Word: andreotti
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Little Red Riding Hood who looks only at the nightcap and thinks that it's her grandmother," says Italy's urbane Premier Giulio Andreotti. "But at the same time, I am not so reckless as to throw oil on the fire and ruin everything." Metaphorical mixture aside, such political caution and practicality explain how Christian Democrat Andreotti, 57, has managed for the past four months to keep a weak one-party government in power, primarily propped up by the "benevolent abstention" in Parliament of a strong Communist Party...
Communist cooperation in the parliamentary process is a disturbing new anomaly for Western European democracies, and few Italians are pleased by the development. Many Communist rank and filers resent what amounts to their party's support on key votes for the Christian Democrats. Andreotti's critics, meanwhile, charge that by accepting Communist "non-opposition," the Premier is providing the Communists with an opportunity to enter the government eventually. Andreotti has qualms about accepting support from the left under these circumstances, but, he says, "in order to come out of our economic crisis, it would be foolish...
Delicate Truce. For the short term, Andreotti needs the Communists, reported TIME's Rome bureau chief Jordan Bonfante last week, and the Premier is convinced that for the moment at least, they intend to act responsibly and without their usual revolutionary deviousness. But Andreotti is limiting the relationship to parliamentary cooperation; he has turned down a suggestion by Communist Leader Enrico Berlinguer for a round table of major parties to draw up economic policy. In the longer term, the Premier believes Euro-Communists should be encouraged to follow democratic procedures not so much within national governments...
...delicate truce with his principal opposition has enabled Andreotti, a seasoned politician who has three tunes been Premier and was a minister in 16 governments, to crank out an intensive program of austerity measures-including stiffer tariffs, higher government-controlled prices, and proposed wage restraints-aimed at curing the sickest partner in the European Common Market. Italy's current inflation rate is 18%, its internal deficit is estimated at $20 billion, and its foreign trade deficit has doubled in only a year, to $4.4 billion. So weak is the lira that it has to be supported...
...Andreotti's real target is not the holidays themselves so much as a weekend-extending device known as il ponte (the bridge). When a holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, about 35% of Italy's work force routinely call in sick on Monday or Friday, using the day as a bridge to prolong the weekend to four days. This year, adept bridgers have been able to take off an extra 20 days with no loss in pay. But next year, with at most two midweek holidays on the fiesta calendar, bridging is doomed...