From Pebbles to Brickbats in Italy
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F.
COSSIGA VS. THE COMMUNISTS From Pebbles to Brickbats in Italy BY SILVIO F SENIGALLIA Rome When Francesco Cossiga was elected President of the Italian Republic in 1985, the general consensus...
...Forattini, Italy's most famous cartoonist, portrayed Cossiga as hiding behind the balcony of the Quirinale Palace with only his big nose sticking out to sniff the direction of the prevailing winds...
...Heckled by Leftist demonstrators while he spoke, Cossiga shouted back that he was "not afraid of them now" as he had "not been afraid of them in 1977...
...Cossiga promptly announced that he had no intention of seeking a second term...
...The plan called for the allied nations to set up underground groups capable of carrying out counteroperations in the event of Soviet occupation or a Communist takeover during the Cold War...
...The President indignantly refused a subpoena...
...Numerous and sometimes contradictory disclosures of all this across Europe have touched of f polemics in a few Nato countries, but nowhere as heatedly as in Italy...
...This was therefore a good opportunity for both sides to project an image of reconciliation...
...Cossiga no longer seems to realize, Montanelli said, that every utterance he makes in public is viewed as coming from the Chief of State, not from the professor or jurist he used to be...
...The violent barrage against Andreotti was quickly extended to Cossiga, who said he was "proud to have been part of a secret that served the nation, and warned that any attempt to exorcise the "ghosts of the past" would cause serious harm to the unity of the country...
...If the language was less bitter than Occhetto's, there was still no apology for the verbal assault on Cossiga at the Rome rally...
...At a Communist rally held in Rome four days earlier that was addressed by Party Secretary AchilleOcchetto, he went on, the "terrifying slogans and invectives" hurled at him were similar to those once uttered by the Red Brigades...
...It issued a communiqu...
...Of late, however, the President's pebbles have turned into brickbats and his target has become the Communist Party (PCI) and its leaders...
...Aman of integrity, a distinguished politician now occupying the highest of fice in the land, has been called a Fascist, a Nazi and a protector of terrorists...
...By calling the shots as he saw them regardless of possible bruised feelings, Pertini had captured the imagination of the people but kept politicians on edge throughout his seven-year tenure...
...Having thus made clear that he was not driven by selfish motives, he stepped up his complaints about the country's ineffectual executive and sluggish legislature...
...Speaking in Turin on November 21, he went so far as to charge that the PCI was guilty of "cynical and dirty slander" against his person and of "infamous accusations...
...To be sure, Cossiga was a former Prime Minister and a political veteran, yet he also was a law-school professor and a lackluster speaker—a figure both reserved and humorless...
...Devised in the early '50s and apparently financed in part by the CIA, Gladio included combat training for hundreds of potential fighters and gave them access to caches of arms, ammunition and sophisticated communication equipment...
...To all who care about Italian democracy the entire episode has been mortifying...
...Stay tuned...
...The Communist offensive against the President had its roots in recent revelations about Gladio, the Italian code name for a NATO-backed scheme of organized resistance...
...Meanwhile, Communist resentment of Cossiga has been heightened by his unwillingness to testify before a Venice judge who is holding an inquiry to determine how the Italian authorities "lost track" of a dozen caches of weaponry...
...On November 23 the PCI executive board entered the fray...
...In a final thrust that was more cruel than any of the insults shouted by the Communists, the editorialist asked Cossiga to stop turning the Quirinale into a fish market...
...Predictably, Cossiga has been backed by the leaders of the Christian Democratic and Socialist parties, personal feelings and previous differences notwithstanding...
...The President had been Undersecretary of Defense and later Minister of Police in the years when Gladio's "gladiators" were being trained to conduct resistance operations, if not illegal maneuvers against the PCI...
...Although his angry response descended to the level of political diatribe, it was not half as outrageous as the treatment to which he was subjected...
...The DC-PSI partnership in a series of coalition governments spanning 25 years has always been difficult, and often quite rocky, but the mythical Leftist alternative is now more than ever out of the question...
...Before long his didactic remarks and criticisms began to irritate both the coalition government and the Communist opposition...
...As for the Socialists, they could not risk straining their alliance with the Christian Democrats over an essentially delicate personal matter...
...Then, toward the middle of this year, the quiet, diligent "notary of the Republic" turned into a protagonist...
...For almost five and a half years he performed as expected...
...No feathers were ruffled, and only a few surprised eyebrows were raised...
...His occasional addresses and messages did not divert the attention of cartoonists from Christian Democratic (DC) Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti's humpback and elephant ears, Socialist Party (PSI) leader Bettino Craxi's Mussolini-like poses, or Senate President Giovanni Spadolini's bulging belly...
...Whether or not that is true, there are certainly many unanswered questions about terrorism in the years between 1969 and 1974...
...The Christian Democrats had little choice but to rise in defense of a prominent fellow member, especially given the fact that their internal unity is once again being threatened by fragmentation and factionalism...
...Nobody knows—or, more modestly, I do not know—what prompted the change of style...
...According to the vehement reaction of the Communist leadership, in the '70s Italian intelligence agents, with covert U.S...
...noting that "the respect owed the Chief of State did not entail the acceptance of deeds and judgments that are not only unfair and offensive but also a borderline violation of the Constitution...
...He added that the results of current investigations would be given full publicity...
...Those eager to succeed him in 1992 openly expressed their concern, too, that the President's new posture in effect marked the start of his campaign for re-election...
...Moreover his language, albeit exceedingly strong, could at least partly be explained by the circumstances...
...But his assurances were sharply and vociferously rejected by the PCI...
...He took the President to task for "his heavy-handed involvement in the area of debate reserved to the political parties...
...The next day, Occhetto declared himself "appalled" by what he insisted was a misrepresentation of the Communists' behavior...
...The soundness of his grounds for doing so will eventually be debated by the Constitutional Court...
...A PCI-PSI bloc could barely attain 40 per cent of the national vote, and Craxi, a realist, knows well the "bird in hand" proverb...
...That was the gist of most editorial comments—excluding, of course, the Communistnewspapers...
...He felt, he said, like shaking a pebble out of his shoe...
...The matter was not a major one, nor was the President unduly outspoken...
...THE COMMUNISTS From Pebbles to Brickbats in Italy BY SILVIO F SENIGALLIA Rome When Francesco Cossiga was elected President of the Italian Republic in 1985, the general consensus was that Parliament could not have chosen anyone less like the truly beloved and irrepressible 88-year-old incumbent, Sandro Pertini...
...With Cossiga, a relieved establishment sighed, the President would return to his traditional dull role: opening horticultural shows, handing out medals, entertaining foreign dignitaries...
...backing, used the underground forces to execute terrorist attacks aimed at discrediting Italian Leftists and insuring that the Christian Democrats stayed in power...
...In an effort to downplay the issue, Prime Minister Andreotti, who early in November provided the first confirmation of Gladio, immediately assured Parliament that there had been no wrongdoing or coverup...
...Silvio F. Senigallia reports regularly for The New Leader on Italian affairs...
...Oddly, though, the severest criticism of Cossiga's behavior came from Indro Montanelli, publisher of the conservative Milan daily Giornale...
...The dean of Italian journalism maintained that the Communists' inexcusable attack did not justify the President's tirade, particularly since he had been indulging in his own verbal aggressiveness for months and did not let up even during an official visit to Great Britain in October...
...But Cossiga obviously had quite a few pebbles in his shoes, because he continued to sound off...
...The party's left wing, headed by former Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita, has been feuding for months with the Andreotti-led majority...
...The first time he openly aired his views on a controversial issue he used a quaint Italian expression to indicate that he wanted to get something off his chest...
Vol. 73 • November 1990 • No. 15
