Up with ... Fascists?

By MARGUERITE MICHAELS

The rumors of Federico Fellini's death must have been exaggerated. Surely the wildly contradictory results of last week's municipal elections were the surreal creation of Italy's most imaginative film director. Disgusted with 40 years of corrupt governments dominated by centrist parties, voters opted for the extremes -- recycled communists, neofascists, northern separatists -- signaling the end of one era while giving no clue to the direction of the new one. The defeat of the mainstream parties seems likely to be repeated when Italians elect a new national Parliament next year. Wrote Eugenio Scalfari, editor of the Rome daily La Repubblica: "A chasm opened, and everything that for 40 years had stood for the center fell into it."

The voter rebellion has been simmering for a long time. Decades of misrule have brought the institutions of government to a state of collapse. In the past 20 months more than 3,000 politicians and businessmen have been implicated in an ever expanding web of billion-dollar kickback and bribery scandals. High taxes, unemployment over 10% and an influx of immigrants have finally driven the normally sanguine Italians into a rage.

In last week's races for mayors and city-council members, the cozy power- sharing coalition anchored by Christian Democrats and Socialists that had held power since the end of World War II fell to ignominious defeat: its candidates won only 14% of the vote countrywide. In search of a party with a stronger message, or perhaps just in revenge for the havoc politicians have wrought on the country, Italians registered their protest by turning to both the far left and the far right. The Northern League, an upstart populist movement centered in Milan, continued to gain power. It has threatened nothing less than the partition of the country into autonomous federations, dividing < the wealthy north from the poor south. The Democratic Party of the Left, formerly the Italian Communist Party, continues to insist that it represents the workers and the poor, but now without Marxist dogma. The neofascists of the Italian Social Movement played to widespread anxiety about public order. But despite their claims of moderation, they are plagued by a fringe of noisy skinheads, racists and thugs who remind Italians of the disastrous Fascism of World War II.

The voting was so schizophrenic that runoffs will take place next week in many of the major races, often between polar opposites. Only one candidate won outright. Sicilians elected charismatic Leoluca Orlando, 46, mayor of Palermo, on his promise to drive the Mafia out of Italy.

Romans split between the Democratic Party of the Left, which backed Francesco Rutelli, 39, a Green candidate who ran on an environmentalist platform promising to bring pedestrian zones and pollution controls to the decaying capital, and the baby-faced leader of the neofascist Italian Social Movement, Gianfranco Fini, 41. He contended his party best responds to public demands for law and order, immigration controls and restoration of the death penalty. The top two vote getters in Naples, the city that has come to symbolize southern Italy's chronic poverty and lawlessness, were Antonio Bassolino, a 46-year-old veteran communist who had the backing of the leftists and the Greens, and the neofascist party's Alessandra Mussolini, 30, granddaughter of dictator Benito Mussolini and niece of Sophia Loren. In Genoa and Venice the leftists surprisingly forced runoffs against the Northern League, suggesting there may be a geographic limit to the separatists' appeal.

Only a quarter of the nation's electorate voted in the municipal balloting, but the dismal showing of the ruling parties may force President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro to call for new parliamentary elections, possibly as early as next February. Last week's winners were already beginning to reposition themselves as new coalition builders attractive to the mainstream. Said the Northern League's secretary, Umberto Bossi: "A center party does exist in Italy, and it's called the League." Countered Achille Occhetto, leader of the Democratic Party of the Left: "We are a great alliance of progressive forces that can confront the League and offer a democratic alternative to the Christian Democrats."

Few people believe Italy is headed for anything but a prolonged period of instability. Since the center did not hold, political scientist Giovanni Sartori figures the next Parliament will prove that the country has become "absolutely ungovernable." Italians can expect more wild swings before the political pendulum finally settles back in the center.

With reporting by John Moody/Rome