Italy in Limbo
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F.
A COUNTRY WITHOUT A GOVERNMENT Italy in Limbo BY SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA Rome The power vacuum in Italy today is truly frightening, and there is no indication that it will soon be filled. Months,...
...It is being kept alive by the general realization that only stopgap governments are possible under existing circumstances...
...I am worried about those who have not voted Communist and now may want to join the party on the rise," said Flaminio Piccoli, DC floor leader in the Chamber of Deputies...
...Last month Jesuit Bartolomeo Sorge, the influential editor of the conservative Civilta' Cattolica, warned the DC that it has three months at most to attempt "a regeneration of the party" by returning to its original Catholic-democratic inspiration...
...Finally, besides the problems stemming from intraparty rivalries and factionalism, the DC has two essential issues to face that challenge its fundamental policy from 1947 to this very day...
...Unlike the Socialists, the Christian Democrats managed to avoid splits, and no group, regardless of how small, ever broke away...
...Party leaders fought each other like cats and dogs, never letting fair play or political ethics cramp their style, yet they always did so within the fold...
...Hence they favor a Christian Democratic-Socialist alliance that would exclude the Social Democrats and maintain a friendly working relationship with the Communists, whose support would be needed for the envisaged coalition to survive...
...But it is easier to make such noble demands than to execute them...
...The minority government headed by veteran statesman Aldo Moro is a rudderless body, incapable not simply of shaping policies but of making even individual urgent decisions in the economic area...
...It altered not only relations between the United States and the Soviet Union but also the approach toward domestic and international Communism virtually everywhere in the world, including the Vatican...
...Communism was no longer the antichrist...
...Silvio F. Senigallia, a veteran contributor, is the Rome representative of Farrar, Straus and Giroux...
...The progressive Catholic daily Avvenire, in a strongly worded editorial, condemned the petty, selfish squabbles among DC leaders interested mainly in preserving their positions and apparently unaware of the plight of the Catholic electorate...
...A coalition based on anti-Communism is numerically feasible only if the Socialists are willing, and they definitely are not...
...Communist participation within the framework of a Parliamentary majority, on the other hand, is totally unwelcome to the bulk of the basically conservative Christian Democratic membership and electorate, which opposes any government relying upon direct or indirect PCI support...
...Right of what used to be Center there is only the 6.9 per cent of the population that supported the Italian Social Movement-National Right Wing, a neo-Fascist party operating in a shallow and contemptible atmosphere of criminal violence and futile nostalgia...
...The DC faithful are uncomfortably conscious, too, of the parallels between their party and the Movement Republicain Populaire, the once powerful French Catholic party of Robert Schuman that, after a quick decline, sank into oblivion in the early '50s and formally dissolved in 1967...
...The DC can expect little help from the moderately Leftist Social Democrats (5.6 per cent of the vote) and Republicans (3.3 per cent...
...Until a few months ago, Bologna was the only major urban center with a Communist mayor...
...The DC national congress will be held early next year...
...Nevertheless, the implication was not lost on the less orthodox sectors of the DC electorate...
...Months, perhaps years, are likely to pass before this country is able to emerge from the political coma gripping it...
...Meanwhile, Italy can do little more than linger on listlessly...
...Over 1 million traditional DC voters, convinced that the time for a change had come, cast their ballots for the PCI...
...Through the years the DC was a federation of warring factions glued together by two factors: its religious matrix and its possession of power...
...The Socialists (PSI), who polled 12.1 per cent, up from 9.7 in 1972, feel the ideological and political pull of the PCI, but at the same time are afraid of being squeezed by a modus vivendi-the so-called historic compromise-between the DC and PCI...
...The distinction may be subtle...
...But can it afford to do something regionally that it may not be willing to do nationally...
...To begin with, because of the long holiday season here no serious reappraisal can even get under way until October at the earliest...
...And the DC Left-wing monthly, Domani d'Italia, voiced the fear that it was already too late to attempt to reinvigorate the party, to give it a new decent modern image...
...The DC was no longer the Catholic party, it was un partito di cattolici (a party of Catholics...
...Pressure is mounting, therefore, for the DC to initiate a thorough regeneration, re-animation, revival, etc.-and right away...
...now all the big cities north of Rome are ruled by Communist-Socialist coalitions...
...With Pope John's Vatican Council, though, things started to change...
...So far they have merely picked a scapegoat in the person of their aggressive, sarcastic, overbearing political secretary, Amintore Fanfani, and after weeks of accusations, bickering and vigorous infighting, have forced him to resign...
...Even now there is little evidence of possible defections on an organized basis...
...But some of the party's rank and file and its moderate middle-class electorate have been showing signs of slippage...
...In the past, the Catholic hierarchy threw its full weight behind the DC in election after election...
...There are those, like Fanfani, who recall that the DC continues to be the majority party, and that 12 million Italians voted for it...
...Moreover, solutions can be provided only by new leaders, new ideas, new formulas, so there is bound to be a long period of inaction before things get moving again...
...They caution against excessive pessimism, hasty decisions, sudden shifts...
...The trend could be accelerated by the inception of a bandwagon mentality...
...One may uncharitably add that in a country like Italy, where for 21 years everybody was a Fascist and for the next 30 years Christian Democratic supremacy was virtually unchallenged, the possibility of a mass rush toward the extreme Left cannot be discounted...
...The hierarchy began to exhibit a reluctance to participate in a crusade every time the Italians went to the polls, and its attitude toward Communism became less intransigent...
...That is why he is patiently waiting to see what new course, if any, the DC will steer...
...A major reason for this is the shift that has taken place in the Church...
...The party has to decide whether to stick to anti-Communism or share power with the PCI...
...The culmination of this process-following the defeats suffered by the party during the last year on the divorce referendum and in the regional elections of Sardinia and Trentino-was the June 15 election...
...When Pius XII was alive, one actually heard threats of excommunication for those who failed to support the DC...
...He believes it best to move his party into a dominating national position without rushing matters...
...In fact, the DC won a bare 35.6 per cent, down 3 per cent from the 1972 Parliamentary balloting, but the Communists (PCI) registered sweeping gains, increasing their percentage from 27.5 in 1972 to 32.4...
...His successor, Benigno Zaccagnini, a decent, old-fashioned politician, is as much of a stopgap as the Moro government...
...As for the PCI, it is shrewdly refraining from triumphal displays or demands that it be given a clear-cut national role...
...These people, however, do not reflect the prevailing mood within the Christian Democratic top- and second-echelons...
...Berlinguer feels time is on his side...
...The DC leadership, consequently, came under closer scrutiny, and more and more people decided they did not like what they saw: ineffectual governments always headed by the same men, rampant factionalism and often blatant corruption...
...In addition, five other regional governments have been formed with direct or indirect Communist support...
...The question is, can the Christian Democrats wait that long to come up with a program...
...Detente had an effect as well...
...One did not have to vote for the Christian Democrats...
...Statements issued by the Pope, the cardinals, the bishops, and the Vatican newspaper warned voters against the dangers of atheistic Marxism...
...I had previously reported in these pages ("Italy's Elections," NL, June 9) that "Christian Democratic spokesmen are resigned to some losses, but view 35 per cent as their safety margin...
...Secondly, while such a reappraisal may be only a moderately severe task for a small organization, it is an extremely complex one for a large party with major government responsibilities on the national and local levels...
...The DC setback, when coupled with the PCI's sensational advance, gave the returns a significance beyond figures and percentages: After 30 years as Italy's strongest party, the Christian Democrats find themselves in a situation where they are unable to preserve their supremacy, unwilling to compromise with the Communists, and unready as yet to go through the fundamental reappraisal that alone might bring about the party's renascence...
...Most observers seem to doubt it...
...Still anchored to the outdated formula of an anti-Communist Center-Left coalition, they are respectable but powerless...
...Instead, under the capable leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, the Communists are concentrating on widening their range of power in regional, provincial and city governments...
...The national question is connected with, and made more complex by, Communist power at the local level, and this brings us to the second issue: Since by August 1 a quarter of Italy's 53 million citizens, and all the inhabitants of the industrial North, were living under Communist-controlled regional governments, it is difficult to see how the DC can refuse any form of collaboration without completely paralyzing the nation's political and administrative life...
...Any genuine Christian Democratic reassessment will be truly agonizing...
...now there are six-Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria, Tuscany, Umbria, and Emilia...
...Before the elections, three regional governments were run by the PCI, or by the Communists in partnership with the Socialists...
...The primary ingredient in the current crisis is the defeat the once proud Christian Democratic party (DC) suffered in the nationwide local administrative (as opposed to Parliamentary) elections of June 15...
...As is well known, he eschews a 51 per cent popular front solution and seeks a broad alliance between the Communists and Christian Democrats...
...The first concerns the national government...
...While the powerful Communists, the influential Socialists, the discredited neo-Fascists, and the ineffectual Social Democrats and Republicans have all outlined their postelection policies, the Christian Democrats, still in shock, have yet to decide what they want, let alone how they are going to get it...
Vol. 58 • September 1975 • No. 18
