Setback for the CP preference votes cast for some of the candidates). Three LCR members were elected to city councils (two in Vicorano in local elections near Rome and one in Spezzano in Calabria) and three were elected to councils, (Venice, Brescia and Livorno). (1)
The Greens made their first relatively large-scale appearance, although this took
The May 12 and 13 elections were important for three reasons. First they were to determine the fate of a series of regional and provincial councils, as well as of city governments where left coalition:
have ruled for ten years. A number of these went into crisis as a result of the defection of the Socialist Party (PSI), which opted for alliances with the centrist parties.
SeCondly, the elections we Satist her the file parmal Social the Christian Democrats, the Socialist Party,
Democratic Party (PSDI), Republican Party (PRI), and Liberal Party
(PLI) that rules the country was losing momentum electorally. This bloc has been continually rent by internal conflicts and has been defeated several times on parliamentary votes.
Thirdly, a lot of political attention was focused on the question of whether the Communist Party (PCI) would top the vote of the Christian
Democrats for the second time. It passed this milestone first in the 1984
European elections.
Livio MAITAN
The results were clear enough, and for the winners and the not have too many differences over the assessment of the vote. The following table (table 1) shows the overall results regional elections, which were politically the most significant.
Obviously in assessing the vote shifts, you have to take into consideration the different choices depending on the nature for example, that on May 12, the PCI got the regional elections, it got only elections, and 27.6% in the municipal ones. On the other hand, in the city of
Bologna its vote declined more in the regional elections than in the municipal
Nonetheless, tendencies emerge quite clearly, overall the general political motivations have a greater weight than local ones.
Thus, it is more useful to compare the latest results with those of 1983 and even with 1984 than those with more remote ones of 1980. It has to be taken into consideration, moreover, that the percentage of abstention dropped, and that most often there was a coincidence variations in percentage greater certainty.
what conclusions should be drawn? The DC scored definite gains this time both with respect to 1983 and
1984, and this time it has topped
PCI. The PSI also made progress, getting its best result since 1968 (among other things, it gained from the fact that the
Radicals [a protest party] did not run a slate). The other parties of ational Viewpoint 3 June 1985 government coalition got uneven results, general more favorable in of the PRI than in that of the PSDI and
In other words, the DC consolidated itself as the strongest force in the ruling coalition and the PSI as its main ally. The latter can exploit its position in the proportion to its electoral strength.
The PSI's margin for maneuver is still greater at the local level. In fact, it will be able to sit in most local executive bodies, taking advantage of the relationship of forces to gain in left administrations and those run by centrist coalitions.
What is more, the five-party governmental coalition unquestionably come out of these elections stronger, and it can now seriously envisage remaining in office until the term of the present legislature ends in 1988 (which does not exclude shifts in the composition of the government).
The MSI, in general, maintained its positions. But the national the sum of quite different regional tendencies. It declined or stagnated in the center and the south, but it gained in the north. In the city of Bolzano, the capital of a province in which the majoriof the people are German speaking the national question thus remains acutely posed, the MSI gained
The DP gained, .0.1% by comparison with the European elections and notably more, 0.6% by comparison with the 1980 regional elections, but it did not exceed the level of the 1983 legislative elections. Nonetheless, it can now play more of a role in the regional councils, where it will have nine representatives. it got three seats.
example, they identified with representa tives of the Radical Party. Their average score, 1.7% was relatively modest. But they did not run everywhere, and in candidates they got 2.6%. If the Greens continue to run in elections, they can Party, as well as for the DP, the PSI, and the PCI.
However, the most important aspect of the May 12 elections was unquestionably the decline of the PCI, whose vote dropped by 4.3%, a very in the context of stable patterns, from the level of the European
In particular, the PCI was beaten in spectacular results since 1975 and even in working-class and poor neighborhoods and wards. Now it will be frozen out of the city council in Turin and Rome and likely in Milan. The situation remains quite uncertain in Genoa and
Only in the traditionally red regions (Emilia, Tuscany, Umbria) did the PCI hold its strength. But lost its momentum.
The PCI's decline was all the more grave because, as I noted, it abstentions, votes it lost shift toward the DP, except possibly in way. It is not easy to plot exactly the shifts in the vote. But according to the PCI electoral department, by comparison with the 1983 elections, the party gained from the drop in abstentions and spoiled or blank ballots, while losing votes to the PSI, the Greens,
Both the DP and the Greens gained only in the region of 0.2% (the study does not distinguish between those votes that went to the Greens and those that went to the DP).
Discussion has opened up, including in the PCI itself, about the reasons for what the party organ, l'Unita, called in 'its first comment "a severe blow." There the LCR was on a slate under different name than that of the DP.
because of the refusal of the local DP to apply the national agreement correctly. wards are subdivisions of the boroughs in the
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ITALY.
1983 legislative
TABLE 1
1985 regional elections
1980 regional elections
Votes
1984 European
%
%
Votes
%
Votes
9,863,564
30.2
9,686,140
PCI
PDUP
10,228,994
35.0
DC
11,223,284
3,608,282
13.3
PSI
4,267,959
1,277,345
1,150,788
3.6
PSDI
1,635,029
1,280,563
4.0
PRI
PRI-PLI coalition
935,455
702,273
2.2
PLI
471,450
470,626
1.5
9
DP
722,380
PR
553,353
1.7
9
Greens
2,088,115
6.5
MSI
2,087,404
682,752
2.0
5
608,724 miss.
31,573,366
32,031,114
Total
Abbreviations: PCI, Communist party; PSI, Socialist Party; PDUP, Party of Proletarian Unity, the Il Manifesto group; PSDI,
Democratic Socialist Party, an old right-wing split from the PSI; PRI, Italian Republican Party, a small bourgeois party; PLI,
Italian Liberal Party, small right-wing bourgeois party; DC, Christian Democrats; MSI, Italian Social Movement, ultrarightist.
with neofascist connections; DP, Proletarian Democracy, far-left slate.
were no doubt various factors. In the cities it had for long years, in run and Turin, the particular Rome found its credibility wearing out. This was because of its yielding to all sorts of blackmail from its allies and government and because it chose not to put up a fight, by mobilizing the masses, against the constraints imposed by the
The PCI did not even respond necessary energy to the operations that led to its exclusion from the governconditions of a seemed to a section of the voters incap such acute problems able of solving as housing and transport. But what lay root of this setback were general political and social factors.
In 1983 and still more in the initial months of 1984, political struggles developed, culminating in the gigantic demonstration on March
24. The PCI played an indisputable role in this. Even Berlinguer's funeral fitted into this context. Above and beyond being homage to a popular leader who died suddenly, it was an extremely militant political mobilization.
The PCI's surpassing the vote of the
DC on March 24 reflected all that.
The period that began in June 1984 has, however, been marked by a decline in mobilization and political tension.
The level of struggle has been the lowest in the whole postwar period. The PCI, which had tried to channel the movement, helped to demobilize it. At the same decisive role in time, it played a paralyzing the peace movement.
In such a context, all the economic and social difficulties arising from unemployment, economic stagnation, and so on, began to weigh negatively on the political situation itself. And the conservative ideological offensive which the
6
Seats Votes % Seats 225 9,574,077 31.5 233
363,012 1.2 8 276 11,154,807 36.8 290 94 3,851,978 12.7 86 23 1,506,649 5.0 30 25 924,347 3.0 18 13 818,250 2.7 15
274,911 0.9 41 1,787,395 5.9 37
95,527 0.3 720 30,350,953 workers' movement and the PCI in particular have proved incapable of responding to with seriousness, disarray and provoked a retreat of some sections of the masses, which especially, the DC, were able to recapture. It is significant, among other things, that for the time in long years the Church actively mobilized against the PCI.
It would be wrong to draw sweeping situation in Italy remains unstable, both on the social and political levels, and movement still has the necessary strength to meet the offensive of its adversary, even to begin a counter-
The campaign for the referendum to be held on June 9 is an initial opportunity for a fight back. (2) This campaign has to be fought and won, combating all hesitations and maneuvers. The LCR threw itself into this work right after the project was launched on December
Finally, the electoral setback has provoked very sharp debates and public
Italian Workers demonstrate (DR)
31.2 10,359,829 34.5 32.6 9,907,043 33.0 11.4 3,397,026 11.3 4.0 1,008,482 3.4 5.2 1,845,861 6.2 3 1.5 429,267 1.4 2.3 969,949 3.2 6.6 1,886,987 6.3 2.2 196,095 0.7 29,999,639 differences in the PCI. On one side, Senator Napoleone Colajanni plunged into an open criticism of the party's present organization from a more rightwing point of view.
He has gone so far as to recommend the replacement of the party national secretary, Natta, by the union leader, Lama. (The latter has decided to withdraw from the leadership of the CGIL [Italian General Confederation of Labor] at the congress that is to be held in a few months.)
It is obvious that Colajanni would never have made such a statement without the agreement of other leaders higher up than he.
Other PCI leaders struck a different sort of note already during the election
(for example, in Rome the former CGIL leader Scheda). As for the PCI youth organization, the FGCI, its secretary gave an interview to the daily Paese Sera, which has become the forum critical of the present orientation. Among other things he said that the party's losses had to be attributed to the ineffectiveness of the left municipal governments in the recent and to the decline in the mass mobilizations from the 1984 level.
For his part, Natta presented some initial elements of a self-criticism that
La rectification recognized, notably, that "in the immediate circumstances the democratic altersubstance and concrete possibilities."
The PCI Central session as this article is being written and it will no doubt give some new about the present situation of the party and its leadership. 2. This is the referendum demanded originally by the PCI against the decision made by the government February 1984 to restrict the sliding scale of wages.
International Viewpoint 3 June 1985
too class collaborationism.
the bourgeoisie, has rejected this. And, on the other side, the demands from the workers are growing for the
Social Democracy to offer an alterna to the bourgeois government.