At Last, a New President

The choice of a senior Socialist averts another crisis

After 16 ballots spread over nine days, cheers rang out from the crowded floor of Rome's Chamber of Deputies and the galleries broke the rules with a round of applause. Weary backbenchers leaped to embrace the elderly, white-haired figure of Socialist Deputy Alessandro Pertini, 81, who had just been elected as the seventh President of the 32-year-old Italian Republic.

The enthusiastic outburst from the 1,011-member Grand Electoral Assembly was more than a spontaneous tribute to a respected senior politician and wartime anti-Fascist hero. Mostly, the cheer reflected all Italy's relief that a parliamentary stalemate had ended and another political crisis had been averted.

Pertini had been among the early favorites soon after the electors gathered to choose a successor to Giovanni Leone, who abruptly resigned last month in a cloud of scandal over alleged tax evasion and financial improprieties. Pertini's Socialist Party, the country's third largest, had aggressively sought the presidency from the start, as a sign that it was not about to be submerged by the growing accord of Italy's two dominant parties, the Christian Democrats and Communists.

Aware that a Communist President was not in the cards despite the party's growing national acceptance, the Communists were willing to promote Pertini out of leftist loyalty. In addition, the avuncular, pipe-smoking Socialist, a former speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, was acceptable to the centrist Republicans and Social Democrats who complete the five-party parliamentary majority that supports the government of Christian Democratic Premier Giulio Andreotti.

Although the post is largely ceremonial, the President has the power to appoint premiers and to choose the moment for calling national elections. For that reason, the Christian Democrats were reluctant to surrender their hold on the office to another party. Beyond that, they felt that Pertini was being "imposed" on them by the ambitious Socialist leader Bettino Craxi. While negotiations to break the impasse continued behind closed doors, the electors went through 15 inconclusive ballots, with the proceedings broadcast on national television. Although Pertini was their compromise candidate, the Communists on early ballots cast symbolic votes for a favorite son, Party Elder Giorgio Amendola; by the end of the election he had received a total of 5,028 votes. Throwaway votes went to such unlikely candidates as the widow of Aldo Moro, the onetime Premier murdered by his Red Brigades kidnapers, and even Sophia Loren.

After Pertini disengaged from formal Socialist backing by withdrawing briefly, the Christian Democrats finally relented. On Saturday's 16th ballot, Pertini won with 832 votes--the largest total ever gained by an Italian presidential candidate. Although many right-wing Christian Democrats were disappointed by the outcome, few had any personal quarrel with Pertini. A native of Savona, on the Italian Riviera, he was imprisoned several times between 1925 and the end of World War II for his underground resistance work--first against Mussolini's fascist regime, later against the Nazis. He was co-founder of the postwar Socialist Party and has been a member of Parliament since 1946. Pertini does have one striking advantage at this particular time: in his long parliamentary career, there has never been a hint of scandal.

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