Italy's Rudderless Prosperity
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO E.
AND NOW DE MITA Italy's Rudderless Prosperity BY SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA Rome Contrary to the belief of some foreign observers appalled by the endless political crises here, Italy is actually...
...To maintain the economy's vitality it is crucial that the monstrous public deficit be brought down, and that the fat trimmed from the huge state sector be invested in the country's basic infrastructure...
...This firm line is strongly supported by the voters, many of whom deplore the leniency shown by the courts to the so-called pentiti (repentants), those terrorists (and mafiosi) willing to cooperate with the authorities...
...others are the work of the lunatic fringe of the neoFascist Italian Social Movement (MSI, 5 per cent of the total vote...
...Nonetheless, the battle against the Red Brigades, the radical Leftist organization that terrorized Italy in the late 1970s, has largely been won...
...What Italy suffers from is not instability, it is ungovernability...
...During the Moro episode, then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, a fellow Christian Democrat, rejected the idea of negotiating with the kidnappers...
...Clearly, reliance on selfregulation has been a dismal failure...
...and c) Parliamentary rules that slow down the enactment of government-sponsored legislation...
...The definition of the right to strike and of the legal status of the unions has been overdue for decades...
...Yet for both parties this indispensable cohabitation has been extremely uncomfortable and a source of constant friction...
...the past should now be buried and respect accorded to yesterday's earnest though possibly misguided combatants...
...But the threat of another national nightmare comparable to the 1978 abduction and murder of DC leader Aldo Moro no longer looms...
...If De Mita's leadership is to be more than a temporary stopgap, he must immediately go to work on regulatory labor legislation...
...Its social, administrative and economic structures are quite sound...
...In 1987 and the early months of 1988, however, the frequency and length of strikes paralyzing public services—especially schools and transportation— have hurt the nation badly enough to convince an increasing number of people that regulation of the right to strike is imperative...
...For example, private corporations (with the exception of such giants as Fiat and Montedison) have reportedly gone just about as far as they can in modernizing their factories, boosting production and finding new markets...
...Among those languishing in prison, it is widely albeit unhappily conceded that the armed struggle is over...
...Early on politicians avoided tackling these questions for fear of a massive reaction by the Communist Party and its labor federation, CGIL...
...So the Cabinet went on " discussing everything and deciding on nothing,' to quote the Rome daily 77 Messaggero...
...Certainly Socialist Labor Minister Rino Formica's belligerent opposition to regulatory legislation did little to encourage a calm and constructive approach to this critical problem...
...Achieving these goals will require forceful political leadership, and here the problem of ungovernability comes in...
...Former Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi holds many high cards in the next round of the perennial poker game, now getting under way...
...Italy's recently attained standing as the world's fifth strongest industrial nation—behind the United States, Japan, West Germany and France, but ahead of Great Britain —makes the cautious optimism pervading Italy's industrial circles understandable...
...There are some worrisome signs, however...
...Shortly after the nine-month-old government headed by the Christian Democrat Giovanni Goria fell in early March, DC National Secretary Ciriaco de Mita was tapped to put together a replacement...
...There are many obstacles to the effectiveness and staying power of any cabinet, as evidenced by the fact that the government taking office this month is the 48th in Italy since World War II...
...This made matters even more difficult for the Christian Democrats and the Socialists because neither party wanted to carry the labor-baiting label into an election...
...After many scary years of 20 per cent inflation, the annual rate has now dropped to 4.5 per cent and seems to be holding there...
...Later, a working agreement was forged between CGIL on one side and the predominantly Christian Democratic and Center-Left unions on the other (CISL and UIL, respectively...
...And this is precisely what the DC leader has to avoid: He cannot afford to put his prestige behind a government that would last no longer than his hapless predecessor's...
...On the economic front, too, the news is mostly cheering...
...although his stance was backed by the Communists, it was not easy to uphold because both Bettino Craxi's Socialists and the Vatican were pressing for a "compassionate approach.' Today, with the sense of social vulnerability having receded, none of Italy's political parties shows the least inclination to extend official forgiveness for the acts of political terror...
...Growth prospects for 1988 are favorable, with the GNP expected to rise by over 4 per cent...
...Communist participation in the government is still out of the question as far as the other major parties are concerned...
...It took him a month of brokering to come up with a cabinet, most of whose 32 members are holdovers from the previous one...
...There are still occasional acts of political violence: Some, like the recent assassination of Christian Democratic (DC) Senator Roberto Ruffilli, arecommittedbyoffshoots of the Red Brigades...
...Thus the only possible governing formula is a coalition including the DCs (34 per cent of the vote) and the Socialists (PSI, 14 per cent...
...Silvio F. Senigallia regularly reports for The New Leader from Italy...
...Compagni che hanno sbagliato ("comrades who have erred") is what the terrorists belonging to the Red Brigades used to be called by many of their less violent colleagues on the radical Left...
...The ambiguous feelings that description implies were for years shared by a number of older people who should have known better, such as the outstanding Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia...
...The Milan stock market, dealt a heavy blow by the Wall Street crash last October, has rebounded following a period of uncertainty, and the lira is keeping its head up in the European currency markets...
...One would need to be awfully optimistic to believe that De Mita will have the determination and the luck to accomplish something positive in the labor area...
...What the Red Brigades stood for, they say, must be understood in the context of the more turbulent social conditions prevailing in the 1970s...
...Last October even Giorgio Benvenuto, the Socialist who heads UIL, acknowledged the need for a comprehensive labor law...
...The most serious are: a) an electoral law favoring the proliferation of small political formations...
...Goria'sgovernment, weak and squeezed between rife labor unrest and popular irritation, resorted to vague promises and procrastination with regard to delimiting the right to strike...
...Moreover, the struggle for power between them has weakened the central government to the point where cabinets are always on the verge of either resigning or being toppled...
...b) the failure of a single party to achieve a solid Parliamentary majority...
...According to some observers, he is planning to make his support of the new Cabinet so costly as to leave his arch-rival, De Mita, politically spent after a relatively brief time in office...
...Since the early 1980s Italian police have apprehended hundreds of members of the Red Brigades, some of whom have collaborated with the judiciary to cop a plea...
...AND NOW DE MITA Italy's Rudderless Prosperity BY SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA Rome Contrary to the belief of some foreign observers appalled by the endless political crises here, Italy is actually a very stable country...
...As April arrived, it seemed to be simply waiting for the government in formation to take ? ver and get the ulcers...
...But judges remain bound by a law passed at a time when informers were in desperately short supply...
...But he did not press the issue out of the realization that the CGILCISL-UIL superfederation cannot compromise at present because its supremacy is being challenged by many self-proclaimed independent unions...
...But as the Romans used to say, hope is the last goddess...
...The teachers, railroad engineers, bus drivers, airport ground crews, and airplane pilots represented by these maverick organizations are in a rebellious mood and are unwilling to accept any appeal to a collective sense of responsibility...
...Through periodic statements and interviews from their cells, the network's surviving leaders have tried to convince politicians and the public that the time has come for "general pacification...
Vol. 71 • April 1988 • No. 7
