Feb 8, 2008
Walter Veltroni reckons there's something of Barack
Obama about him.
"Yes we
can!", the Rome
mayor said in English at the end of a news conference this week to launch his
campaign to be the next leader of Italy,
borrowing the catchphrase of the Illinois
senator who aims to be the first black US president.
Like Obama, Veltroni is hoping he can
convince voters he is their best bet for change. At 52, he is a different
generation to the charismatic former prime minister and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, his rival in Italy's two-month election race.
Berlusconi's
centre-right coalition is at least 10 percentage points ahead in the polls and Veltroni
is hoping for an Obama-style surge before the April
13-14 vote.
"I don't
believe the doomsayers nor opinion polls. Look at Obama - three months ago nobody would have bet on him, now
look where he is," Veltroni said when it was
clear Italy
would hold a snap election after Prime Minister Romano Prodi
resigned.
Prodi will not stand for
re-election and has passed on the centre-left leadership to Veltroni
who is offering a new-look left, modelled on, and
named after, the US Democratic Party.
Obama is not the first
prominent US Democrat to provide Veltroni with
inspiration. He is an admirer of Bill Clinton and wrote a book on Robert Kennedy. The theme is clear, he wants jaded Italians to see him as a new breed
of politician.
"I am
convinced ... only a completely new political proposal, something the country
hasn't seen for 15 years, can provide Italians with a good reason to
vote," Veltroni said.
Veltroni was deputy prime minister
in Prodi's first cabinet in 1996. But he has been away
from national politics for a decade and, unlike Berlusconi who is
contesting his fifth election, has never run for the top job.
New
Blair?
The Partito Democratico, which he was elected to
lead at a 'primary' last October, was formed via a merger between ex-communists
and centrist liberal democrats.
In Italy's
fragmented politics, Veltroni hopes the PD can mop up
votes from Italians who would previously have supported an array of other
parties and can bring the mainstream Italian left closer to the centre.
He said last
year he shares with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair "the idea of
the left as a wider area, more plural than was traditionally considered in the
history of the Italian left".
Veltroni is a former editor of
left-wing daily L'Unita and started his political
career in the now defunct Italian Communist Party. He lacks Berlusconi's slick
charm but opinion polls show Italians warm to his intellectual image.
The part-time
novelist and movie buff - he created the Rome
film festival - enjoys personal approval ratings of 50-60%, against 30-40% for
Berlusconi.
His foreign
policy would be similar to Prodi's, against the Iraq
war but for intervention in Afghanistan, concerned for the fate of Palestinians
but a friend of Israel.
Often accused
of 'buonismo' - Italian for being too much of a Mr Nice Guy - the Rome mayor has sought to harden his image by
cracking down on illegal settlements of Romanian immigrants in the city at a
time when fear of crime, and foreigners, has become a major issue for many
Italians.
He hints at tax
cuts rather than more state spending to boost Italy's flagging economy and has
resisted using the one weapon that has united the left over the last 15 years:
bashing Berlusconi.
Paraphrasing one
of his Democratic heroes, Veltroni said he wanted to
run on his own merits, not as an anti-Berlusconi leader.
"When Robert
Kennedy was running, he said: 'I am not running against a man, I am running
for my country'. That goes for the (Italian) Democratic Party as
well."
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/1574199