EDITORIAL
EDITORIALS BREATHING SPELL IN ITALY Inside the fat man that is the Christian Democratic party in Italy, there are at least two other men clamoring to get out a liberal-radical on one hand and a...
...In the recent elections they faced the old question of Communist long-range intentions, made somewhat fresh by new currents inside the Western Communist parties...
...This is the direction in which the political wind is blowing, and it is hard to imagine a sharper rebuff for Pope Paul, whose spokesmen had for weeks before the voting warned of the Communist danger to the Eternal City...
...Dividrd or not, the Christian Democrats must, in the short time that may be available to them, recapture their sense of moral purpo.se and political vigor in order to tackle Italy's worst problems...
...And if the political party so intimately related to the church over the years is unable to recapture the moral vigor that is needed, it will be a telling indication that the church in Italy as well as the Christian Democratic party is in serious trouble...
...their union makes as much sense as would an effort by Michael Harrington's Democratic Socialists to collaborate with Ronald Reagan's most die-hard Birchite followers...
...As a consequence, the Christian Democratic party has been increasingly plagued by governmental corruption, political factionalism, bureaucratic inefficiency and a general inability to govern...
...EDITORIALS BREATHING SPELL IN ITALY Inside the fat man that is the Christian Democratic party in Italy, there are at least two other men clamoring to get out a liberal-radical on one hand and a conservative-reactionary on the other...
...indeed, they gained ground slightly...
...In the voting that centered around this question, a report on which begins on page 521, the Christian Democrats did not lose...
...The voting in the city of Rome illustrates the dimensions of the Christian Democratic problem...
...With inflation raging and well over a million citizens out of work, somehow they must demonstrate that they can face and solve Italy's pressing social and economic problems and here solid help from the United States in terms of loans and investments will help far more than further lectures from Secretary Kissinger...
...What the Christian Democrats have won, then, is at best a breathing spell perhaps a last chance to survive as a major political force...
...The result is that the Christian Democrats have been in power since World War II, without a large-scale, responsible democratic opposition and without the periods out of power that seem necessary if any political party is to go through a periodic self-cleansing process...
...They formed and operate as one party simply because of the strength of the Communists...
...if the Christian Democrats had split into radical and conservative wings, the Communists would have been Italy's major party and would have organized the government...
...But the Communists did well too, both political parties profiting at the expense of smaller political groupings with whom the Christian Democrats normally form coalitions...
...If the Communists won the elections, would the result be Communism with a human face a la Czechoslovakia's Dubcek or would it be the kind of Communism that drowned Dubcek's springtime in blood...
...The two really have no business being in the same party, of course...
...There neither party wen a majority, but for the first time the Communists pulled more popular votes and won more seats than the Christian Democrats...
...All this is well known by the Italian voters...
...Continued bumbling will certainly mean a political bonanza for the Communists the next time around...
Vol. 103 • August 1976 • No. 17
