De Gasperi's Victory

At 10 o'clock one morning last week, Italy's Communists, fellow-traveling Nenni Socialists and their strange allies, the monarcho-fascists, opened their last-ditch battle against Premier Alcide de Gasperi's electoral reform bill. Not until 76 hectic hours later did the battle end. The chamber of the Italian Senate by then was a shambles of broken chairs, torn books and blood spatters; at least a dozen wounded Senators and Cabinet Ministers stumbled about in the wreckage. But the unholy alliance had lost and refused even to cast its votes. The final vote: 174 to 0.

The vote finally taken, De Gasperi's government was free to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies and call for new nationwide elections, to be held probably June 7. Under the new law, any party or coalition which polls more than 50% of the vote will now get 64% of the seats in the Chamber.

For five years, De Gasperi's Christian-Democratic (Catholic) Party, and the three parties which work in partnership with him, have had a substantial majority (63.7%) in the Chamber. But the strength of Italy's antidemocrats at both ends of the spectrum, the Communists and the monarcho-fascists, is growing. De Gasperi fears what he recently called "the prospect of the two extreme wings joining hands to create . . . a paralysis of the parliamentary system." Though many democrats are disquieted by the reform law, De Gasperi argues that democracy must be made secure enough to survive.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.