Saturday 2 march 2013 6 02 /03 /Mar /2013 10:43

http://www.presseurop.eu/files/images/author/gabriele-crescente_2.jpg?1286363226The Italian election results have been met with astonishment on the other side of the Alps. However, Europe’s leaders should in fact be heaving a sigh of relief: Angela Merkel and company were only a few decimal points away from coming face to face with Silvio Berlusconi at the next European summit. The resurrection of Il Cavaliere and the resounding collapse of Mario Monti, the candidate backed by Brussels and Berlin, has prompted plenty of ironic comment in the European press about the consequences of Angela’s “blessing”, which regularly turns out to be a death warrant for those who receive it. It is almost touching when you consider that just a few days before the vote, Democratic Party (PD) leader Pier Luigi Bersani and Monti were bickering over which one of them the chancellor wanted to see as head of government in Rome, without so much as a thought for the possibility that a majority of Italians, who were after all the ones to decide on the matter, would not want either of them.

Slavoj Žižek has recently drawn attention to the growing distaste for democracy, which is increasingly criticised as a danger to economic stability. Many were convinced that pressure and intimidation would be enough to convince the Italian electorate not to rock the boat and vote for the right candidates, and even mentioned the possibility of a second election if the results of the first one proved to be unsatisfactory. However, Italy is not about to hold another vote, at least not for the moment. There is a simple reason for this: in all probability, the main beneficiary of a second ballot would be the Five Stars Movement (M5S) led by Beppe Grillo, a man who, even more than Berlusconi, is now troubling the sleep of European leaders. To show that he is no less blinkered than his rival, the social democratic candidate for the German chancellery, Peer Steinbruck impulsively expressed his horror at the news that Italy had decided to elect “two clowns”.

However, on close inspection there are plenty of glad tidings in these elections. As the director of La Stampa, Mario Calabresi, recently pointed out they have remedied what was considered to be one of the major problems in an old dysfunctional country: today Italy has one of the youngest parliaments in Europe, with a high proportion and new faces, and many of those who encumbered its benches over the last 20 years have been given their walking papers. In one way or another, the enormous pressure for a renewal that has been held back since time immemorial has finally opened a breach.

Credit for this change is largely due to M5S, which, in spite of the controversial personality of its leader and the often unacceptable tone of his rants, offered a platform to dozens of young outsiders who would otherwise have been excluded from institutional politics. These new recruits deserve respect: they are not robots remote-controlled by Grillo and, once they take their seats in parliament, they will have the right to cast their votes in secret.

Standing back from their leader’s commitment to make no agreements with anyone, many M5S voters have already expressed their willingness to support a possible PD government. And of all of the mistakes made by Bersani, calling on them rather than accepting the offer of a grand coalition with Berlusconi, is certainly not the worst.

A minority government led by the PD with support from M5S could be something very new in a Europe ruled by armour plated coalitions, which prioritise governability and a consensus with Brussels over all other values. It could become a laboratory in which decisions will not be guided by the imperative of a display of stability for the sacrosanct markets, but one that could nurture an ongoing dialectic that is vital to democracy. Above and beyond these considerations, it is perhaps the only way to reconcile the contradictory needs of a society as dramatically fragmented as Italy, and more generally the societies in most European states.

None of this will be a cakewalk. The M5S programme includes points, like the reduction in the cost of politics, which will certainly be well received in Europe. However, there are others that are potentially explosive: to cite just one, a referendum on the single currency. Having said that, after four years of crisis, it would be naive to expect that the conflict which has been brewing in the European Union and its member states could be resolved by a mild-mannered drawing room debate.

As Adriana Cerretelli recently wrote in Sole 24 Ore, “Angela Merkel has done all she can to clear her path to German elections in September of the danger of fresh bouts of European instability.” However, she has obviously failed in this initiative, and the mountains of dust that have built up under the carpet are now threatening to overturn the table. The time has come for a new period of confrontation, which openly deals with problems in the public domain, instead of confining them to to the rarefied and essentially opaque proceedings of intergovernmental meetings behind closed doors.

Berlin and its allies can no longer count on loyal supporters in Italy, or in Spain where the entire political system is hanging by a thread, and run the risk of having no voice in those countries. The dialectic of austerity and contrasting predictions as to the future of the European Union should now be aired in public for the benefit of Europe’s citizens. Given this context, the European elections in 2014 offer an ideal opportunity for a campaign on the level of the entire continent, on the lines recently proposed by Andre Wilkens, in which the real weight of ideas and political positions can be measured in open debate. This is probably the last chance to save the facade of European consensus, before it crumbles and falls, taking the entire building with it.

Fonte: http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/editorial/3475581-italian-election-may-have-silver-lining

Autore: Gabriele Crescente (b. 1980) is an Italian journalist. Having worked for weekly magazine Internazionale since 2006, he is also Presseurop's Italian site editor.

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