Italian politics: Oopsadaisy!

A party with a funny name breaks ranks, and dashes hopes

CAN Italy ever become a stable, two-party democracy? Recent events have left many Italians wondering if the answer might be no. More than a decade has passed since Italy overhauled its electoral laws to make possible a simple, British-style see-saw between centre-right and centre-left, which most voters would prefer. But progress has been slow.

In fact, the political scene is even more fractured now than in the days when coalitions dominated by the Christian Democrats rose and fell every few months. Then there were only eight parties that mattered. Today, at least 16 political groups are active on the national stage.

One obstacle to bipartisan democracy has been the retention of an element of proportional representation. Another is the survival of a Christian Democrat movement, split between right and left, whose members are reluctant to give up the dream of joining hands in the centre.

Most of today's parties are grouped into two rival alliances: Silvio Berlusconi's ruling conservative House of Freedoms and the so-called Union, made up of centrist and left-wing parties and led by the former European Commission president, Romano Prodi. But the squabbling among supposed allies is often more heated than the debate between rival alliances.

After the latest mutiny within his coalition forced Mr Berlusconi to resign temporarily as prime minister last month, he suggested he might not stand at the 2006 general election unless his partners joined him in a single, manageable party. The Northern League rejected the idea outright. The other main parties, the National Alliance and the Christian Democratic UDC, signalled profound misgivings.

These are tricky times for Mr Berlusconi. Last week, his party won a key local election victory. This week, he got another boost when a court overturned the conviction of his former lawyer, Cesare Previti, who had been found guilty of bribing judges on Mr Berlusconi's behalf to win control of Mondadori, a publishing house.

But Mr Previti, a close associate of the prime minister, still faces seven years in jail for judge-bribing in another case unconnected with Mr Berlusconi. The economy is in recession (the OECD predicted this week that it will shrink 0.6% by year's end). And the unions have voted for a programme of half-day strikes in June over public-sector pay rises.

The opposition's response to the government's woes? It split. On May 20th, the Margherita (“Daisy”) party, Italy's second-biggest opposition movement, opted for semi-detached membership of the Union. It will back its candidates for the Senate and the 75% of seats in the Chamber of Deputies decided on a first-past-the-post basis. But it will run against them for the remaining 25% of seats in the lower house allotted by proportional representation. Mr Prodi called it “suicide”. Even if the Margherita is eventually wooed back to full membership, considerable harm will have been done to the centre-left.

What Mr Prodi and Mr Berlusconi both grasp is something many of their followers cannot, or will not: that two political contests are being fought in Italy. One is over policies. The other is about which side can present a more united face to voters, who want a bipartisan system.

With the economy in a shambles, the right is losing the first race. But what the latest events show is that the centre-left is losing the second. Mr Berlusconi may be struggling to merge his allies into a party, but Mr Prodi is still battling to keep his supporters in an alliance. This means that Mr Berlusconi, for all his economic bungling, still has a chance of retaining power.