An Election for Democratic Unity

The Communists want power, but may not get it

"It is the hour of change.' The Communist Party must govern!" That chant resounded through the high-domed chambers of Rome's Palazzo dello Sport last week as bespectacled Communist Leader Enrico Berlinguer rose to address his party's 15th national congress. From a lectern bearing the hammer and sickle symbol, he issued a strident challenge: "The Communist Party has always stood on the very threshold of power. If the national and political crisis is to be solved once and for all, we must cross that threshold."

Italy's President Alessandro Pertini had dissolved parliament while the congress was in session, thereby turning it into a rousing pre-campaign rally. In late spring, Italians will go to the polls to elect a new parliament from which will come the country's 42nd government since the overthrow of Mussolini 36 years ago. In effect, Berlinguer has declared that the elections--which take place two years ahead of schedule--will be a referendum on whether or not the Communists should be included in a coalition of "democratic unity."

That prospect, which causes shudders in Washington and other Western capitals, arose because Premier Giulio Andreotti finally gave up on a government that was "born to die," as newspapers called it. In January an Andreotti-led government that had ruled Italy since last spring collapsed when the Communists withdrew their support. At Pertini's behest, Andreotti then put together a jerry-built minority government consisting of his own Christian Democrats, the Republicans and the Social Democrats. The Premier's scenario was to present this weakling coalition to the senate, get a no-confidence vote that would lead to the dissolution of parliament and then to preside over elections. Italian politics being what they are, the elaborate strategy almost backfired. As the senate session got under way, word spread that members of the right-wing National Democratic Party would unexpectedly vote to keep Andreotti's government in power. In the end, Andreotti managed to topple his government by only one vote, 150 to 149.

The Premier had many reasons for wanting early elections now. Although 1.7 million Italians are out of work and inflation (annual rate: 12.9%) remains high, Andreotti's policies have helped stabilize the lira and brought the economy to the verge of a new boom. In 1978 Italy piled up an impressive $6.4 billion balance of payments surplus and increased exports by 10%. Says an aide to the Premier: "In the last three years, we put through more constructive legislation than all the governments of the past 15 years put together." The Christian Democrats hope to regain the support of disillusioned centrists who tend to blame the Communists for the crimes of Italy's radical terrorists. They also are counting on the protest votes of people who have lived in cities and districts controlled by the Communists for the past three or four years. Says a high-ranking Socialist: "The Communists have proved they are no more efficient in government than are the other parties. Honest, perhaps. Efficient, no."

All this has contributed to the most ebullient pre-electoral mood the Christian Democrats have had since the 1950s. Their most optimistic strategists predict that the party will increase its share of the total vote from the 39% scored in 1976 to as much as 42%. That big a gain might allow the party to form a centrist or center-left government from which the Communists could be excluded altogether.

Berlinguer has conceded that "this election will be more difficult for us than that of 1976," when the Communists garnered a record 34% of the vote. Since 1977, more than 23,000 members have left the party, which also has lost a number of key local elections. Communist leaders are trying to downplay the defections. "If we lose votes, they will be from the middle-class voters who came to us in 1976," says Antonio Tato, a party spokesman. "But we will keep our basic constituency, the working class, and no government will be able to ignore the party that represents the workers."

Berlinguer hopes to attract new support by portraying the Communists as a responsible party that deserves to have a share in governing Italy. Party candidates will undoubtedly argue that Andreotti's legislative successes were due largely to the fact that the Communists were part of his parliamentary majority, if not of his government. During that period, moreover, Italy enjoyed an era of relative labor calm.

The Communists' concern with respectability was very much on display at last week's congress. When Armando Cossutta, a pro-Soviet hard-liner who is known as "the Man of Moscow," admonished the party to refurbish its "fraternal ties of collaboration with the Soviet Union," he met with stony silence from the party leaders seated behind him on the stage. Later the 1,192 delegates overwhehningly approved a pro-NATO resolution, supported by Berlinguer, that asserted the "necessity for Italy to remain in the Atlantic alliance" so long as it operates "for defensive ends." The resolution was part of an all-out effort to forge new links between the Communists, other left-wing parties and even businessmen under a banner of "democratic unity." As a delegate from Bologna put it: "The Marxist class struggle is passe. What we have now is a struggle of many classes who have a common interest in opposing monopoly capitalism."

Despite their optimism, some Christian Democrats believe that Italy can only achieve long-term stability by "taming" the Communists and including them in the country's governing club. One idea for accomplishing that is said to be favored by Andreotti and other Christian Democratic leaders: portfolios would be given to independent candidates who have been elected on the Communist ticket. "That would not mean that we are going further left," argues an Andreotti adviser. "It would mean that we are pulling the Communists toward the center." Whether Berlinguer and his colleagues would be satisfied by such a move is unknown. Whether such a move is necessary will be unclear until after the voting in June.

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