Pertini's'WhiteSemester'
SENIGALLIA, SAVIO F.
ELECTION PRELUDE Pertini's 'White Semester by SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA Rome On January 8 Parliament here entered its so-called White Semester. The quaint designation refers to the last six months...
...Ordinary Italians look up to Pertini as one of the few honest men left on the national scene...
...To be sure, Pertini was right in maintaining that a Cabinet member should not have greeted an extremist who had been sentenced to jail for three attempted murders and was free in Paris thanks to France's excessively permissive attitude...
...The legislators failed to introduce a bill for that purpose, thus in effect rejecting the late Segni's suggestion...
...Do not blame him, Repubblica concluded, if millions of people, disgusted by the spectacle of unethical behavior, refuse to trust official pronouncements and want the tough old bird to tell them the truth...
...Despite the jeering of social snobs and the nitpicking of thin-lipped intellectuals, the overwhelming majority of the populace adores his homey touch and proudly feels that he is one of them...
...Actually, De Michelis should have been forced to resign, as Pertini argued in his letter...
...Nonetheless, it is already a subject of widespread discussion...
...Two of Italy's most influential newspapers, Milan's Corriere del/a Sera and Rome's Repubblica, have taken diametrically opposed sides on the matter of the President's proper functions...
...He loves his job, revels in it...
...Rebutting those arguments, Repubblica Managing Editor Eugenio Scal-fari claimed that Pertini has moved to fill a vacuum...
...And let no one take the President as a harmless, ineffective antique...
...Italy's head of state is chosen by members of both houses of the national legislature plus representatives from each of the regional governing councils...
...He arouses emotions that would make him hard to dislodge in any circumstances, and at present there is no appealing, let alone outstanding, alternative in sight...
...It went on to explain that it was speaking of "the assignment to the President of the Republic, to this President of the Republic, of the role of custodian of collective morality as against an immoral ruling class, and of spokesman of efficiency as against the inefficiency of other institutions...
...Or will the DC leadership insist on making Pertini's return contingent upon Craxi's replacement by one of their own...
...A second unwise decision followed: Craxi, after first ignoring the episode, subsequently tried to minimize its importance...
...Then Pertini stepped in...
...A new dispute arose just this month...
...It is much too early as well to make any firm predictions about what Pertini himself will decide to do...
...In no small measure this is attributable to the fact that the Italian people love and respect Pertini...
...While he appears absolutely sound in mind and body, that vital statistic cannot be shrugged off...
...This thoroughgoing and subjective interpretation of his duties and powers has more than once put Pertini at the center of bickering about the head of state's legal sphere of competence...
...More than 20 years ago, then President Antonio Seg-ni sent a message to Parliament recommending that Article 88 be amended to limit the office to a single term with all of its powers kept intact to the end...
...As he sees these things, people are deeply unhappy over the bureaucracy's cold-hearted immobility and the widespread corruption of the politicians, regardless of party...
...Even many politicians and most of the media view him as the best President in the Republic's rather short life...
...He feels free to express his views bluntly on whatever may concern him, and if the prime minister of the day does not like it, that is too bad...
...An open and hardly edifying clash between the touchy Prime Minister and the temperamental President ensued...
...A correspondent of the Italian Catholic weekly, Famiglia Cristiana, witnessed the scene and described it in an article...
...He wrote a letter to Craxi and, when that did not produce results, had the Quirinale Palace press office issue a sharply worded communique...
...Prime Minister Bettino Craxi is, of course, from the Socialist Party (PSI), and so isPertini.WilltheChristian Democrats (DC)—Italy's largest party, commanding 3 3 per cent of the vote to the PSI's 11 per cent—be willing to accept the continuation of a status quo that denies them the two top positions...
...Pertini's age is also a problem: He is 88 years old...
...Plunging into sincerely enthusiastic crowds, shaking proffered hands, hugging old comrades, embracing foreign dignitaries, and fielding journalists' questions are a tonic for the indomitable old man...
...In 1945 the founding fathers of the emerging Italian Republic, reeling from 23 years of Fascist dictatorship, were eager to guard against the possibility of a coup d'etat being engineered or aided by some unscrupulous lame duck chief executive...
...Pertini's future has raised several controversial questions, however, beginning with the desirability of permitting second terms altogether...
...Meanwhile, Pertini goes on refusing to restrict himself to his largely ceremonial constitutional functions (see "Italy's Outspoken President,' NL, January 23, 1984...
...The quaint designation refers to the last six months of an Italian president's seven-year tenure, when he loses the power to dissolve Parliament as a whole or either of its chambers...
...De Michelis finally apologized, and the case is now apparently closed...
...Even so, his actions were of debatable constitutional propriety...
...Whether accompanying Pope John Paul on a skiing expedition, dining with Spain's King Juan Carlos in Madrid or spending a cold night witnessing the attempted rescue of a child suffocating at the bottom of a well, Pertini instinctively knows how to behave...
...The election of a new president—or perhaps re-election of the current one, San-dro Pertini—will not take place until early July, and will be preceded by countrywide administrative balloting on May 12...
...A third issue is strictly political...
...Sturdy and alert, his totally informal and spontaneous approach to human relations is unerring...
...Hence the Constitution's Article 8 8, which created what has become known as the White Semester but does not ban a second term...
...He therefore believes that he has an obligation to offer criticisms and recommendations—consequences be damned...
...According to Corriere della Sera, Pertini's actions have not only exceeded the responsibilities assigned to the president by the Constitution but weakened the political class and the country's politics in general...
...Socialist Labor Minister Gianni De Mich-elis had made an unwise decision to shake hands and have a long chat with escaped terrorist Oreste Scalzone, an old acquaintance he ran into at the Beaubourg Museum in Paris...
...Most likely we shall have to await the results of the May elections to find out: The DC fared poorly in 1983 and 1984, and it remains Silvio F. Senigallia reports regularly for The New Leader from Rome...
...Over the long run, the Rome daily admitted, this may have unsettled the balance among Italy's institutions, yet the fault lies with the corruption, or at least the corruptibility, of many individuals in "the government class...
...In an article by Managing Editor Piero Ostellino, the northern paper lamented what it said was a "distortion" that has occurred in recent years...
...to be seen whether they will show enough strength this year to demand their return to the stewardship of government...
...A number of distinguished jurists supported him, though, conceivably explaining why no president has to date been selected twice...
...Yet one can risk a surmise that he wants to succeed himself...
Vol. 68 • January 1985 • No. 1
