TIME EUROPE
May 1, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 17
Berlusconi's Revenge
A crushing defeat in regional elections brings an early end to the premiership of Massimo D'Alema
By GREG BURKE Rome
Italian opposition leader silvio Berlusconi has harped for months about how the country needs early elections, but never with more exuberance than last week following the resignation of Massimo D'Alema, Italy's first ex-communist to serve as Prime Minister. In regional elections last week Berlusconi's center-right Freedom Alliance captured eight of the 15 regional presidencies, including four previously controlled by the left. The Alliance scored huge victories in three of the wealthiest northern regions of the country, and overall the coalition picked up nearly 51% of the vote to the left's 45%. That left D'Alema with no choice but to fold the country's 57th postwar government.
What happened? Regional governments have had only limited powers in a country in which Rome still controls nearly all tax revenues, but Berlusconi was able to transform the elections into a referendum on a loaded question: Do you want the state to control your life or do you want to be free? "People weren't voting on political or electoral programs, or on the budgets of the regional governments," said conservative commentator Marcello Veneziani. "It was almost an ideological vote." That's just what Berlusconi wanted. A self-made man who sees himself as the guarantor of freedom in Italy, he literally cruised to victory in a six-deck ship he used to campaign in various ports around the peninsula. D'Alema, himself a sailor but owner of a more modest vessel, found himself adrift.
D'Alema's real problems began a year and a half ago when he ousted his nominal ally, Romano Prodi, from the Prime Minister's seat. Italy had voted for a soft-spoken Catholic economics professor and ended up a short time later with a long time Communist Party official. Francesco Merlo, an editorialist for Corriere della Sera, referred to a D'Alema style "of arrogance, of scoffing at one's adversary, of a Machiavellian circus in which traps and wolves abound."
D'Alema has no monopoly on Machiavellian maneuvers, of course, and Berlusconi will sooner or later have to pay the price for his alliance with Umberto Bossi's Northern League. While the League has softened its talk of seceding from the rest of Italy, a good number of xenophobes still fill party ranks, and a key part of the Bossi-Berlusconi alliance was a proposal for tough anti-immigration legislation.
Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi met at the end of the week with party leaders, and gave Treasury Minister Giuliano Amato the task of forming a new government. Amato, 61, a former Socialist, was Prime Minister for 10 months in 1992-93 and has an excellent reputation as a competent and fair statesman. Whether he can get a majority in Parliament is another question. But D'Alema's fall had virtually no effect on the markets, which means there's confidence those in power will patch things together once again. They usually do.
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May 1, 2000
COVER
Zimbabwe in Flames
Robert Mugabe has kept his grip on power by manipulation and intimidation. Now, it's all spinning out of control
Voice of Protest
Despite a ban on radio play of Thomas Mapfumo's latest song hits, detailing the grim state that Zimbabwe is in, his album is a best-seller
Viewpoint
The hired thugs who do Mugabe's bidding are threatening to hold peace a hostage to autocratic power
EUROPE
A New Arms Race?
Once consigned to the cold war trash heap, a U.S. national missile defense system — if revived and deployed — could shatter key accords with Moscow and renew the arms race
The End for D'Alema
Italy's first ex-communist Prime Minister is crushed by center-right election gains
Innocent No More
After symbolic bombings in France, Breton nationalists claim a life at a McDonald's outlet
Viewpoint
Going for the throat is Vladimir Putin's style
BUSINESS
Nordic Pace-setter
Finland's Merita-Nordbanken leads the way in Internet and mobile phone banking
A TV Triumph
Broadcasters and producers join the Web and go global
FASHION
The Suit is Dead; Long Live the Suit
Bankers dressing like Internet executives create the biggest threat to the suit in 100 years. Can it survive?
DEPARTMENTS
To Our Readers
World Watch
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