Just when Italy's center left appeared demoralized beyond repair, it has found a new leader who has managed to put Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on the defensive over his restrained response to the recession. The Democratic Party, which fell from power amid infighting a year ago and was then thrashed by the centre right in national and local elections, has leapt back into the political debate since choosing Dario Franceschini as interim leader on Feb. 21. “The opposition had disappeared for the past year and is now giving the first signs of life after a flat ECG,” said politics professor Franco Pavoncello, ascribing this to Franceschini's “more dynamic, fresher personality.” With proposals on how to respond to Italy's recession such as a monthly cheque for the unemployed and a one-off tax on the rich, the PD has, for the first time since its election defeat, seized the political initiative from the centre right. Critics call Franceschini's proposals “populist” and his ideas on how to finance them “simplistic”. But the debate has forced Berlusconi to tone down his optimism about the crisis and confront demands for more action to be taken. Having wasted little breath on the PD since he won a third term last year, 72-year-old centre-right leader Berlusconi has now turned his attention to the 50-year-old former Christian Democrat, irritatedly calling him a “Catho-communist”. But Franceschini has so far succeeded where his predecessor Walter Veltroni failed, using criticism of what he portrays as government complacency to unite the moderate left. Under Franceschini “we are no longer doomed to argue all the time”, said ex-premier Massimo D'Alema, referring to infighting that brought down Romano Prodi's government a year ago. The left's resurgence has also coincided with quarrels in government ranks ahead of the formal merger of Berlusconi's Forza Italia and the conservative National Alliance, headed by Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house, later this month. Another Berlusconi ally, Umberto Bossi of the anti-immigrant Northern League, said Franceschini's dole cheque proposal “might work” almost in the same breath as he rejected a Berlusconi proposal on parliamentary reform. Beating Berlusconi Franceschini, like his predecessor Veltroni a bookish figure with a sideline as a novelist, says he has no ambition of leading the PD beyond its autumn party congress, but wants “six months to show that Berlusconi and his agenda can be beaten.” That is a tall order for a party which, in a poll by IPR for La Repubblica daily, fell to 22 percent of support from its 33 percent in last year's elections. Berlusconi's People of Freedom had 36 percent and its Northern League partner 9.5 percent. The PD desperately needs to recover votes before European parliamentary elections in June and seems to have found fertile ground in attacking Italy's response to the economic crisis. “Berlusconi's aim is to prevent the crisis being felt. In fact, to deny its existence,” Franceschini said. Berlusconi chides the media for calling the crisis “tragic”, even though the economy may shrink 3 percent this year and post two consecutive years of negative growth for the first time since World War Two. Fittingly perhaps for a country with the third highest debt in the world, Italy has spent less on the crisis than its peers. Business daily Il Sole 24 Ore has estimated that while the United States has invested 5 percent of GDP, Japan 2 percent, Germany 3.8 percent, Italy has spent just 0.2 percent. The revived PD has proposed sending monthly dole cheques to workers laid off by the crisis, in a country where there is no long-term unemployment benefit. It would fund this by cracking down on tax evasion, an area where Prodi scored some successes. The government, rejecting the proposal, says it would cost 1 percent of Italy's GDP or 16 billion euros, while the PD says it would cost only 5
