The Third Pole: an ANNUS MIRABILIS?

3 THE THIRD POLE : AN ANNUS MIRABILIS? Carlo Baccetti But guys, do you realize that the two founders of the PD and of the PdL, Rutelli and Fini, are now saying exactly the same things in Italian politics as we are? — Pier Ferdinando Casini, 12 September 2010 The year 2010 was a sort of annus mirabilis for the small centrist parties Alleanza per l’Italia (ApI, Alliance for Italy) and Unione di Centro (UdC, Union of the Center). They have declared the failure of “Italian bipolarism” and held high the banner of the “third pole,” which, according to the current president of the ApI, Francesco Rutelli, “aspires to gain a majority.” It was a year in which it appeared that the forecasts about the awful effects of Italian-style bipolarism—polarized and centrifugal, held hostage by the extreme flanks—would come true. It was also a year in which the coming together of a third pole, capable of taking on a pivotal role in Italian politics, seemed a realistic short-term political objective. The key event that brought about the newly favorable scenario for the center parties was the rift between Silvio Berlusconi and Gian- franco Fini, the president of the Chamber. The “expulsion” of Fini, the decision on the part of his supporters to leave Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Liberty), and the birth of autonomous parliamentary groups named Futuro e Libertà per l’Italia (FLI, Future and Freedom for Italy), while awaiting the formation of a party, all shook up the Italian political system. These events destabilized the Notes for this chapter begin on page 119. 104 Carlo Baccetti center-right government and marked a real and deep fault line in the bipolarism system, which was first visible two years earlier after the general elections. This leads us to a re-examination of the political motivations of the parties that had taken up strongly critical positions against bipolarism. It was not only the obvious difficulties of the center-right majority that fueled the belief among the parties concerned that there was room in Italian politics for a “highway toward the center” (Rutelli). Even the policy of alliances pursued by the Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party) provided a boost for the role of the centrist parties, particularly after October 2009, when Pierluigi Bersani became its secretary. The crux of Bersani’s position was that he rejected the PD’s strategy of pursuing a “majoritarian vocation,” which Walter Veltroni had adopted in the 2008 elections, opting instead for a somewhat confused and uncertain proposal concerning a new Olive Tree. This would possibly open up the prospect of a new Unione, that is, a broad electoral alliance in which centrist forces would be given special attention. Thus, the two small center parties moved rapidly (more rapidly, in fact, than they themselves had expected) from the weak role of the makeweights of Italian politics to being the highly courted interlocu- tors and potential partners of almost all the political actors, both on the right and on the left. This chapter is structured as follows. In the first section, we shall examine the main features of the ApI in terms of its leadership, its strategic choices, and its organizational structure. The second part will look at the UdC and the organizational changes that the party underwent during the course of 2010. The third section will deal with the strategy and results of the ApI and the UdC in the regional elections of 28–29 March. In the fourth part, we will focus on the political changes that have redefined the systemic space occupied by the third pole. Finally, in the conclusion there will be a brief assessment of the outcomes achieved in the year 2010 by these parties, which attempted to upset the bipolarism political system in Italy. The Alleanza per l’Italia On 27 October 2009, following Bersani’s victory in the PD primary elections, Rutelli, who had previously been the president of the Margherita party and, as such, was a co-founder of the PD, announced his decision to leave the party and to pursue a new path. He spoke of a new political project that aims not only to oppose the “right-wing populism” hing- ing on the Berlusconi-Lega Nord (LN, Northern League) pact, which The Third Pole 105 “divides the country,” but also to differentiate itself from the left, from “those opposition parties that are incapable of presenting themselves as an alternative.”1 The majority of ApI supporters came from the Margherita-Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI, Italian Popular Party) faction of the PD. They were leaving the party because they believed that it had undergone a “genetic mutation” that had moved it away from the objective for which it had been founded—to set up a center-left party with a pluralist ideology. That objective had failed, with the result that the group originally identified as the Democratici di Sinistra (DS, Left Democrats) had gained the upper hand and had moved the PD toward decidedly more traditional positions, that is, into the home of the social democratic family. The election of Bersani was considered the clearest possible sign of the PD’s intent to move back in that direction.2 This PD, pushed to the left, was accused above all of being subservient to the “illiberal justicialism” of Antonio Di Pietro’s Italia dei Valori (IdV, Italy of Values) and of opposing the Berlusconi government only with maximalist slogans, without proposing any concrete alternatives. In the list of the 15 founding members of the ApI (some of whom soon fell by the wayside), there are mostly parliamentarians and professional politicians, along with a few representatives of “civic soci- ety”: Rutelli; the deputies Linda Lanzillotta, Gianni Vernetti, Marco Calgaro, Donato Mosella, and Massimo Calearo (an entrepreneur from Veneto and ex-president of Federmeccanica, an employers’ association in the metalworking industry); Lorenzo Dellai, the president of the autonomous province of Trento (and the brain behind the Civica Margherita founded in 1998 in Trentino, a prototype of the national party); and Andrea Mondello, an entrepreneur from the tertiary sector (president of the Rome Chamber of Commerce and of Unioncamere Lazio). The list also includes some politicians from the Rosa per l’Italia association or from the UdC, such as the Lombard deputy Bruno Tabacci (who was to be chosen as spokesperson) and the ex-mayor of Parma, Elvio Ubaldi. Politicians from the IdV included the deputy Pino Pisicchio and Senator Giacinto Russo. On the whole, there were three senators and eight deputies supporting ApI at the beginning of the year; however, these figures fell to two senators in August, when Clau- dio Gustavino switched to the UdC, and to six deputies in September, due to the defections of Calearo and Bruno Cesario. In December, the ex-socialist Enrico Boselli joined the ApI. To understand the beginnings of the ApI, we should remember that the merger of the Margherita and other minor centrist and left- wing parties with the DS in 2007 had taken place without the full support of many Margherita party members, both from the Catholic and the moderate lay branches, who had feared the hegemony of the 106 Carlo Baccetti “ex-Communists” ever since the PD had been formed. The PD’s electoral defeat in 2008 was seen by these people as an opportunity to shake off the “suffocating” grip of the ex-DS members and to bring about a new political formation that could, in many respects, build on the experience of the Margherita. It is no coincidence that by the end of 2010 the logo that had been chosen only a year before, in which there appeared some stylized bees and an orange blossom, had been redesigned. In the new logo, the bees have disappeared and the flower looks much more like a daisy (margherita in Italian)—that is, the sym- bol of the party of which Rutelli had been president. To give credibility to its separation from the PD, the ApI had to declare bipolarism a failure and once again stress the usefulness, in the present situation in Italy, of a centrist, reforming party—one whose strength relies on concrete proposals and not on ideological radicalism. Thus, the ApI adopted the overcoming of bipolarism as a strategic option. Bipolarism had failed, it argued, because the two main parties, rather than competing for the center ground, “as in all mature democracies,” and opening the way for a “modern alternating democracy,” allowed themselves to be influenced by extreme forces on the right or left. The ApI was born in order to provide a way out “of the worrying impotence of bipolarism, driven first by extremist or judicialist forces and then by populist and racist forces, causing the entire country to drift for 15 years.” It was born in order to build “a center that makes decisions, provides equilibrium, innovates, and unites.”3 These analyses and critiques of bipolarism are along very similar lines to those that had been provided by the UdC for a consid- erable length of time, and obviously the ApI saw the UdC as a natu- ral partner in this political perspective. In order to contribute to the formation of a new government majority, strategic convergence and collaboration with the UdC were among the guiding principles when the ApI was founded. In the first assemblies organized to launch the new movement,4 the founders emphasized the “modern” and reformist approach of the ApI, singling out some social groups for special attention: those run- ning small and medium-sized businesses, professional people from both traditional and new professions, and the

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