Factions Feud

Fanfani is asked to step in

Political crisis is as familiar to Italians as pasta, as regular as a strike, but the latest parliamentary high-wire act in Rome had even seasoned observers worried. His fragile five-party coalition government riven by infighting over economic policy, Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini had to try twice earlier this month before his resignation was accepted by an irritated President Sandro Pertini. In the resulting political vacuum, Pertini last week acted quickly, foregoing the usual ritual of extensive political consultations. Within 48 hours, he had made up his mind. Summoned to the Quirinale Palace for a trumpet fanfare and the mandate to form Italy's 43rd postwar government was the Christian Democratic president of the Senate, Amintore Fanfani, 74.

A political veteran, the stocky and pugnacious Fanfani received the call at a time when Italy's feuding parliamentary factions seemed hopelessly deadlocked. The collapse of the Spadolini government, which had a prime minister from the tiny Republican Party and was the first postwar administration not to be headed by a Christian Democrat, began while Spadolini was in the U.S. Back in Rome, two contentious Cabinet members began trading public insults, and with that, the Prime Minister's authority dissolved. Spadolini called for the resignation of the battling ministers. They balked; in the tradition of Italian coalition politics, Cabinet members serve as representatives of parties, not at the pleasure of the Prime Minister. In despair, Spadolini resigned. Lamented Milan's Corriere della Sera in a front-page editorial: "What we now have is not an ordinary government crisis. . . but the greatest of all."

If anyone seemed capable of resolving the crisis, it was Fanfani. Four times Prime Minister in the 1950s and early '60s, the Tuscany-born Fanfani was known both as il Padrino (the Godfather) and, because of his ability to bounce back from political adversity, the Tuscan Pony. Despite his antiCommunist, anti-abortion stands, he gained a reputation as a pragmatist, forming the country's first left-of-center coalition with the Socialists in 1962. His ability to compromise was quickly put to use last week to mollify the present-day Socialists under Bettino Craxi.

At first, Craxi had insisted on either a short-term government with elections in the spring or else immediate elections; either, he hoped, would strengthen the Socialists' hand. But, after discussing the issue with Fanfani, Craxi apparently agreed not to raise the question for the moment and called on the Prime Minister-designate "to do quickly all that was possible to be done quickly."

This week Fanfani may begin the daunting task of assembling a new coalition from the same fractious parties that tore apart the last government. Success is hardly assured: interparty feuding could quickly end a fledgling government or precipitate fresh elections before Fanfani can form a Cabinet.

The backdrop against which the political drama is being played out is Italy's formidable economic crisis, which all parties agree is about to come to a head. It blends uncontrolled government spending with rising inflation and high unemployment. Complimenting other E.C. ministers on the steps their nations had taken to stabilize their economies, outgoing Treasury Minister Beniamino Andreatta deplored Italy's official inertia: "I believe our people also have that same courage [to favor stabilization], but our politicians, at least some of them, do not know how to read their feelings." It may take more courage than any of the parties are willing to show to translate those feelings into a disciplined economic policy.

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