The left tries to survive

From Tokyo, where he is visiting his
Japanese counterpart, Prime Minister Romano Prodi has again stated he will not
accept any electoral reform not supported by a broad consensus: “I insist”, he
said, “I will not do an electoral law without a vast majority. Otherwise, we
will fall back into chronic instability the day after”. The Premier has further
commented this rather optimistic plan reminding that “dialogue does demolish
some barriers”, and assuring that the consultations held by the Government on
the subject are indeed making progress. A progress, though,  expected to be slow, since the left itself is
well aware of the fact that, once an agreement on the reform is reached, new
elections toward a more stable majority will be inevitable.

Prodi has also touched the
other  political issue keeping busy the
left side of Italy’s
political spectrum: the birth of a new “Democratic Party” – formed by the
“reformist” movements of the coalition, namely Democratici di Sinistra e La Margherita – in an
effort to bring some unity to the extremely fragmented political front of the
left. The Premier has stressed that the speculations that recently filled the
Italian press, about the potential candidates for the new Party’s leadership –
among which Rome’s Mayor Walter Veltroni – are completely baseless, suggesting
he doesn’t have any intention of abandoning the wheel of his Coalition anytime
soon. 

In this context, the convention of
Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema’s Party, Democratici di Sinistra and that of La Margherita – to be
held, respectively, in Florence on april19th and
in Rome the day
after – could be the last ones for both movements.

On the other side of the
Parliament’s chamber, a couple of weeks after the split represented by UDC’s decision to vote the refinancing of the military mission along with
the majority despite the right’s decision to abstain, its leader Pier
Ferdinando Casini’s UDC seems to have run back home. At the party’s convention,
Casini has stressed that the role of his Party is “naturally alternative to
that of the left”, choking off any conjecture of a definitive detachment from his
Coalition and, by so doing, renewing his legitimate ambition to succeed
Berlusconi as its leader.