LETTER FROM ROME:The post-fascist party is merging with Berlusconi's Freedom Party, a long-time ally, but defections are likely, write PADDY AGNEW.
IT WENT down in history, or at least in gossip among the hacks, as the day Silvio Berlusconi “lost it”. I am talking about an infamous November morning 16 years ago when the Italian prime minister, then known to the world only as a powerful media mogul, came to visit us at the Foreign Press Club in Rome.
Those were dramatic times. The entire landscape of Italian politics had just been turned upside down by the twin effects of the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the Tangentopoli(Bribesville) scandal. On the one hand, the old Italian Communist Party (PCI) had just disappeared while, on the other, the Christian Democrat party was about to fragment into a thousand little pieces that still make themselves heard today.
It was obvious to all that a centre-right political vacuum was about to open and it was almost equally obvious to many well-informed commentators that Berlusconi was about to step into it. On that November day, Berlusconi did not confirm the speculation about his forthcoming “discesa in campo” (taking to the field), which of course came about two months later, but he did make one highly significant statement.
Referring to the forthcoming Rome mayoral election contest, Berlusconi said that, if he had a vote, he would cast it in favour of Gianfranco Fini, then the leader of Italy’s neo-fascist MSI.
This, remember, was the party founded in 1946 by survivors of the Republic of Salò, the Mussolini puppet state largely created by the Nazis which existed from September 1943 to April 1945.
This was a statement that prompted commentators to suggest that, in one bold move, Berlusconi had “rehabilitated” the ex-fascists, a party that had been out in the cold for 47 years, never being involved in any of the many complex coalition governments of the post-war era.
It was also a statement that prompted bitter and angry exchanges with some of the (Italian) journalists present that morning.
Berlusconi was still relatively new to politics and, faced with the questions of polemical left-wing reporters, he lost his cool. The result was a rare moment of truth, a moment when the smiling Berlusconi mask was lifted, as he lost his temper, venomously hissing " vergogna, vergogna"(shame on you) at his critics.
That tempestuous news conference, however, signalled the birth of a political alliance that was to shape the destiny of the last 15 years of Italian politics.
Throughout that time, Berlusconi has had no more faithful ally than Fini, who has served as his deputy prime minister and his foreign minister.
Throughout that time, too, Berlusconi has had no more reliable coalition partner than Fini’s Alleanza Nazionale (AN). That, of course, was the new name taken by the MSI in 1995 as, bit by bit, Fini (and some of his party) began to discard the old fascist garments.
Echoes of that November 1993 morning hung in the air last weekend when, in another potentially “historic” moment, Fini formally dissolved AN, which will now merge with Berlusconi’s Freedom Party (PDL).
In one sense, this could be seen as the end of a long and winding peregrination that has seen Fini lead his flock ever more purposefully in the direction of middle-of-the-road legitimate democracy and far away from the fascist excesses of the past.
In recent years, not only has he denounced Mussolini’s infamous 1938 racial laws, but he has made symbolic visits to Auschwitz and Israel. During the latter visit, he so completely disowned Il Duce, calling fascism “absolute evil”, that the Duce’s granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, left AN in disgust to form her own party, Alternativa Sociale. (Ms Mussolini has since joined the ranks of Berlusconi’s PDL.)
In a sense, AN’s fusion with Berlusconi looks like a logical final step. Such has been AN’s sustained willingness to collaborate with the prime minister (helped, no doubt, by getting AN hands on the levers of power) that it has often seemed, unlike the Northern League for example, like a party of yes-men.
In his final speech as AN leader on Sunday, Fini continued to steer his followers to a liberal- sounding middle of the road, talking about the need for dialogue with Islam, the need to create a multiethnic Italy and claiming that the new PDL would not be a “party of the right”. He also warned his flock against forming an “AN faction” within the new party.
All of which sounds fine and good, but is the entire flock convinced? During the two days of debate last weekend, no one was more warmly received than Trieste deputy Roberto Menia, who wondered aloud if the “merger” had not been done in too big a hurry.
Menia was speaking at the very moment senate speaker Renato Schifani, an emissary from the Berlusconi camp, arrived at the congress in a sign of good will.
Like Fini, Schifani received a distinctly cool reception from the rank and file.
It seems that not everyone in AN is quite ready to make the move from grassroots party to media-mogul party. Stand by for defections from the new PDL.