A new left leader?
SINCE Giuliano Amato, a clever and experienced technocrat, became Italy's prime minister in April, he has not done badly. He has managed to stay at the head of a ramshackle and demoralised coalition of some dozen parties. When he took over, many politicians in Rome doubted whether he would survive long beyond the autumn, yet within a month or two the conventional wisdom was that nobody else on the centre-left was as well equipped to run the show. By midsummer the betting was that Mr Amato would not only stay in charge until the next general election, due at the latest next spring, but would probably lead a coalition of the centre-left into the electoral fray.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “A new left leader?”
From the September 16th 2000 edition
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