The Man from Naples

Throughout most of their long and tragic history, the inhabitants of the rocky, windswept island of Sardinia have been Italy's forgotten men. But last week all Italy was watching as Sardinia's tough peasants and their red-skirted women went to the polls to elect a new regional council. Reason: Italy was still without a Premier, after a month and a half's crisis, and its only hope for a strong government lay in new national elections (now scheduled for next spring). In the Sardinian voting, Rome's politicos were seeking portents.

In every election since World War II, Sardinians had given a steadily increasing share of their votes to Communist candidates. Last week, a little better off--thanks to the $200 million which Italian governments have pumped into Sardinia's poverty-stricken economy in the past four years (TIME, May 21, 1956)--the islanders reversed their Communist trend (the Red vote fell off from 22.3% to 17.5%). The dominant Christian Democrats increased their vote (from 41% to 41.8%). But the real surprise of the election was the showing made on his first campaign in Sardinia by ebullient, 72-year-old Achille Lauro, founder and sole proprietor of Italy's Popular Monarchist Party--Italy's most colorful politician.

Spaghetti & Soccer. A self-made shipping tycoon (estimated worth: $100 million), blue-eyed Achille Lauro first burst into Italian politics in 1952 when he was elected mayor of Naples. Since then he has spent an estimated $4,000,000 of his own money and run up the biggest civic debt in Italian history ($160 million), giving his fellow townsmen spaghetti, circuses, repaved streets, and a first-class soccer team. (Mayor Lauro cheerfully forked over $200,000 to sign up one Swedish soccer star for Naples.) The Neapolitan crowds love him; opposition politicians consider him a gold-plated clown, or, in the words of one, stricken by "dynamic senility."

A Monarchist in name only--the autographed portrait of King Umberto II that graced his desk has recently disappeared --Lauro has no illusions about restoring the House of Savoy. His more modest goal is to build the sagging Italian right into a political force strong enough to help govern Italy in coalition with the Christian Democrats.

A Kiss from Achille. Lauro began the Sardinian campaign for his Monarchist candidates by doling out 10,000 Easter eggs and 10,000 parcels of toys. These were followed by 10,000 layettes, 500,000 key cases, 100,000 aprons bearing the rampant lion of the Popular Monarchist Party, and countless babies' bibs inscribed "A Kiss from Lauro." (Of the 800 babies born in Sardinia in the past two months, 103 were christened Achille.)

"An offense to democratic usage and the good sense of the Sardinian people," huffed Sardinia's most eminent citizen, ex-Premier Antonio Segni. But on election day more than 60,000 Sardinians, 9% of the electorate, voted for Lauro's Monarchists, giving them six crucial seats on Sardinia's regional council. With Lauro's aid, the Christian Democrats would have a slim but workable majority in the council, a pattern which Lauro himself suggests can be followed nationally. "The new fact," said Milan's Corriere della Sera, "is Achille Lauro."

For a while last week, sleek and shrewd Amintore Fanfani, organizational boss of the Christian Democratic Party, tried to establish an Italian government. When Fanfani failed, Italy's ambitious President Giovanni Gronchi pulled a surprise. He renamed as Premier rotund, outspoken Adone Zoli, who tried and failed last month to form a government. Blandly reminding one and all that he had never accepted Zoli's resignation, the President informed Zoli that he is thus still Premier. Question: Will the Italian Chamber of Deputies think so too?

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