Word: fanfani
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...jaunty, combative Amintore Fanfani is one of Italy's heartiest political perennials and the country's most controversial politician. A four-time Premier, he has since 1973 been secretary of the Christian Democratic Party, which has ruled Italy for 30 years. For his pugnacious leadership and almost baronial control of the party's vast machinery and patronage, he has sometimes been called, both inside and outside the party, il Padrino-the Godfather-of Italian politics...
Next month some 40 million Italians will vote in regional elections that, with considerable help from Fanfani, have taken on the coloration and dimensions of a full-scale political confrontation. At stake are nearly 1,000 council seats in 15 of Italy's 20 semi-autonomous regional governments. In polls taken last month, the Communists' showing improved by 2% or 3% over that in the last national election in 1972, which would give them an impressive nationwide total of 30%; the same polls forecast that the Christian Democrats would lose 3%, dropping to an overall 35%. But there...
...proposed "historic compromise" that would give the Communists a share of power in the national government. To counter this proposal, which was made in 1973 by Enrico Berlinguer, secretary-general of the Italian Communist Party, the Christian Democrats have launched a double-edged campaign. Scholarly Premier Aldo Moro, Fanfani's colleague and occasional rival, leads the left wing of the party and is the most consistent Christian Democratic supporter of a center-left alignment. Moro is stressing the conciliatory spirit of the center-left accommodation with the Socialists (who support the Christian Democrat-Republican coalition that governs the country...
...political lethargy. He believes that the ending of the Viet Nam War has at least shocked Europeans out of the comfortable belief that the U.S. will intervene anywhere and at any cost on their behalf. In a clear reference to the American retreat from Saigon, former Italian Premier Amintore Fanfani observed that the current "international situation is a warning to peoples who want to remain free to rely first of all on themselves, and not to tie their salvation exclusively to the help of friends, who are certainly faithful, but not always in a position to help half the world...
...rejected by some hard-liners within the party, who were brought up on the classic revolutionary dogma of unending class struggle. Nonetheless, it was virtually certain that the delegates would approve the secretary's platform. The larger question was the reaction of other Italian political parties. Amintore Fanfani, the conservative secretary of the Christian Democratic Party, remains adamantly opposed. "If the Christian Democrats do not want to commit suicide," he said earlier this month, "they must say no to the compromesso storico tomorrow, as well as today." But left-wing Christian Democrats are not that opposed to the idea...