ROME LETTER:Italy's main opposition party is taking a pasting in both byelections and to its public image
ALL IN all, this has not been a good year for the Italian left. What started badly last January with the fall of Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition government got worse when the newly formed Democratic Party (PD), led by former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni, lost the April general election to the great communicator himself, Silvio Berlusconi.
This week, however, the PD, the main opposition party, would appear to have touched a new low. Last Monday, the party's candidate was roundly beaten by the Berlusconi Freedom Party (PDL) candidate in a byelection held to replace the disgraced centre-left governor of Abruzzo, Ottaviano Del Turco. He was ousted from office this summer on the back of his alleged involvement in a healthcare scam.
Where Del Turco had returned a 58.2 per cent vote in 2005, this time the centre-left candidate, Carlo Costantini, returned a 42.4 per cent vote, being roundly defeated by the PDL candidate Gianni Chiodi on 49.57 per cent. Worse still, in a region where 81 per cent of the electorate turned out for the general election last April, less than 53 per cent voted last weekend.
Before the PD even had time to begin to question just what percentage of the abstentionist electorate belonged to them (a large one, one imagines), the party was hit by another shock from out there in the Adriatic. The PD mayor of Pescara, Luciano D'Alfonso, was arrested on Monday night in a graft probe that involves other senior party officials.
Little did Walter Veltroni and the PD know it, but that was only the beginning of their troubles. Next morning, another PD exponent, deputy Salvatore Margiotta, was placed under house arrest in connection with an alleged scam related to the extraction of oil in Basilicata.
Basilicata, in southern Italy, has Europe's largest onshore oilfield, operated by French energy group Total, along with Italian subsidiaries of Exon Mobil and Shell. This oilfield is expected to produce 50,000 barrels of oil a day by 2011, while local communities hoped that oil might bring jobs and prosperity. So far, it seems to have brought little more than multinational profits and Italian-style kickbacks.
And things did not get better on Wednesday when ever-troubled Naples was hit by a corruption scandal. Police placed two city councillors who work alongside centre-left mayor Rosa Iervolino under house arrest for what prosecutors call a "systematic looting of public resources". Two deputies, Renzo Lusetti of the PDs and Italo Bocchino of the PDL, were also informed they are under investigation in connection with the Naples scandal.
Furthermore, in what seems sure to be a long and protracted investigation, wealthy builder and hotel-owner Alfredo Romeo was arrested while 10 other people have been placed under house arrest. At the centre of the investigation is the awarding of a €400 million maintenance and catering contract to a Neapolitan firm, Global Services.
Nationwide, the picture is grim for the PD. Apart from the two investigations in Abruzzo and those in Basilicata and Naples, senior party figures are involved in at least five other major corruption investigations in Trento, Genoa, Florence, Foggia and Calabria. For the party which attempted to take a leaf or two out of Barak Obama's campaign notebook, using slogans such as "A Modern Italy! We Can Do It", this week's events are depressing.
If Veltroni really believes he can establish the image of a new, squeaky-clean force in Italian politics, he would clearly seem to have a long way to go. Yet for some time now, that is what elements of the left and centre-left have proudly claimed. "We are clean," they suggest, the implication being that Berlusconi and his centre-right cronies will be forever caught up in judicial wrangles and accusations of corruption.
Yet no less an authority than Roberto Saviano, best-selling author of Gomorrah, a remarkable exposé of the Camorra in Naples, this week issued a damning sentence on the centre left, in relation to Naples.
"Leaving aside this week's investigation in Naples and how it will finish, one thing must be said. Namely, that we have known for 10 years now that the centre-left maintains good relations with organised crime," said Saviano, currently under threat from the Camorra, to students at the Roma Tre university on Wednesday.
PD leader Veltroni, already criticised by many of his supporters for not mounting a stern enough opposition to the Berlusconi government, clearly faces a serious internal crisis. Not for nothing, in Abruzzo last weekend, many PD supporters switched to the Italy of Values (IDV) party led by ex-investigating magistrate Antonio Di Pietro.
Veltroni has promised that he will work ever harder to "show clearly how the Democratic Party can represent something new". He has his work cut out.
Meanwhile, prime minister Berlusconi seems to be left with a free hand. Just as a worldwide economic crisis is biting hard, he is concentrating on his reform agenda, in particular overhauling the justice system.
Just what Italy needs in a credit crisis.