From: luciano@athos.Berkeley.EDU (Luciano Lavagno)
Subject: Re: Important questions
Reply-To: luciano@athos.Berkeley.EDU (Luciano Lavagno)
Organization: UC Berkeley IC CAD Group
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 02:40:43 GMT

In article <92100.005546FAFARDP@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>, FAFARDP@QUCDN.QueensU.CA
writes:
>1. What are we to make of the recent elections in Italy, Germany, and France
>   where parties of the far right surged in popularity?  Is this a sign of
>   poor economic times leading to dissent or is it something more?
I have been away from Italy for a while, and I never was a political
specialist, so I may not be the terribly precise, but I will try to comment a
bit anyway.

The "right wing" vote in Italy seems mainly a vote of protest against the
current political situation in Italy (witness the "average" performance of the
traditional right wing party, MSI). Most likely, people voted for the "Lega
Lombarda" (whose main declared political objectives are the division of Italy
in three independent states and the expulsion of illegal aliens and immigrants
in general) because they were perceived as "against the system".

Note that I am not trying to defend such a vote, I am just trying to explain.
For the first time since WWII there was a party (well, a "federation" of
parties...) that:
1) is not involved in a major way in the corrupt system "votes for favors"
(jobs, career, ...) that more or less controls Italy.
2) is not communist (yes, many people would never vote for them, even if they
changed name).
3) shouts loud enough and clear enough that it's time to be done with point (1)
above.

Nobody knows what will happen now. I don't think a backlash of xenophobia can
be either the motivation or a consequence of the success of the "Lega" (8.5 %
of the votes, and 20 % in some areas of the North).
One sure result is a change in the political equilibrium in Italy. Now maybe we
will have an electoral system that guarantees less fragmentation of the
political horizon.
So we would be able to change our ruling parties every once in a while, as
every democratic nation is supposed to do... Note: Italy, despite its
reputation abroad of having very unstable government has had a single, major
party in power, the Christian Democrats, since the end of the war. And the
current ruling coalition is probably about 20 years old (except for minor
readjustments).
Ciao !
Luciano
P.s. I append the latest election figures, from soc.culture.italian, as a
reference.
-- 
Luciano Lavagno    Dept of EECS, Univ of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
+1-510-642-5012    luciano@ic.Berkeley.EDU

SENATO

DC  	    27.3	-6.3
PSI 	    13.6	+2.7
PLI 	    2.8	    	+0.6
PSDI	    2.6	    	+0.2
PDS 	    17.0	] -6.3
Rif.Com.    6.5 	]   
MSI 	    6.5	    	 0.0
Lega	    8.2	    	+7.8
PRI 	    4.7	    	+0.9
Rete	    0.7	    	+0.7
Pannella    0.5	    	+0.5
Verdi	    3.1	    	+1.0
Referendum  1.0	    	+1.0

CAMERA

DC  	    29.7    	-4.6
PSI 	    13.6	-0.7
PLI 	    2.8	    	+0.7
PSDI	    2.7	    	-0.2
PDS 	    16.1    	] -6.6
Rif.Com.    5.6 	]   
MSI 	    5.4	    	-0.5
Lega	    8.7	    	+7.4
PRI 	    4.4	    	+0.7
Verdi	    2.8	    	+0.3
--------------------------------
Xref: sparky soc.culture.europe:3576 soc.culture.nordic:2702 eunet.politics:594