Forward to the Past

Designer Emilio Pucci, who is as earnest about politics as he is about fashion, lost his Liberal seat in the Chamber of Deputies in spite of a campaign in which he averaged four speeches a day. Communist Novelist-Painter Carlo Levi (Christ Stopped at Eboli) was dropped from the Senate. On the other hand, Franco Maria Malfatti, a former president of the Common Market Commission, was easily re-elected a Christian Democratic Deputy. Admiral Gino Birindelli, until recently commander of NATO's Mediterranean naval forces and now the darling of Italy's right, also won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, representing the neo-Fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano.

Those were a few of the gains and losses recorded last week as 37 million Italian voters--93.1% of the eligible electorate--went to the polls. It was the first time since 1924 that the nation had been called to an election before the end of a five-year parliamentary term --and essentially it decided nothing. Disgusted by a decade of ineffective revolving-door Cabinets, most Italians nevertheless fell back on old allegiances once they went into voting booths. As a result, most of the ten major parties emerged from the campaign much as they had entered it--and Italy faced the prospect of another round of shaky coalition governments.

The Christian Democrats, Italy's most powerful party for a quarter-century, remain exactly that. At one point, the party had been expected to lose anywhere from 10 to 30 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, largely because of the vociferous law-and-order campaign put forward by the M.S.I. But Interior Minister Mario Rumor, a former Christian Democratic Premier, mounted a shrewd law-and-order campaign of his own, with some well-publicized roundups of political troublemakers and seizures of gun, bomb and ammunition caches. Another former Premier, Amintore Fanfani, barnstormed across Italy plugging his party's less-than-catchy slogan "Forward to the Center!" The Christian Democrats lost only fractionally in their share of the total popular vote (38.8%, down .3% from 1968), held all their 135 seats in the Senate and raised their total in the Chamber of Deputies from 266 to 267.

The Communists, Italy's second largest party, gained slightly in the popular vote and picked up two seats in the Chamber, raising their total to 179. But their close ideological allies, the Proletarian Socialists, lost all 23 of their seats. Proportionately, the big winners were the slightly left-of-center Republicans, who now have 14 seats in the Chamber (a gain of five) and five in the Senate (a gain of three), and the right-wing M.S.I, and Monarchists, who running together doubled their Senate Representation (from 13 to 26) and did almost as well in the Chamber (from 30 to 56).

The major problem facing Italy is how to create a viable government from such inconclusive results. The man most likely to get the first chance at tackling it is Giulio Andreotti, 53, Premier since February and head of the caretaker government that has run the country, so to speak, since early elections were called two months ago. Andreotti will probably first try to shape a center-left coalition of Christian Democrats, Republicans, Social Democrats and Socialists. If that fails, Andreotti may ask the Chamber to accept a monocolore (one-party) government of Christian Democrats, or turn the task of Cabinet-building over to another potential Premier--which would be clear proof that Italy was politically no better off than it had been before the elections.

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