[able", • That was how the principal capitalist…]
Socialist Press1976 1976-06-30Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 3 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 3
able", • That was how the principal capitalist newspapers assessed the outcome of the June 20th elections.
The corrupt and discredited Christian Democratic party (DC) is still clinging onto power, but their fingerholds are crumbling.
The election results have only deepened the political crisis which produced the election in the first place.
The DC held on to the same 38.7% they polled in the 1972 elections (a recovery of 3% since the regional elections last summer).
THREATS
They were helped, no doubt, by the implicit threats of the Pope who, the Vatican announced, didn't vote because he "does not participate in Italian politics"), and of President Ford, and of the US Congress which passed a gratuitous resolution supporting "democracy" in Italy.
But they were also helped by the strategy of the Communist Party (PCI) and Socialist Party (PSI).
By refusing to advocate a goverument independent of the Christian Democrats even if they won a majority, these parties helped to sabotage the possibility of such a majority.
They prevented voters from casting a clear vote against Christian Democratic government; workers could merely express a preference on the terms on which the DC should stay in power.
BASE
Nevertheless, the parhamentary base on which the DC have dominated Italian governments for 30 years has dramatically shrunk.
This is partly due to the continued advance in the PCI vote which reached 34.4% - 2.4% up on last year and over 7% up on the 1972
----- pull-quotes -----
"The most difficult parlia- ment in the history of the rep- ublic"; "Italy is ungovern-