Italy's New Number-One Problem
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F.
VIOLENT CRIME Italy's New Number-One Problem BY SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA The national economy is no longer Item Number One on Prime Minister Giulio An-dreotti's agenda. That may come as rather...
...The PCI, while equally unlikely to support the bill, seems to be more attuned to the mood of the nation than its Socialist comrades...
...Probably a more important factor than the surprising resiliency of the country's industrial machine in moving the economy down a notch on the Prime Minister's list of headaches, though, is the unprecedented wave of violence that has hit every corner of the peninsula, especially the larger urban centers...
...That is contingent, however, upon a government-union agreement on wage limitations...
...The party's leaders have at least shown an awareness that an increasing number of Italians are deeply frightened by the daily prison breaks, abductions, holdups, and other violent crimes...
...Veteran Communist leader Giorgio Amendola can afford to warn young workers and students that "they must not demand everything and immediately," as he put it last month in a blunt speech...
...But union heads, who fear the enactment of deflationary policies projected by the letter, feel compelled to take a strong stand...
...At the same time, well-organized groups of political terrorists belonging to the lunatic fringe of the extreme Left, who very likely have ties to the underworld, are waging guerrilla-style warfare on democratic institutions...
...The Socialists, stressing prevention rather than repression, worry instead about prison inmates' living conditions, slums, the lack of a police union, and police brutality...
...Their attitude remained unaffected by the April kidnapping of party president Francesco De Mar-tino's son Guido, released five weeks later, after the payment of a ransom equivalent to $1.1 million...
...In addition, the PCI has consistently and unconditionally condemned disturbances led by the fanatical Left...
...The government now gives the police moral and official support, but this is a recent development...
...On the economic front there has been some progress, fragile as it may be...
...On the one hand, the conservative sectors of public opinion clamor for merciless toughness plus sweeping emergency measures...
...The party's cooperation with the CD and its commitments to moderate Eurocommunist policies are already costing it sizable electoral support among young voters, many of whom see no difference between Andreotti and Berlinguer...
...Within a 48-hour period early this month, three prominent journalists were shot in the legs and the parked cars of two others were blown up...
...Thousands of university students, mostly members of the anarchistic, anti-Communist and antidemocratic Autonomous Movement, have also been staging frequent campus sit-ins, street demonstrations and political rallies that often turn into riots, forcing police intervention...
...But it was no secret that national and city authorities feared the Autonomous Movement might disrupt the parade either directly or through the paid services of professional criminals...
...Two years ago in Milan, when the driver of a police jeep shot and killed a young rioter who had thrown an incendiary bottle that set the car's tarpaulin on fire, only a medical report stating that a sudden raptus had made him mentally unsound "saved" him from the predominantly Leftist media's assaults...
...Casualties are of course inevitable, further inflaming the discontent at Italy's obsolescent, overcrowded, underequipped universities...
...Officially, the decision was described as consonant with the current climate of austerity...
...Credit for these attacks was claimed by the Brigate Rosse, an urban guerrilla organization...
...Thus far he has secured only insignificant concessions...
...In the past, too, the late writer, poet and movie director Pier Paolo Pasolini was the single Left-wing intellectual to side with the underpaid, pathetically vulnerable uniformed sons of the proletariat against radical youngsters from the affluent middle class...
...Because Andreotti's is a minority government, the support of the Socialists and the Partito Communista Italiano (PCI), is crucial...
...Since its elimination or even temporary suspension is impossible for mainly political reasons, An-dreotti is trying hard to convince union leaders to accept some basic modifications in the Scala Mobile's index...
...On the other, radical intellectuals and civil rights advocates denounce the police for gratuitous, brutal harassment of harmless demonstrators...
...Midway between these two camps are the majority of citizens, who consider the massive presence at rallies of police units in riot gear a mixed blessing...
...It is simultaneously protective and oppressive, a deterrent and an irritant...
...But it will probably not be forthcoming...
...Indeed, their idealism is such that they favor the complete disarming of the police...
...No success has been achieved in curbing violent crime, making it the country's most pressing and perplexing immediate problem...
...This new crop of outlaws is terrorizing the country to the point where a major trial in Turin had to be suspended sine die because the majority of the jurors suddenly discovered they were in poor health, and produced doctor's certificates to support their claims...
...A bill authorizing the temporary arrest of suspected criminals, wiretapping, stricter punishment, and an altogether tighter enforcement of existing laws has been introduced in Parliament by the Christian Democrats (CD...
...Part of the reason for Andreotti's exertions—and for his negligible success despite three months of constant bargaining and discussions between the government, Left-wing parties, management, and labor—is the "letter of intent" Italy wrote to the International Monetary Fund to obtain a $530 million loan...
...Those masterminding these only seemingly unconnected outbreaks are armed and have no qualms about opening fire on the police...
...The very sight of the units is a reminder that they are needed...
...This explains the considerable restraint displayed by the Communist press in its assessment of the police role in quelling recent major riots in Bologna, Rome and Milan...
...The position of the police is truly unenviable...
...Policemen and carabinieri have even been praised for their courageous fight against organized crime...
...Given this state of affairs, it is no wonder that the government's priorities have shifted...
...Nevertheless, it is a statistical fact that the country is not yet bankrupt: The economy bounced back from the recession with an unexpectedly high growth rate of 5.6 per cent in 1976, and this year a further expansion of at least 2 per cent is expected...
...While professional criminals are intensifying their activities, concentrating on kidnappings and bank holdups, a large number of armed gangs formed by Silvio F. Senigallia reports regularly for The New Leader on Italy...
...trigger-happy young hoodlums ?who make the old Mafia seem like a benevolent, law-abiding association—are looting and murdering at random...
...They seem to understand, too, that this fear is not limited to the conservative sector of the middle class but encompasses citizens of all political orientations and income levels...
...Now everybody agrees that something must be done to stem the spread of organized crime and political terrorism...
...whatever it does is wrong...
...That may come as rather startling news, since Italy has an $18 billion foreign debt, and a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development came to pessimistic conclusions about the government's ability to take vital antiinflation measures...
...Unless the deadlock is broken, the progress of the Italian economy, which some foreign observers including the influential Economist magazine have found so impressive, is bound to prove merely a short-lived albeit pleasant episode...
...The situation is so fraught with danger that the government cancelled the annual June 2 Constitution Day parade that was to be held here...
...One of the factors chiefly responsible for inflation here is the Scala Mobile, the automatic wage escalation system...
...The question is what...
...Industrial wage costs are currently running 22 per cent higher than last year, outstripping the rise in prices by 5 per cent...
...Still, party leader Enrico Berlinguer cannot relish the prospect of a confrontation with students at a time when long-overdue university reform is under Parliamentary consideration...
Vol. 60 • June 1977 • No. 13
