No joy for bosses in Italy election

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ITALIAN CP DEMONSTRATION: 'We should ally ourselves with the workers CP leader Berlinguer The results of last week's Italian general election can have given nothing but pain to both the ruling Christian Democrats and the would-be ruling Both of them lost some votes: the Christian Democrats a mere % of their 1976 share of the poll; the CP a more significant In spite of the relative advance of the smaller parties-especially ti le outspoken petty br urgeois Radical party-the basic structure of the parliament will same.

The Christian Democrats (with 262 seats out of 630) remain the largest party but still lack a majority.

And the Communists are still the only other large party though they lost 26 seats to reduce their representation to 201.

It is a result which virtually guarantees the continuation of the long drawn-out political agony of Italian capitalism.

The decline in the CP's vote has certainly strengthened the right wing of the Christian Democrats, who reject all formal governmental compromise with the CP.

An it will strengthen the wing of the CP leadership which wishes to play down the formal compromises of the last two years which clearly led to a loss of So in the short term at least the 'historical compromise' coalition which the Stalinists of the CP have for so long tried to build with the Christian Democrats is a dead duck.

The smaller parties between the two giants (the Socialists with 62 seats, the movement in the West.' Social Democrats with 20 and the Republican with 16), could produce a parliamentary majority in a 'centre-left' coalition with the Christian Democrats.

But it is unlikely that any of them will risk the HELLADNI emerges from this election further away than ever from stable parliamentary solution to its problems.

The one outcome which the bourgeois papers and the political leaders are not even discussing as possibility is for a coalition of workers' parties to take power.

CLARESE Portugal was plunged into a new political crisis last week as the non elected government of ex-Salazar official Carlos • Mota . Pinto resigned.

The reason for the resignation was the certainty that parliament would pass the censure motions separately tabled by the Socialist and Communist Parties.

Together these parties have a majority, and could constitutionally take over the government.

The censure motions against Mota Pinto's grossly anti-working class government reflect pressure on their party leaders from the working class bases of the CP and SP.

But the Stalinist and reformist leaders are agreed on one thing above all: the avoidance at all costs of the formation of a CP-SP • This, they know, would immeasurably increase the demands of the Socialist and Communist parties that their leaders carry out policies to meet their growing material problems of unemployment and falling living standards.

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faces new crisis