Italy Votes / Episode #2
The specter of Vladimir Putin hangs over Europe as voters prepare to go to the polls in Sweden this weekend and in Italy down the pike. Then there's Chile and Angola.
Continuing my pledge that Andelman Unleashed will chronicle every presidential or national leadership election around the world this year, we are turning now to the landmark election in Italy. Between now and the vote on September 25, we will examine each week the evolution of the players, the issues, and especially the stakes for Italy, Europe, America and the world. Here we will also raise the curtain on Sweden's elections on Sunday that hold the prospects for a similar turn toward the right at a critical moment for that country and the West. Stay tuned.
Voters are going to the polls this Sunday in Sweden and on September 25 in Italy. At stake is control of each nation's parliament and selection of the prime minister who will rule.
Perhaps it's a mistake to examine every event through the prism of Vladimir Putin, but while there is a host of domestic issues, financial worries, inflation, and energy shortages as winter approaches, both countries have leading political parties leaning heavily to starboard whose victory can only produce glee in the Kremlin.
Sweden
The nation's moderate Social Democrat prime minister Magdalena Andersson is hoping to extend her party's eight-year rule and retain her own leadership of the nation. But nipping at her heels is the far-right Sweden Democrats under the leadership of 43-year-old Jimmie Åkesson, with its neo-Nazi roots and its leader's pledge to act as a "blow torch" in Swedish politics. Indeed, the SD has made little effort to conceal its sympathies for Europe's Fascist past, the party's parliamentary office sending invitations recently to celebrate the anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland, Sweden's neighbor just across the Baltic Sea. Indeed, Poland and most other NATO nations have already approved the application of Sweden and Finland to join the alliance as full members, an action that Putin himself has sharply condemned.
Especially frightening is Åkesson's clear embrace of the growing pan-national MAGA movement. In the southern port city of Helsingborg recently, he proclaimed to a boisterous crowd of hundreds: "It's time to give a chance to Make Sweden Great Again. This MSGA slogan has propelled the SD party to within 9 percentage points of the ruling Socialists and into a solid second place.
A determined Eurosceptic, the anti-immigrant Åkesson stoked fears about his affinity for Putin in a recent radio conversation when he refused to say whom he preferred—Putin or French President Emmanuel Macron. Not long afterwards, Sweden's Defense Minister Peter Hulqvist observed that "as late as a week before the war in Ukraine started, Jimmie Åkesson could not choose between Putin and Biden." Hultqvist in a press briefing then proceeded to tick off a list of the Sweden Democrats' votes favorable to Russian interests in the European Parliament, concluding that "there is no doubt that SD's connection to Putin's Russia is a security threat to Sweden." A former defense minister, Mikael Odenberg, wrote in an op-ed for the leading daily Svenska Dagbladet: "I am deeply concerned about the perspective that SD will have an increased influence over Swedish defense and security policy. The party is a potential security risk for our country….[It] has for long been in the embrace of Russia and Putin. Now it will have much greater influence.”
Even without an outright majority in a Swedish parliament with eight political parties, a strong enough showing at the polls could put the party and Åkesson in a position for strategic positions in the next government and a loud, potentially disruptive, voice in setting the nation's direction. “Sweden has been a great country, a safe country, a successful country and it can be all these things again,” he said, one “no longer ravaged by crime, gangs roaming the countryside unchecked, where the welfare state is no longer failing those it was designed to help.” It is a message with apparently growing appeal in a nation long accustomed to a consensus of social welfare and a solid anchor for the north of Europe.
Italy
At the other end of the continent, similar voices are in an even more commanding position in Italy to take over the full reins of government on September 25. There, Giorgia Meloni has emerged as leader of the Brothers of Italy (Fratella d'Italia or FdI), a venerable party that has never fully shed its Fascist past. While she has described the nation's original Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, as an individual who needs to be viewed from an historical perspective, she has also failed to renounce much of what he stood for when he seized power precisely a century ago.
The fact is that much of the Italian electorate is scared. The outgoing technocrat prime minister, Mario Draghi, who arrived in power fresh out of a triumphant leadership of the European Central Bank, hardly had time to make good on his promises for economic and social transformation before he was overwhelmed by a parliamentary cacophony of dissenting voices that finally drove him from office in despair.
Among these dissenting voices was Meloni and two of her would-be coalition partners since no Italian government in years has won a sustainable majority on its own. Longtime rightist Italian leader, the aging Silvio Berlusconi, 85, and Matteo Salvini, 49, and his ultra-populist Lega (League) are also in this mix.
It is Salvini who is especially frightening in terms of his apparent embrace of Vladimir Putin and all his Kremlin represents. “I would not want the sanctions to harm those who impose them more than those who are hit by them," Salvini told a gathering on Lake Como last weekend. "If we adopt an instrument to hurt the aggressor and after seven months of war it has not been hurt, at least considering a change seems legitimate to me." Salvini claimed that the sanctions have even helped Russia achieve an annual export surplus of $140 billion.
But Italy is facing some truly intractable problems beyond Russia that no ideological bluster will cure. Indeed, it will take a very deft hand on the economic and social tiller, which by no means plays to the strength of any of the three leaders of the potential ruling coalition. Italy is the second most deeply-indebted country of Europe after Greece. The national debt amounts to 151% of its GDP at the end of 2021, twice that of Hungary and Poland and four times that of Sweden. Moreover, unlike the admonition that the first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging, Italy's burden has been steadily rising from 135% in 2019 before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Higher interest rates will only compound the problem. And on Thursday, the ECB raised its benchmark lending rate across the Eurozone by 75 basis points, the highest in history, while promising there'd be more to come. Hedge funds have been lining up their biggest bets against Italian government bonds—the highest 'short' levels since 2008. "It's the most exposed [country] in terms of what happens to gas prices and the politics is challenging," Mark Dowding, chief investment officer of BlueBay Asset Management, told London's Financial Times, adding he's shorting Italian 10-year bonds, betting their prices will plummet as interest rates soar.
Nor is Vladimir Putin in any position to help out, even if he had an inclination to do so, at least not now. Italy is only one of the big customers of Russian oil and natural gas that are deeply impacted by the various sanctions regimes in force and up for renewal, even strengthening. Meloni, and particularly her Lega partner Salvini, who have both expressed skepticism over the value of sanctions if the price to Italian consumers remains as high as it is, might be tempted to join with Putin chum, Hungary's leader Viktor Orban, in seeking to throw a wrench into the unanimous vote the 27-member European Union must hold to continue the penalties against Russia and its oligarchs.
Inflation is the other central issue in this Italian election. What seemed on the brink of helping Italy's more moderate parties, particularly the Partido Democratico (PD) of former prime minister Enrico Letta, were some of the latest inflation numbers that suggested the cost of living might be peaking at 7.9% in July. But the pace picked up again in August surging to 8.4%, the highest in more than 36 years. Draghi, still in power until the elections, managed last month to cram through a $17 billion aid package to help shield families from soaring energy costs and rising consumer, particularly food, prices. This bailout, however, only adds to the $35 billion in previous packages and of course to the country's debt burden.
In short, this promises to be quite an election season, filled with events and individuals who have altered and illuminated our times. Cue Gina Lollobrigida who at 95 apparently believes she is ready for another, perhaps final, closeup?
She's running for the Italian Senate as a candidate for the Sovereign and Popular Party in the city of Latina. "I was just tired of hearing politicians arguing with each other without ever getting to the point," she told the national Milan-based daily Corriere dela Sera. "I will fight for the people to decide, from health to justice. Italy is in bad shape; I want to do something good and positive." And she added, unlike so many of her competitors, "I collaborate with everyone. As long as it is for the good of Italy." As to why she's running? "As long as [I have] energy, I use it for important things, especially for my country."
Chile
No government, no parliament is on the line, but Chilean voters did go to the polls last Sunday and gave an overwhelming thumbs-down to a new draft constitution to replace the document that has been in force since the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet was ousted in 1990. The new document would have legalized abortion, adopted universal health care and assured more than 100 constitutional rights that are not now guaranteed. It would at once have transformed one of the most reactionary nations in Latin America into a leader of liberal societies. But 62% of the people wanted no part of it. Undeterred, the nation's leftist President Gabriel Boric said this week he'd begin working with Congress to begin another effort to rewrite the constitution: “Chileans’ decision demands our institutions and political leaders to work harder, with more dialogue, respect and care, until we reach a proposal that reflects us all."
Angola
Finally, last week, Angola's Supreme Court issued its definitive ruling, confirming the re-election of João Lourenço and his MPLA party (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola), by a narrow 51.17% to 43.95% over four-time challenger Adalberto Costa Junior and his UNITA party (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). Costa claimed a victory of 49.5% to 48.2% and appealed to the court to annul the results and hold a new election. The court refused.
"The data collected by the UNITA (parallel) counting ... reveal huge and unacceptable differences from those published by the CNE (electoral commission)," Costa Junior said, adding that the count indicated "willful manipulation of the results." The high court disagreed.
For a full look at what was involved in this contentious vote, and the long history of both parties in the birth and development of this oil-rich but still deeply-impoverished nation, do have a look at our Andelman Unleashed examination Angola: Still Refighting a Bitter Civil War.