The Fall of Scelba

For a few moments last week, it seemed as if doughty little Premier Mario Scelba, whose government had staggered along for 16 months, would stagger on a while longer. But the day of reckoning came at last.

In his 497 days, Scelba had seen Trieste settled and had pushed through the Paris accords. At home he had launched an attack, even though belated and limited, on the Communists' entrenched privileges. But he had gotten nowhere on Italy's much-needed social and economic reforms. Skillful on the teeter-totter of politics, he had merely avoided falling to the left or falling to the right by a careful balancing that kept him and his government upright but accomplished little else.

"Outside Help." Scelba's defeat was accomplished by his own party--chiefly by the right-wing "Concentration" of the Christian Democrats led by ex-Premier Giuseppe Pella. Pella (who would like to be Premier again) used an occasion provided by Party Secretary Amintore Fanfani (who would also like to be Premier). Fanfani laid down a "minimum" program of social welfare and public works, and demanded that Scelba get his coalition partners (Liberals, Saragat Socialists and Republicans) to accept it--or resign.

Pella smoothly agreed with Fanfani's proposal and then indicated his real interest. "If we had a one-party government, there would be no preliminary bargaining. Then Christian Democracy could courageously face the problems it wants to solve." On some issues, Pella added blandly, a Christian Democrat government would need "outside help, but at any rate the government would not be a wavering reed in the wind, but an attracting force for the country." In other words, the Concentration would accept Fanfani's program not because they approved it, but because they were sure the minor coalition parties would not. And this would mean the end of Scelba.

Scelba's persistence almost fooled Pella & Co. The businessmen of the Liberal Party, whom Pella had counted on to balk at more land reform, accepted the program rather than bring on a crisis.

But when the tiny (five Deputies) Republican Party refused to support a new Scelba Cabinet, Pella's group demanded an emergency meeting of the Christian Democratic executive committee: the Scelba coalition had failed, they said.

In vain did Scelba's supporters argue that the Republicans' five votes were not essential to Scelba's majority. Shortly after 9 o'clock in the evening, Fanfani told Scelba formally that "with deep regret" the executive committee had decided not to support him. Next morning, smiling determinedly, Mario Scelba submitted his resignation to President Gronchi. His chief regret, said Scelba mildly, was that he had been overthrown not by parliamentary votes but by party maneuvering.

Inside Fight. Vice Premier Saragat, leader of the Social Democrats, was less mild. "This is not a government crisis," he snapped. "This is a Christian Democratic crisis. Moreover, this Christian Democratic crisis is due to purely personal and not to political reasons." The Liberals' Party Secretary Giovanni Malagodi scornfully attacked Pella's "strange argument" that "a one-party government would get its votes from the right for so-called national measures, while it would receive votes from the left for social measures. In other words, over the prostrate body of the nation would rule two demagogues, one a flaming nationalist, the other a pseudo-Socialist." His scorn was directed at the Concentration's fond ambition to pass foreign policy measures with help from the Monarchists (who are pro-Western) and economic reforms with votes from Pietro Nenni's Communist-line Socialists. It was a dangerous game, founded on the Concentration's conviction that it can use fellow-traveler Nenni without being used by him.

At week's enti President Gronchi, a left-wing Demo-Christian who is also flirting with Nenni, began the ritual consultations for selection of a new Premier. The first man he asked to form a government was wealthy 64-year-old Lawyer Antonio Segni, who as Minister of Agriculture in several De Gasperi cabinets was the author of the land reform laws and so dedicated a believer in them that he ordered the expropriation of most of his own estate in Sardinia.

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