Analysis: Italy’s technocrat PM cheered despite his austerity measures

By BARRY MOODY
Published on Wednesday 15 February 2012 02:47

THE remarkable success of Prime Minister Mario Monti, fêted as a hero both at home and abroad, has created turmoil among Italy’s discredited politicians and is likely to provoke radical shifts in the political landscape over the coming year.

When Monti was appointed to head a technocrat government in November, with Italy on the brink of an economic catastrophe that would probably have killed the euro, there were predictions the politicians would only give him a few months to calm markets before forcing an early election. Right-wing politicians talked of “pulling out the plug”.

That talk is history. Scarcely anybody now believes there will be elections before those scheduled in spring 2013, including Monti’s discredited predecessor Silvio Berlusconi, whose scandal-plagued final months had destroyed confidence in Italy’s ruling class.

Politicians are instead scrambling to form new groups and find a figure who could credibly replace Monti, with his industry minister Corrado Passera, a former bank chief, being widely mentioned.

The centrist UDC party and others have even suggested Monti himself should carry on to mend the economy after 2013 despite his vow to step down. There are wide predictions however, that he will become head of state when President Giorgio Napolitano – architect of the technocrat government – steps down next year.

Despite pouring bitter austerity medicine down the throats of Italians in a swift sweep of policies, Monti remains popular, with a rating of around 60 per cent.

Politicians, bankers and officials say his intellectual prestige as a former European Commissioner has put Rome back on the eurozone top table with Germany and France, where he is able to protect Italy’s interests in a way Berlusconi could not.

From this position, Monti – who Italians believe knows more about both Europe and economics than his counterparts – has pushed against Germany’s drive for debt reduction, advocating attention to growth and flexibility.

All this creates a big problem for the old political order, already despised by much of the population and dismissed as a self-serving “caste” before Monti took power.

One pollster puts their general approval rating at 12 per cent, with a wave of recent corruption scandals aggravating the contempt. Monti is an act that they cannot follow without dramatic changes.

“Italians will not put up with business as usual. The combination of incompetence and corruption has discredited the whole political class,” said Professor James Walston of the American University in Rome.

The election of mayors from outside the major parties in Milan and Naples and other local political developments are all seen as signs of momentum towards major changes.

But despite the euphoria about Monti, an entirely new political order, rather than a reworking of the existing one, looks unlikely.

“I don’t see the politicians saying, ‘We really have to unite to save the country’, I see them saying, ‘OK, now it is time to divide up the pie’,” said Professor Erik Jones of Bologna’s Johns Hopkins University.

He added that it was too difficult and expensive to build a completely new political formation.

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