Italy Searches for a Government

...The Communists now hold 228 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, compared to 179 won in the previous national elections of 1972, and 116 in the Senate, up from 98...

...An indication of what he was talking about came July 5, when an accord between the major parties resulted in a Communist being elected Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, the most important parliamentary post to be held by the party in the Republic's 30-year history...

...unable to take advantage of the tense election, the Neo-Fascists lost 21 deputies and 11 senators...

...The strengthening of both leading parties at the expense of the smaller ones might be seen as a positive step toward the creation of a two-party system in Italy, if one of them was not the PCI...

...In the past—and especially last year—a sizeable number of them had expressed dissatisfaction over the DC leadership's glaring shortcomings by straying as far Right as the Neo-Fascist Social Italian Movement (MSI) or as far Left as the PCI...

...This time many of the defectors returned, even if their lack of enthusiasm called to mind the advice of Indro Montamelli, the irrepressible publisher of the conservative daily Il Giornale, who told his readers: "Hold your nose and vote DC...

...Silvio F. Senigallia, a regular contributor to these pages, is a close observer of Italian politics...

...Nevertheless, some middle-class voters did support the Communists, enabling them to register an unprecedented 34.4 per cent and confirming the Leftward shift of Italian political thinking...

...The prognosticators did not fare very well in the case of the Socialists (PSI) either...

...Some went so far as to hold out the possibility of a Socialist prime minister...

...is more or less resigned to Communist participation in a formal governing majority...

...Realizing that the DC may not be able to accept an overt partnership with the PCI at the moment, the Communists might support a temporary Christian Democratic-Socialist-Republican coalition that did not represent itself as a revival of the Center-Left formula, Berlinguer's aide continued...

...New elections are unthinkable, he reasoned, the old DC-minor parties alliance is no longer large enough, and the enfeebled Socialists cannot take an anti-Communist stand...

...Although the Tuesday-morning quarterbacks claimed the results were hardly unexpected, in fact, most experts had not accurately predicted them...

...Communists gain...

...The Socialists, whose actions forced the elections to be held a year ahead of schedule, were undone by their unreliable performance...

...One was the advance of the extreme Left-wing factions, who have been described with appropriate irony by Berlinguer as yesterday's extraparliamentarians and today's ultraparliamentarians...

...On the eve of the balloting an editorialist of Milan's Catholic paper, Avvenire, told me the DC would gladly settle for the 35.3 per cent of the vote it ended up with in '75...

...One of his closest aides, who wished to remain anonymous, also told me he personally believes the two major parties will eventually arrive at a modus operandi...

...Socialists lose...

...As the weeks went by, however, that moderate optimism gave way to worry, if not outright gloom...

...At the onset of the campaign many observers felt the Christian Democrats (DC), concentrating less on defending their lackluster record than denouncing the Communist (PCI) threat to Italian liberty, would do better than they did in the June 1975 regional elections...

...The condition existed before the elections, but the country's conflicting forces have now been equalized...

...When the tabulations were completed, not only did the DC remain the strongest party, taking 39 per cent of the vote, but it also preserved a margin over the Communists of 5 per cent in the Senate and 4.3 per cent in the Chamber of Deputies...

...Meanwhile, the PSI's relationship with the Communists went full circle: popular front in 1948, coolness after the 1956 Hungarian events, anti-Communism in the early '60s, rapprochement in 1969 following the failure of unification with the Social Democrats, and finally a proposal for a new popular front (under a different name) in 1975...

...It has been given new life by the bipolarization that was the most significant result of last month's balloting...

...They had participated in, or backed, virtually every DC-led government since 1963...

...The objective was temporarily shelved because it was attacked by DC Right-wingers and opposed by Socialists, who feared they would be left out of such an arrangement...

...The other was the rapid disintegration of the Center and Center-Left minor parties traditionally allied with the DC—the Social Democrats, Republicans and Liberals...

...At least two trends that emerged in '75, though, did hold up in the latest contest...

...Having come to the conclusion that the Christian Democrats and the Communists would lose ground, they had predicted sizeable Socialist gains...

...minor parties get clobbered...

...To paraphrase Berlinguer, their desire for a change was stronger than their fear of novelty...

...Publicly, the Communists favor a broad emergency coalition excluding only the MSI, but Berlinguer's long-range goal continues to be the "historic compromise"—a PCI-DC partnership...

...According to this tentative scenario, the PCI would provide an escape from the present impasse on condition that it would soon be followed by formal recognition of the party's participatory state...

...Nonetheless, the PSI—which exacted its patronage and had its own share of scandals—frequently chose to play the role of the DCs severest critic and ultimately pointed the finger at it as the source of all corruption in Italy...

...Under the circumstances, it is an additional obstacle to the formation of a stable government...

...Their undoubted reluctance to support the Communists' foreign policy was outweighed by an absence of confidence in the once prestigious yet at present old and corrupt DC leaders...

...Thus the new key political word here is ingovernabilita...

...The remaining 6 per cent of the ballots, cast by a combination of Right-wing extremists and diehard conservatives, went to the MSI...

...Most analysts had been convinced the PCI would not match its 32.4 per cent showing in '75, when only local administrations were at stake...

...Members of the bourgeoisie who joined then with the predominantly working-class Communist electorate were merely voicing their protest, it was argued, and would now return to the democratic—albeit not necessarily Christian Democratic—fold...

...No wonder voters turned away from the Socialists...

...The carefully-organized and well-financed Communist effort was running smoothly, while the increasing discontent of housewives over rising prices seemed to indicate the dominant party might lose even its longstanding support among middle-class women...

...But apparently these voters had crossed the political Rubicon in 1975...

...Additional factors contributing to the PCI's success included the development of a Communist bandwagon mentality, the heavy play given so-called Euro-Communism by the Western press, and the belief that the U.S...

...WRESTLING WITH BIPOLARIZATION Italy Searches for a Government by SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA Rome The Rome daily Messaggero aptly summarized the outcome of the Italian national elections held Sunday June 20, and Monday June 21: "Christian Democrats recoup...

...In the single hopeful sign since the elections, Berlinguer withdrew his demand for a direct role in the government...

...But the PSI, winner of 12 per cent of the vote in '75, managed to take only 9.6 per cent this time around...

...This achievement, despite the concerted anti-DC campaign waged by all the other parties, suggests that the Christian Democrats once again rallied the large group of middle-class, middle-of-the-road Italians...

...The traditionally anti-Communist bloc received approximately 47 per cent of the vote, exactly matching the Leftist parties advocating Communist participation in the government...