The 38th Crisis

Another government falls

Bus No. 991 chugged along its early morning run from Monte Mario to Piazza del Risorgimento with 50 office-bound passengers aboard. As it paused in traffic near an open-air fruit-and-vegetable stand, a mustached, black-haired youth steadied his revolver on the shoulder of an old woman passenger and fired seven times. Three of the bullets hit their mark: Appeals Court Judge Girolamo Minervini, 61, was killed instantly.

That shooting in downtown Rome, carried out by a member of the dreaded Red Brigades, was one of three brazen assassinations of Italian judicial officials last week. Terrorists also gunned down noted Jurist Guido Galli in a corridor of Milan University and killed State Prosecutor Nicola Giacumbi as he walked home with his wife in Salerno. The resurgence of terrorist violence (18 victims this year) has heightened national tensions to a more alarmed level than at any other time since the kidnap-murder of Politician Aldo Moro nearly two years ago. Last week public morale received a further blow when the minority Christian Democratic government of Premier Francesco Cossiga collapsed and plunged the country into what Rome politicians call a crisi al buio: a crisis in the dark. It was the 38th government to fall in the past 35 years.

Cossiga's Cabinet, born as a stopgap "government of truce" after last summer's inconclusive national election, caved in after the Socialists announced that they would no longer keep it afloat by abstaining on key votes.* Cossiga did not bother to go through the formality of a vote of confidence. After a brief parliamentary debate, he routinely visited the Quirinale Palace to submit his resignation; just as routinely, President Alessandro Pertini asked him to stay on as caretaker.

The downfall of Cossiga's seven-month-old government, however, was lamented more than most. A first-time Premier who had served as Interior Minister during the Moro affair, the scholarly, multilingual Cossiga, 51, turned out to be unexpectedly engaging and energetic. In Parliament he managed to put across a comparatively tough package of antiterrorist legislation, and despite Communist opposition, won approval for basing NATO's new, intermediate-range nuclear cruise missiles on Italian soil.

In recent weeks, however, it became evident that not even a government as agile as Cossiga's could long survive. Not only was there a new surge of terrorism, but the country was also shaken by a major financial-political scandal, culminating in the arrest of 39 prominent bankers and businessmen on charges of embezzlement and other irregularities. Italy has Western Europe's highest inflation rate (21.7%); unemployment stands at 7.7%. A rash of labor strikes has disrupted transport, newspaper and hotel services and left the streets of Italy's major cities piled high with uncollected garbage.

The country's political stalemate was compounded when the Christian Democrats, after four years of flirtatious "dialogue" with Communist Party Chief Enrico Berlinguer, voted in a new, hard-line party leadership at a national council this month. Its first commitment: no further dealings that might lead to the so-called historic compromise of Communist entry into the government. With that, burly, ambitious Socialist Leader Bettino Craxi found himself compelled to deliver the coup de grace. Reason: his own troublesome left wing strongly favors a Communist presence in the government.

At week's end, President Pertini asked Cossiga to try to form a new government. He accepted the mandate with an understandable lack of enthusiasm. "As of today, no governing formula has emerged," he had told aides. "This is strictly a game of chance." Whether or not he succeeds, the three major parties will undoubtedly find some way of avoiding an alternative that none favors: new national elections. Both the Socialists and Christian Democrats are divided on the issue of Communists in the government. Meanwhile, Berlinguer's party is showing signs of discord over his moderate policies and charges by ultraleftists that Communism has become part of the Italian establishment.

*In the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies, the Christian Democrats have 262, the Communists 201, the Socialists 62; remaining seats are split among nine smaller parties.

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