Italian Summer Intrigues
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F.
SPADOLINI RETURNS Italian Summer Intrigues BY SILVIO F.SENIGALLIA Rome Government instability is an endemic condition in Italy. Since the end of World War 11 no fewer than 42 governments have...
...His isolation and fear of being outflanked by the Communists prompted Craxi to make a 180 degree turn...
...When Spadolini was selected for another try at putting together a cabinet, the Socialists immediately announced that change was urgent: They would not "eat warmed-over soup...
...Meanwhile, unions and management are wrangling over the long overdue revision of the consumer price index system...
...this opposed by every other political party, as well as by President Pertini...
...Still, no political crisis in the history of the Italian Republic was more pointless than the August 7 flap that brought down the five-party coalition headed by Giovanni Spadolini...
...Craxi failed to foresee two things...
...the dominant tone was puzzlement mixed with much irony and some indignation...
...The PSI leader accepted, claimed a victory and sent the Socialist ministers into the new????that is, old-Cabinet...
...Spadolini????the first non-DC Prime Minister since 1945-wanted to protect both his job and his image as chief...
...At least 30 DC deputies????the so-called snipers????joined the opposition in voting against the government...
...Even the Social Democrats, who usually side with the Socialists, were sharply critical of Craxi's overbearing and opportunistic attitude...
...Yet the outcome was the acme of paradox...
...Forcing a showdown in these circumstances would have been self-defeating, particularly since the DC voiced a willingness to make concessions, including the rein-troduction of the financial bill that was the pretext for the Socialists' maneuvering...
...One was the total isolation of the PSI in its quest for new balloting...
...Comments and speculations were left to pundits and the media...
...The Socialists, modern Robin Hoods, would stand up as defenders of the poor and scourges of the greedy rich...
...Spadolini's "reincarnation," as the Rome daily Repubblica dubbed it, was the most ludicrous episode of the midsummer farce...
...The face-saving device was Spadolini's offer to give full priority to a Constitutional reform advocated by the PSI aimed at making the government and Parliament function faster and smoother...
...Then the thriller suddenly turned into an idyll and people were left wondering whether the politicians had been joking, or trying to add a touch of suspense to the holiday routine...
...As for Craxi, the Socialist stormy petrel who sank the government of Christian Democrat Arnaldo Forlani in May '81, he was convinced that early general elections would strengthen the PSI...
...They were undone for a number of serious or merely tactical reasons, and often replaced according to criteria hardly comprehensible to the average voter...
...The scheme was foolproof only in theory...
...Secondly, Craxi's recurrent nightmare is a compromise between the Christian Democrats and the Communists that would erode his party's clout...
...to do so he had to play hard ball with the leaders of the other coalition parties...
...In fact, it was resolved a little over two weeks later with the formation of agovernment led by the same Prime Minister and with exactly the same Cabinet ministers taking up their old posts...
...The DC, itself an amalgam of feuding factions, was not ready for an early return to the polls...
...The Socialists were particularly incensed by the Chamber of Deputies' vote against a measure that would have required oil companies to pay taxes within 15 days of distributing products to retailers, or face interest rates of 18 per cent on the taxes not turned over during this grace period...
...The DC plans to support Spadolini and the status quo until it is ready to pounce...
...Italians had repeatedly been told that the differences among the coalition partners were so deep as to make the dissolution of Parliament and early elections inevitable...
...The former Prime Minister's attempt to come up with a government was successful, and on the 17th Pertini once more took off for Selva, only to return to his Quirinale office on the 23rd for the swearing in of the new????actually old????Prime Minister and Cabinet members...
...Strictly speaking, the Prime Minister was correct in maintaining that the return of the identical government that had been toppled was a conspicuous novelty????nothing of the kind had ever happened in Italy...
...Since the end of World War 11 no fewer than 42 governments have ruled, making their average life span approximately 10 months...
...This would boost the PSl's present 10 per cent of the popular vote and give the party greater leverage with the DCs, who cannot form a government without the Socialists...
...Having received Parliamentary approval September 2, Spadolini and his colleagues are once more facing Italy's two major economic problems-the cost of labor and the cost of money...
...And following Spadolini's resignation, the Communist leadership reportedly let it be known that to avoid elections they would indirectly support a four-party bloc without the Socialists...
...An old, tough, no-nonsense Socialist who is truly loved and respected by everybody, Pertini had left Rome on August 1. He told journalists he had been assured there would be no crisis, despite the endless bickering between members of the Christian Democratic Party (DC) and the Socialist Party (PSI...
...In reality, these men are neither knaves nor buffoons, but rather professionals playing the tough game of politics...
...The alleged "plot," which PSI Vice Secretary Claudio Martelli denounced in an interview with a Milan weekly, scared the Socialists out of their wits...
...But on August 7 he was back in Rome to accept the resignation of Spadolini (a member of the Italian Republican Party) and to consult with various leaders...
...The Socialists described the situation as "a turning point stemming from the exhaustion of the First Republic...
...He menacingly concluded, "Under these conditions, the country is literally ungovernable...
...With 38 per cent of the vote in 1979, its tactics are designed to reconquer the Prime Minister's office, or at least to prevent the Socialists from winning it...
...For the time being, of course...
...Craxi stated that the Prime Minister was "taking steps in the right direction...
...The imbroglio had been sparked August 5 when the seven Socialists in the coalition quit to protest the parliamentary defeat of a government financial bill designed to trim the 1982 deficit (estimated at the equivalent of $50 billion...
...Three days later he again tapped Spadolini...
...As an influential Turin deputy put it, the government's efforts are surrounded by the "gloomy atmosphere of a reconciliation without love...
...Pertini himself initially refrained from rejecting Spadolini's resignation because of the apparent fragility and inconsistency of the government...
...Fortunately, Spadolini I fell and Spadolini II was created when practically everyone here was on vacation...
...This reaction was hardly surprising to anyone watching President Sandro Pertini shuttle to and from the mountain resort town of Selva, where he was unsuccessfully trying to get a month of well-deserved rest...
...Since the present law allows the companies 30 interest-free days, under the proposed rule Silvio F. Senigallia regularly reports for The New Leader from Italy their operating costs would have increased by $825 million...
...Nevertheless, within a matter of days...
...The defeat of the bill taxing the oil companies must have looked like a godsend to him...
...The crisis was over, Spadolini II was about to be launched, Pertini went back to Selva, and all ended, as they say in Naples, a tarallucci e vino-with doughnuts and wine...
...During the summer holidays, most Italians have more diverting things to do than muse over the absurd vagaries of their country's politics...
...Brimming with indignation????and conveniently forgetting that at least half of the Socialist deputies were not on the floor when the vote was taken????PSI Secretary Bettino Craxi accused the Christian Democrats, the coalition's major partner, of reneging on a specific commitment and of "violating precise agreements among the parties of the coalition...
Vol. 65 • September 1982 • No. 17
