Signor Fanfani’s Self-Made Bed

Rome

If there is a lesson to be learned from the Italian elections, it is that, at a certain point, a tendency toward compromise can become political poison. The rationalization when Premier Fanfani initiated the “opening to the Left” a couple of years ago was that the Christian Democrats were embarking on a course that would tend to force the non-Communist Left to the right, and isolate the Communists. Italy would be ruled by a progressive, forward-looking, centrist coalition, slanted Left rather than Right and that the Communists would end up in a political Limbo. Well, the election has brushed away that hallucination. The Communist Party—which went into the election with as many internal frictions and problems as the Christian Democrats—came out the big winner. It pushed its percentage of the vote (it had been remarkably static: 22.8 per cent in ‘48; 22.7 per cent in ‘53; 22.7 per cent in ‘58) up to a whopping 25.5 per cent and the Party is now demanding (although it won’t get) a voice in the government. The outpouring of Communist votes, which upset all pre-election predictions, resulted in good part at least from the fact that in the mammoth confusion that is Italian politics, only two parties stood out with positive programs: the Communists and, on the Right, the Liberals. The Liberals (conservatives) were the only ones who had not compromised themselves with either the Marxists or the fascists; they refused to have anything to do with Mr. Fanfani’s wooing of the Left; they were unqualifiedly proNATO and pro-free enterprise. To vote Liberal was to vote for a known quantity and more than twice as many Italians went down the Liberal line last week as had five years ago. They pushed the Liberal share of the total vote up from 3.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent and more than doubled the party’s representation in the Chamber of Deputies, where it now holds 39 seats.

AM

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Rome

If there is a lesson to be learned from the Italian elections, it is that, at a certain point, a tendency toward compromise can become political poison. The rationalization when Premier Fanfani initiated the “opening to the Left” a couple of years ago was that the Christian Democrats were embarking on a course that would tend to force the non-Communist Left to the right, and isolate the Communists. Italy would be ruled by a progressive, forward-looking, centrist coalition, slanted Left rather than Right and that the Communists would end up in a political Limbo. Well, the election has brushed away that hallucination. The Communist Party—which went into the election with as many internal frictions and problems as the Christian Democrats—came out the big winner. It pushed its percentage of the vote (it had been remarkably static: 22.8 per cent in ‘48; 22.7 per cent in ‘53; 22.7 per cent in ‘58) up to a whopping 25.5 per cent and the Party is now demanding (although it won’t get) a voice in the government. The outpouring of Communist votes, which upset all pre-election predictions, resulted in good part at least from the fact that in the mammoth confusion that is Italian politics, only two parties stood out with positive programs: the Communists and, on the Right, the Liberals. The Liberals (conservatives) were the only ones who had not compromised themselves with either the Marxists or the fascists; they refused to have anything to do with Mr. Fanfani’s wooing of the Left; they were unqualifiedly proNATO and pro-free enterprise. To vote Liberal was to vote for a known quantity and more than twice as many Italians went down the Liberal line last week as had five years ago. They pushed the Liberal share of the total vote up from 3.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent and more than doubled the party’s representation in the Chamber of Deputies, where it now holds 39 seats.