Word: andreotti
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...creating a crisis that presaged general elections and, quite possibly, renewed political terrorism. Charging that the Christian Democrats had reneged on an agreement to consult them on important government decisions, the Communists withdrew from an alliance of major parties that had supported the one-party government of Premier Giulio Andreotti in Parliament. Without the backing of the Communist, Socialist, Republican and Social Democratic parties, Andreotti mildly told the Chamber of Deputies, he had no choice except to step down as head of a Cabinet that had lasted for a precarious ten months...
...Communist pledge to cooperate in a three-year government economic recovery plan, for example, had been attacked by workers who felt that they would suffer from new austerity measures and wage restraints. Similarly, the Andreotti government's failure to make a dent in unemployment, which rose from 1.5 million to 1.7 million in 1978, caused the jobless to criticize Berlinguer for not pushing through employment programs...
...first effort to solve the crisis, Italy's 82-year-old President Sandro Pertini asked Andreotti to try to form a new government. If he succeeds, it will mark the third Cabinet in a row that Andreotti has headed, but the odds are against him. Although a skilled parliamentarian, he does not belong to the Christian Democratic leadership. His party, moreover, sorely misses the masterly negotiating talents of onetime Premier Aldo Moro, who was kidnaped and murdered by Red Brigades terrorists last year...
Unlike most Italian politicians. Andreotti is not a flamboyant orator. He speaks like a man reciting the Rome telephone directory. He is a tactician, not a grand strategist in the mold of his longtime colleague Aldo Moro, who was kidnaped on the day Andreotti's Cabinet was sworn in. "I'm not too keen on ideological discussion," Andreotti once conceded. "I couldn't tell you if Marx is better than Proudhon and if Lenin is a good or evil genius in history." Fabrizio Cicchitto, a Socialist Deputy, claims Andreotti displays "a willful absence of long-range vision...
...vote on the Pandolfi plan draws near. Andreotti has used uncharacteristic rhetoric to spell out the consequences of defeat. Because the government includes "nearly all political persuasions," he says, "if we err, the democratic system itself will be in jeopardy. There will be no democratic opposition for the discontented to turn to." In the end, Andreotti's well-known stubbornness could be the surest safeguard of his power: during his second time as Premier, he suffered 13 consecutive parliamentary defeats before finally agreeing to step down...