Young Initiative

Italy's powerful but ponderous Christian Democratic Party, gathered in convention in sweltering Naples last week, showed signs of new vigor, new spirit, new determination--even a new direction. In the gilt-and-red-velvet San Carlo Opera House (not air-conditioned), 703 delegates, plus party bigwigs and hangers-on, listened to some 100 speeches over the course of four days. On the top tier of boxes a huge banner read: Il Partito nella Lotta per la Democrazia (The Party in the Struggle for Democracy).

With a bit of overstatement, Defense Minister Paolo Emilio Taviani exclaimed: "We have had a real revolution here!" It was not a revolution, for there had been no violent upsets in the party centers of power; it was rather an overhauling, a rejuvenation. Trends and processes that had been going on for months came to fruition at Naples. There was. undeniably, some moaning over past mistakes, but the unifying theme was: How can democracy in Italy be strengthened, how can Communism be thwarted?

Youth Is Served. The big man of the congress was not Ex-Premier Alcide de Gasperi, 73, now the party's secretary general, or Premier Mario Scelba, who has held the government together since February. It was skillful Politico Amintore Fanfani, 46, who heads a left-of-center Demo-Christian faction called Democratic Initiative. A short, stocky Tuscan, an ex-professor of economics, Fanfani was successively a Minister of Labor, Agriculture and Interior, and he knows the government like the back of his hand. Last winter he tried and failed to form a government as Premier. Since then, his Democratic Initiative has been gaining strength in high party councils and in regional organizations, especially in the industrial north.

Fanfani's program is militant Christianity--militant in the direction of reforms, especially land reform, aimed at undercutting the Communists. This appeals to younger party members, and younger delegates seemed to predominate at Naples. They were critical: they asked for facts and figures instead of rhetoric.

Abolish the Paupers. Elder Statesman Alcide de Gasperi talked the new line: "We must transform our party into an instrument fit for the times.'' Of Italy's 11.5 million families, he said, 1,375,000 could be called "paupers," 1,345,000 more are underprivileged, and only 1,274,000 have a "high standard of living." De Gasperi summed up: "Our notion of social justice is to raise the poorer classes to a higher standard of living, to narrow the difference between all classes, and, above all, to abolish the pauper class." It was the voting, however, that actually measured Amintore Fanfani's new power. Seventeen out of 18 new regional members of the National Party Council, and 34 out of 42 new members at large, are supporters of Fanfani's Democratic Initiative. These victories might have alarmed the party's conservative old guard, and even brought on the first tremors of a schism, if Fanfani had made any importunate move to exploit his strength.

He did not. He did not even seek a government post, but seemed content to work with the Scelba government, and to talk of party harmony and party welfare.

Nevertheless, as of today, he is the Christian Democratic Party's most important figure, and he may well become its next secretary general and undisputed leader.

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