In Rome, there is no Pope, Prime Minister Mario Monti is on the way out, the newly elected Parliament looks hopelessly hung, and President Giorgio Napolitano has only 10 weeks left before retirement. That means he no longer has the constitutional right to call fresh elections. His solution may be to stand down earlier than planned, leaving Italy with no leaders in place at all.
Political and social instability are not new to Italy, but they have taken a surreal twist. The center-left alliance won narrowly in Italy’s Feb. 24-25 poll, but the Five Star Movement, a party led by a stand-up comedian called Beppe Grillo, stole the show — and overall victory — emerging as the largest single party in the Chamber of Deputies, one of the Parliament’s two houses. To form a government, the center-left would have to join forces with the right-wing coalition headed by Silvio Berlusconi, the nation’s illusionist in chief, who somehow convinced over a quarter of voters that he was a good bet despite presiding as a three-time Premier over an abysmal economic performance and a string of scandals. Bringing together Montagues and Capulets would be easier than forging a government out of this shambles — at least Romeo and Juliet cared for each other.
(MORE: How Berlusconi May Upend the Italian Elections)
This episode in Italy’s far-from-divine comedy started with efforts to save the euro, but it threatens repercussions far beyond Europe. As austerity bit, the Greeks clashed in their squares, the French rallied in the streets, the Spaniards sulked in their (unsellable) homes. Italians kept unusually quiet and put up with cuts and tax hikes imposed by their technocratic Prime Minister, Monti. But when elections came, he didn’t stand a chance.
Voters not only took revenge for Monti’s measures. This was also a howl of outrage at a system that had been broken long before the euro-zone crisis. As a younger man, Berlusconi, along with the Northern League, rode a wave of disenchantment to power in 1994, promising to change Italy. They didn’t. Neither did the center-left, who has run the country twice since then. Now Grillo has harnessed popular malaise. Many Italians have had enough of the old faces.
(MORE: Split Vote Yields No Clear Winner and an ‘Unholy Mess’)
Those old faces failed to understand their predicament and directed their campaigning against Monti and austerity. They were outflanked by Grillo, who simply campaigned against everything and everybody: banks, big companies, European leaders and traditional politicians. He positioned himself as Italy’s new broom. But that broom may sweep away any hopes for stabilizing Italy — and the euro — along with the dirt.
For a defender of democracy, Grillo has some odd habits. He refuses to answer questions from the Italian media and delivers “political communiqués” on the Web (there have been 53 so far). Some of Grillo’s proposals are reasonable (halve the number of MPs, stop showering political parties with public money). Others are pie in the sky. Where will Italy find the money to provide $1,300 a month in unemployment benefits to its 2.9 million jobless? How can Italy ignore the E.U.’s fiscal and budget constraints?
Grillo shows no signs of pragmatism and no inclination to do deals. He says his opponents “need psychiatric help,” and that may be true after the shock of their poor electoral performance. His deputies may dole out some surprises of their own. Grillo did not run for Parliament and will attempt to maintain control from the outside. He has squelched dissent in the past. But his cadre of MPs, many young — Grillo ascribed his popularity to “a generational war” — and, most likely, free from corruption, may prove less biddable than their leader expects, leveraging their power in return for concessions from the mainstream parties.
(MORE: Why Mario Monti Is the Most Important Man in Europe)
In the meantime, the mainstream parties are looking for other routes out of the impasse. None of the options are palatable. That might mean that the only answer to uncertainty turns out to be more uncertainty: an election for a President followed as swiftly as possible by elections for a new Parliament. The markets, which stabilized during Monti’s caretaker administration, have given their verdict on that scenario: they yo-yoed crazily as stocks slid and Italian bond yields spiked. If the country goes back to the polls, expect Grillo to win outright, replacing an age of illusion with an era of disruption. He may be a comedian, but that won’t be funny at all.
Severgnini is a columnist for Corriere della Sera, a broadcaster and author
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