This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ROME 000798 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/13/2016 
TAGS: PGOV IT ITALY NATIONAL ELECTIONS
SUBJECT: ITALIAN ELECTIONS:  THE SOUTHERN BATTLEGROUND 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Ronald P. Spogli, Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 
 
Summary 
------- 
 
¶1.  (C)  Puglia, on Italy's southern heel, is a battleground 
region in Italy's April 9 elections.  Although a traditional 
stronghold of the Center Right, it is an area where voters 
have handed Center Left politicians dramatic electoral gains 
in recent municipal and regional voting.  Local pundits 
believe the Center Right has run a good campaign, fielded 
strong candidates, and generally made an impressive comeback 
in Puglia this electoral season.  But Puglia, like Italy as a 
whole, remains too close to call.  As one analyst put it, 
"any small thing" in the campaign over the next few weeks 
could tip the balance.  At issue is whether the Center Right 
can gain back enough of its traditional base to overcome 
profound voter dissatisfaction with the economy and a 
perception that PM Berlusconi failed to deliver on promises 
from the last national election.  The Senate race, in 
particular, is wide open.  FM Fini told one of his local 
party bosses that the campaign in Puglia could decide victory 
or defeat at the national level.  End Summary. 
 
 
Center Right: Puglia Could Be the Difference 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (U) Italy's April 9 legislative elections look at this 
point like a statistical dead heat.  The contest will likely 
be decided in just four of the country's 20 regions: 
Piedmont, Lazio, Puglia, and Friuli Venezia Giulia.  All are 
areas where the Center Left has gained ground on the Center 
Right in local and regional elections in recent years.  And 
nowhere is the battle tighter than in Puglia, ancient Apulia, 
the southeastern heel of Italy. 
 
¶3.  (C) Gianfranco Fini, Italy's foreign minister and the 
leader of the center-right's Alleanza Nationale (AN) party, 
summed it up in no uncertain terms for his regional 
representative -- Adriana Poli Bortone, the veteran AN mayor 
of Lecce.  "He put me in charge of the campaign here," she 
told us. "And he said Puglia could decide victory or defeat 
at the national level.  That's a pretty heavy 
responsibility." 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Puglia, with the exception of the mountainous 
Gargano Peninsula in the north, is largely Adriatic coastal 
plain.  Its 4 million inhabitants populate an area about 85 
percent as big as New Jersey, stretching up the heel and 
lower back of Italy's boot.  The capital is the port city of 
Bari; other cities are Brindisi, Foggia, Lecce, and Taranto. 
Agricultural activity includes olives, grapes, cereals, 
almonds, figs, tobacco, and livestock.  There is fishing and 
manufacturing (refined petroleum, chemicals, cement, iron and 
steel, processed food, plastics, wine).  Local authorities 
are keen to develop tourism.  It has been a preferred point 
of entry for illegal immigrants from Albania.  While 
organized crime exists, local politicians and magistrates 
maintain it is much less deeply entrenched than the Camorra 
in Naples, the N'Dragheta of Calabria, or the Mafia in Sicily. 
 
¶5.  (U) Some 3 million persons are eligible to vote in 
Puglia, and turnout is traditionally in excess of 70 percent, 
so roughly 2 million votes are in play.  For many years a 
conservative, center-right stronghold, Puglia is a place that 
has been associated with traditional Catholic values.  In 
recent years, however, it has also become a national emblem 
of center left political gains, with the left eclipsing the 
right in regional and local elections.  The best known 
example came in 2005 elections for regional president, when a 
gay Communist candidate, Nichi Vendola, upset an incumbent 
from Prime Minister Berlusconi's Forza Italia party by just 
14,000 votes. 
 
 
Center Left: People Are Worse Off Than Five Years Ago 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶6.  (SBU) To gauge the electoral climate in this pivotal 
region, Rome Pol M/C, Naples poloff, and Naples Pol FSN 
visited Bari and Lecce from February 28 to March 2, speaking 
to over a dozen political figures from both left and right, 
as well as journalists, magistrates, and local academics. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) The question on the minds of most people we met was 
not whether the right had gained back ground on the left -- 
there was consensus they had -- but whether it would be 
enough to overcome profound voter dissatisfaction with the 
state of the economy and the failure of the Berlusconi 
government to fulfill its campaign promises of five years 
ago.  There the analysis differed.   Most believed the 
center-left still had an edge in the Chamber of Deputies 
vote, but the Senate race was definitely wide open.  The 
center-right could well carry the Senate race in Puglia and 
-- as Fini indicated to the Lecce mayor -- that could be the 
margin for it to carry the upper house nationally. 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  There was consensus that the biggest issue in 
Puglia was unemployment.  Textile, clothing and footwear 
production has been severely hurt by cheap imports, 
especially from China.  The best educated of the region's 
young are migrating in droves.  Political leaders on both 
sides of the spectrum want the central government to invest 
more in public works and development of roads, ports, trains 
and airports -- to create jobs, lay the groundwork for 
economic development, and promote tourism. 
 
 
Berlusconi Did Nothing He Said, Devolution Must Be Stopped 
--------------------------------------------- ------------- 
 
¶9.  (C) "Berlusconi completely abandoned the Mezzogiorno 
(Italy's south) for five years," declared Michele Bordo, the 
32-year-old regional secretary of the Democrats of the Left 
(DS), largest party in the center-left coalition. 
Center-left governments had spent more on the south. 
Berlusconi, he said, was seen as only thinking of himself, 
not the national interest.  People were worse off than five 
years ago.  The climate had changed.  (A center-right senator 
in Bari, Salvatore Tatarella of Alleanza Nazionale (AN), 
privately acknowledged the campaign challenge created by a 
perception that "the government has done nothing it said it 
would do.") 
 
¶10.  (C) Another neuralgic issue in the south is devolution, 
a pet law of the separatist Northern League, supported by the 
Berlusconi government and passed recently by parliament.  The 
DS secretary said the law should, and would, die when it goes 
to a national referendum later this year.  He denounced the 
measure, especially its provisions for fiscal devolution, as 
a formula for keeping more money in the rich north and 
investing fewer national resources in the south. 
 
 
Far Left: Employment is Job One 
------------------------------- 
 
¶11.  (C) The regional secretary of the Communist Renewal 
Party saw three priorities if the center left won: 
employment; reducing Italy's international involvement, 
especially in Iraq; and rolling back Berlusconi-era programs 
like devolution.  Nicola Fratoianni, like Bordo in his early 
30s, greeted us in jeans and jacket at an office plastered 
with anti-war posters.  "We disagree with your government's 
policies in Iraq," he said, noting that his party was "not 
very satisfied" with what it saw as hedged wording in the 
center-left program on the need to coordinate any withdrawal 
from Iraq. 
 
¶12.  (C) But Fratoianni said the party's top priority was 
addressing the "precariousness" of work for many people. 
Contracts should be reworked to provide more job security for 
workers; if more flexibility were required for certain jobs, 
that was fine, but people should be paid more.  "Some people 
believed Berlusconi's promises five years ago," he said. 
"Now he's doing it again, making more promises.  But the 
people who believed him before are disillusioned." 
 
 
Center Right Working the Message 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶13.  (C) We asked Lecce mayor Poli Bartone of AN about the 
left's accusation that the Berlusconi government had 
abandoned the region during the last five years.  She 
responded that, in fact, a lot of money has come to the area, 
mainly EU funds.  The difficulty was that at first, much of 
the money obligated went unused for lack of implementing 
projects.  Now, she said, "we are much better at this" and 98 
percent of the available money is being used, and well -- to 
restore public buildings, improve internal transport, and 
provide better lighting in rundown, crime-prone urban 
peripheral areas.  But, Poli Bartone said, "this is a 
campaign challenge for me -- to make people understand that, 
if EU money is coming in, its because this government 
obtained it." 
 
¶14.  (C) The editors of the Bari edition of leftist La 
Repubblica said the Puglia campaign was very close.  Chief 
editor Stefano Constantini flatly declared that the Center 
Left had not been campaigning well.  "We are a journal of the 
left," he said.  "We want to help.  We asked them to give us 
five points -- just five -- to summarize their 281-page 
program, and we got no response."  Constantini believed the 
Center Right had recovered ground strongly.  His colleague, 
editor and political analyst Domenico Castellaneta, went even 
further.  Castellaneta thought the center right would win the 
Senate in Puglia.  (Subsequently, the Berlusconi-owned daily 
Il Giornale reported March 10 a local La Repubblica poll had 
shown the Center Right at 48.5 percent in the Puglia Senate 
race, against 47 percent for the Center Left coalition.) 
 
¶15.  (C) Prof. Mario Lo Presti, the head of the Eurispes 
Institute for Political, Economic, and Social Studies in 
Puglia, said the campaign was simply too close to call.  As a 
statistician, he cautioned, "I don't believe in polls -- they 
are only valid for the moment they are conducted.  The next 
day they are no good."  Lo Presti saw the race in Puglia as 
so close that "any small thing" in the campaign over the next 
few weeks could tip the balance. 
 
 
Wild Cards:  New Law, Turnout, Cussedness 
----------------------------------------- 
 
¶16.  (C) Wild cards in the Puglia race are the impact of the 
new electoral law, turnout, and the cussedness factor. The 
new law requires voting for parties, not individuals.  This 
worries southern politicians, for whom personal affiliation 
and connections have been the traditional determinants of 
political loyalty.  Now, politicians on both sides must 
scramble to educate voters.  Luigi Pepe of Lecce, regional 
secretary for centrist UDEUR, has prepared special inserts 
 
SIPDIS 
for newspapers in his district -- explaining to his 
constituents that they vote for him by marking a ballot next 
to the party symbol for UDEUR, but without his name next to 
it.  The task for Pepe and others is further complicated 
because writing in a name next to the party symbol will annul 
the ballot. 
 
¶17.  (C) So Pepe believes confusion over the new rules could 
depress turnout.  Similarly, Poli Bartone of AN said that, 
under the new system, it would be a challenge to reach the 
nearly 74 percent turnout of five years ago.  The La 
Repubblica editors in Bari thought the difficulty of 
motivating voters when their preferred candidates' names are 
not actually on the ballot could cut more against the Center 
Left.  They commented that AN had also done a good job of 
fielding strong candidates in Puglia. 
 
 
"Berlusconi Record a Problem, but Prodi Objectively Worse" 
--------------------------------------------- ------------- 
 
¶18.  (C) Rep. Giannicola Sinisi of the moderate left Daisy 
Party disagreed.  He noted that the center left, as a result 
of its victory in local elections, would now enjoy in Puglia 
the advantage the right had had five years ago -- the power 
of incumbency.  He said this was a particular boost in the 
south, with its tradition of clientelism and "transformismo", 
i.e., changing one's party to go with the presumed winners. 
Senator Salvatore Tatarella of AN acknowledged that 
incumbency had indeed been a plus under the old system, but 
said it was less so now.  The right had been in power for 
many years in Puglia, and had a firm base at the regional 
level.  While the coalition had made a number of "tactical 
errors" in the recent campaign for regional president, those 
had now been addressed.  Besides, he said, the Berlusconi 
record may be a problem, but "Prodi is objectively worse." 
 
¶19.  (C) Then there is the cussedness factor.   We noted to 
the Eurispes head that people everywhere tend to vote for 
change when things aren't going well.  How might that play in 
Puglia, if people were feeling worse off?  Prof. Lo Presti 
said the throw-the-bums-out factor might be good news for the 
Center Left on a national level, but it could be negative for 
the left in Puglia, where they control many local 
administrations.  The newspaper editors concurred.   Vendola, 
the gay Communist regional president, was actually doing 
quite well, but he had been in power less than a year, not 
enough time to have much impact.  By contrast, others like 
the mayor of Bari, who have been in government longer, were 
having more difficulty. 
 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶20. (C) Both coalitions see Puglia as central to their 
winning formulas.  Party leaders on both sides will likely 
make a major effort there in the closing weeks of the 
campaign. The Center Left is betting on people feeling worse 
off than five years ago and disillusioned with Berlusconi's 
unkept promises.  But they've done a poor job capitalizing on 
this discontent.  The Center Right has revamped its 
organization in a traditional stronghold, campaigned well, 
and fielded good local candidates.  But voters are 
unimpressed by Berlusconi's domestic record and leery of new 
promises.  In short, Puglia, like Italy as a whole, is too 
close to call.  As Lo Presti of Eurispes said, "any small 
thing" in the campaign over the next few weeks could tip the 
balance.  And it could well be that, as Puglia goes, so goes 
the nation. 
SPOGLI