The Socialists, a Modern Party for a Modern Italy’ — Bettino Craxi, their leader, is pictured with somebody behind him working on a computer. Despite the fact that their emblem is a carnation, the Socialists are using green posters this year to steal a march on the Greens. Who have unfortunately split into the Rainbow Greens and the Smiling Sun Greens and are arguing heatedly about who was responsible. ‘A New Role for Women in a Fair Society’, says the Communists’ poster. But will it cut much ice in la strada delle zitelle?
All in all, there is a curious lack of imagination about this advertising. Especially given the Italians’ usual verve and flare for such things. A weariness. As if none of it really mattered. ‘Working toward a United Europe’, boasts the Christian Democratic Party. But then so, if we’re to take them at their word, are the Social Democrats. The Republicans trumpet their ‘Honesty and Integrity’, clearly hinting what everybody already knows, that the others have neither. But then do the Republicans? And is it what people want? The Movimento Sociale, inheritors of the fascist tradition, think it is. ‘Firm Government and an End to Corruption’, they proclaim. Well, it’s a step forward from the ‘Credere, Ubbidire, Combattere!’ — ‘Believe, Obey, Fight!’ — of their predecessors, a motto still provocatively visible under a thin coat of whitewash on the town hall of a nearby village. ‘The Right Choice’, say the Liberals about themselves, feeling that no further explanation is necessary. Or perhaps possible. ‘Towards a Real Alternative’, plead the Communists, their hammer and sickle reduced to a sixpence. ‘Stability, Prosperity’, thunder back the Christian Democrats, making much of their own emblem of the Crusader’s red cross on a white shield. Well, who would ever argue with stability and prosperity?
In the end you have to turn to the extremist fringes to get any hint of policies. ‘Rome = Mafia = Taxes’, says the slogan of the separatist Liga Veneta. And another poster warns: ‘Bringing Blacks to the Veneto = Slavery’. Obviously somebody has a penchant for perverse equations. At the other extreme, the Democratic Proletarian Party wants ‘Nuclear Weapons Out Now’. The Pensioners’ Party demands social justice for the elderly. Predictable stuff. The Radical Party, splendidly idealistic as ever, proclaims: ‘No to World Famine.’
Responsible modern-man Giampaolo Visentini is thus profoundly depressed. ‘They don’t even bother trying to hoodwink us any more, ‘he observes. Bepi just snorts. He won’t talk about it. It’s too ridiculous. In the sanitaria, herbalist Maria Grazia’s husband thunders for the Liga, the separatists. There are too many meridionali moving into the area. Have I heard that they’re setting up yet another cooperative to build houses for themselves in Mizzole? Have I? With that and the new high-security prison going up next to the barracks, we’ll have the Mafia here in no time. Amusingly, work on the prison is stopped the following week because it’s discovered that the contractors involved paid bribes to politicians to get the job. A student of mine tells me she was a Democratic Proletarian activist once, but then she realised they were just the same as all the others.
Meanwhile, the debate on TV has switched to the technical question of whether parties should declare their allegiances vis-à-vis other parties before the election, so that people know what kind of coalition they are voting for. This is an age-old Christian Democrat ploy to have people suspect that the Socialists might desert the present government to form an alliance with the Communists after the election. Which would be the end of everything, of course. The Socialists insist that each party must simply present its policies and that is that. Whereas so far nobody has presented any. The Communists accuse the Church of using the pulpit to encourage people to vote Christian Democrat. The smaller parties try to have us all imagine that behind the scenes Christian Democrats and Communists are planning to get together and change the electoral system in such a way as to exclude all the others. There is an enormous amount of talking, much of it deployed about the furthest outposts of comprehensibility, and absolutely no debate. Nobody mentions interest rates, or inflation, or unemployment, or defence spending, or levels of housebuilding, or anything that might remotely have any bearing on day-to-day life. Nobody presents a programme or manifesto. As for the government’s record, it is never considered, since each party in the coalition always claims that the other members were responsible for everything bad. Oddly, there are no opinion polls, no suggestion that things are running one way or another. If I could vote, I reflect, I would have absolutely no idea who to vote for.
Election day finally comes around. The baby is due now, but lying doggo. We wake to a perfect Sunday morning and hear the radio reminding the population that it’s not just a right, but a duty to vote. They must get along to their polling station before dashing off to swim at the lake or picnic in the mountains. They mustn’t let the election be won by apathy and indifference. ‘And if you really can’t vote today, remember that you have the right to take time off work to vote tomorrow morning. Up to two o’clock. ‘The amount of concern suggests fears of an abysmal turnout. Which I would find only too understandable. We shall see.
Being a dutiful citizen, Rita sets off to vote. Who for, I have no idea. We follow the dusty road over the first and second bridges where people take the corners so courageously. The car park is full for early Mass. Six girls pass us on three bicycles. In each case the passenger stands on the saddle with her hands on the shoulders of the rider. One has an ice-lolly in her mouth, another a cigarette. The vines are stretching their tendrils across the pergola of the Bar Centrale in Piazza Buccari, where Moreno the halfwit, in deerstalker hat despite the heat, is cadging cigarettes and being gently mocked by men reading La Gazzetta dello Sport. And it’s only half past eight. One learns to rise early here to get the best of the day.
We arrive at the other end of the village where the local school has been closed for the last three days to prepare it as a polling station. Although it’s difficult to imagine why so much time was needed. In the main entrance, a computer printout has each person’s name and, for some reason, their profession. There is an obsession about categorising people by profession. You then go to vote in one of a variety of classrooms, and in each classroom there are two scrutatori or observers. Not surprisingly, these are mainly the children of local bigwigs, glad to pick up the 80,000 Lire they get for their services. In the booth, you put a cross over the emblem of the party you want, and then, if you like, the name of one of the many many people who are standing for that party. Each constituency returns a number of deputies, and each party can offer a whole range of possible choices to fill those positions. Which means you can vote for someone in some particular faction of your chosen party, or for the man who has already done you a favour. Or is going to if he gets in. It makes counting terribly complicated.
Curiously absent from the whole process is any real suspense vis-à-vis the result. The evening news offers no ‘swingometers’, no eager experts discussing marginal states or constituencies, no surveys taken of people leaving polling stations. This is partly because the quite extreme system of proportional representation removes any seesaw effect. A swing of 5 per cent means nothing more than a swing of 5 per cent. Not the difference between one government and another. And anyway no such swings are likely to occur. Perhaps 2 or 3 per cent will leave this party, but only to disperse among five or six others. Perhaps at the end of the day one party will have crept forward the few points required to shout victory. But, in the main, the status quo will be left untouched. For the truth is that, disillusioned as they are, most Italians will always get out there and vote for the same party they always have. The football supporter mentality, Giampaolo calls it: ‘You stay with them even when they’re losing every game and charging you more to watch every time.’