the very end, in spite of severe health problems. 

It has to be stressed, however that age and ill health, though certainly relevant,  were  not the only factors to induce the Pope’s resignation.

Pope Benedict XVI presented himself, from the outset, as an extremely committed conservative theologian, but never  showed those  leadership traits which are essential in the governance of such an immense and complex empire as the Roman Catholic Church. Although the Pope's powers appear to be absolute – he is perhaps the only remaining absolute monarch in the world – his actions are  strongly limited by the political complexity of the governing body itself, in which  Cardinals of different  nationalities and schools of thought vie in a centuries old ruthless struggle for supremacy and need a strong hand to keep their actions under control. When Benedict took over the Papacy – and this was a  carefully planned election which took no one by surprise - the  evidently growing weakness of his predecessor’s  reign had already given  rise to a strong accentuation of the powers of the Curia. And the new Pope, since the very beginning,  was unable to exercise the  authority required to bring all these factions under control.

Much stress has been put by commentators on the scandals which supposedly weakened Benedict’s Pontificate  ultimately causing it to be considered a failure. It has to be remembered that  scandals,  whether of a financial nature or otherwise,  have riddled the Vatican for many years, and  also the  sex abuse scandals  in reality predate Benedict’s accession to power: it could even be said that he had the courage publicly to admit their existence  and  thus depart from the preceding  policy of  simply sidestepping the issue by  appointing the guilty to  different posts. Scandals alone were certainly not the sole cause  of  the Pope’s apparent  failure, but rather a weakness in leadership and an inability to  appoint  appropriate  people to delicate posts and, above all, to remove others  from positions  of power which they used unabashedly  for their own political agenda.

On the other hand, however, in dramatic contrast to these considerations, it has to be recalled that Pope Benedict found no opposition within the curia in  his determined drive to distance the Church from the Ecumenical  “liberal” directions taken half a century ago by John XXIII on the occasion of the Vatican II Council. This is a difficult task because, according to the doctrine of papal infallibility, (a rather recent addition to Roman Catholic Dogma, proclaimed by Pius IX at the Vatican I Council in the eighteen sixties), a Pope cannot be  accused of having erred, and corrections to directions taken by a Pontiff  can take many decades. The very short Pontificate of John Paul I – slightly over a month long – was the last to be held by a Pope publicly committed to the respect of the dictates of the Vatican II Council, and the Church, since the election of John Paul II, has been constantly distancing itself from Vatican II. The idea, of course, is to lay the blame not on Pope John XXIII, by definition blameless, but on those, both within and outside the Catholic world who have constantly, often willfully  misinterpreted the meaning of the event which needs to be shown as a moment  consecrated to continuity rather than  rupture.

There is an understandable tendency to concentrate attention on statements made by public figures on  important, formal occasions, but Vaticanists know that  Popes sometimes use more obscure or modest instances to enunciate  important principles. In a homily recently delivered to  an audience of humble Parish Priests, the Pope  very firmly reiterated  his belief that  the “misinterpretations” of  the Vatican II results  have to be corrected, and it is safe to  say that this will be the more probable direction taken by the future pontificate.

Speculation abounds on the possibility that, for the first time in its history, the Conclave will elect a non European – even an African or an Asian – Pope. This is actually a matter of very relative importance and, should the Conclave so decide, it would be more  with a view of showing the  “universality” of the Church, and  also of  giving vicarious pleasure and pride to  a particular nationality or ethnicity rather than in the  effort to  impart a new direction to the Vatican’s policies. All the Cardinals deemed  possible papal candidates, be they African, Asian or from the Americas, have spent enough time in the Curia to be thoroughly trained, some would say “Italianised” and  the vast majority of the  present day Cardinals,  no matter what their geographic or ethnic origins, have been chosen by  extremely conservative Popes, precisely with a view of preventing “dangerous” deviations, of the type experienced in 1978.

With the voting  hotly contested as it probably will be there is also the possibility of an outsider, a maverick  unexpected  candidate obtaining the required majority, and thus upsetting the  plans of the mainly Italian led conservative  faction of the Curia. This is, of course, possible, but extremely unlikely,  and the winner will most probably be if not Italian, at least a man of the Curia, well versed in what his duties will be expected to be.

Carlo Ungaro 

PAPAL RESIGNATIONS: GREGORY XII IN 1415

This was a resignation which was  motivated by the need to end the Western Schism by  agreeing to the joint resignation of the Pope and the Anti Pope. The agreement  was the object of much negotiation, and finally  Gregory's resignation did put an end to the schism.Those were tempestuous years for the Papacy

THE FIRST PAPAL RESIGNATION SINCE 1294

News is just out that  the incumbent Pope, Benedict XVI, intends to resign at the end of this month.
There had been some talk about this over the past  months, but always  denied by Vatican sources.
Papal resignations have been very few in the institution's centuries long history.
Pope Benedict  IX resigned in 1045 but became Pope again two years later after the resignation of his successor, Clement II who had actually forced Benedict out of the Papacy.
The most important resignation, which was at the beginning of a long crisis in Papal history, was that of Celestine V, in 1294.
There have been no Papal resignations since.