Right swamped, gay communist wins seat

Regional elections in Italy April 3 show a landslide shift of votes away from the rightist governing coalition led by media mogul Silvio Berlusconi. In Puglia, one of Italy’s southernmost regions, openly gay candidate Nicchi Vendola of the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC) was elected president of the regional government.

The vote overall, however, was not so much a victory for the left as a broad, mass rejection of Berlusconi and his rightist alliance. Even leaders of the right wing have acknowledged this setback and some have suggested that Berlusconi declare national elections a year earlier than the scheduled 2006. The premier has so far refused to consider this path.

A search on Google-News Italy turned up dozens of reports from Italian lesbian and gay organizations, particularly Arci gay and Arcilesbia, that enthusiastically greeted Vendola’s election. This popular gay communist’s victory was all the more significant since Puglia is not a region in which social issues like lesbian and gay rights have made advances.

Aside from this triumph in Puglia, however, the PRC made no significant gains, although some small communist and environmental parties did.

Six of the 13 regions involved in the vote switched from rightist to center-left governments. The center-left now controls 16 of Italy’s 20 regional governments.

In terms of the popular vote across all the regions, the center-left out-polled the rightist coalition by 53 percent to 44 percent. This was a complete reversal of the last regional elections in 2000, when Berlusconi’s “House of Freedom” coalition out-polled the center-left by exactly the same margin.

Berlusconi suffered this loss even though he completely controls the private broadcast television networks—he owns the three channels—and his government exerts enormous pressure on the publicly owned channels. But the reality of everyday life—economic stagnation, a frontal government attack on workers’ rights, continued participation in the U.S. occupation of Iraq—broke through the media image of the ruling group.

After the quick expulsion from office of Spain’s Premier Jose Maria Aznar a year ago, the Italian premier became the Euro pean leader most closely identified with the policies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair regarding Iraq. So far all he’s gotten for it is to have Italian communist journalist Giuliana Sgrena shot and a secret service officer killed by U.S. troops in Iraq.

The center-left coalition, now called the Union, itself has been no great boon to Italy’s workers. The last time it was in office, it pushed Italy into the U.S.-NATO imperialist war on Yugoslavia. At the same time it sliced away at workers’ rights, pensions and other working-class gains. This paved the way for Berlusconi to win in 2001, who then attacked the workers head on.