Word: nenni
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Despite the drubbing his Socialist Party took at the polls three weeks ago, Socialist Leader Pietro Nenni saw no alternative to limping back into the Center Left coalition with the Christian Democrats for another five-year term. The party, however, had other ideas for regaining working-class support and recovering its voting losses. Overriding Nenni, Socialist delegates voted to stay out of the Center Left alliance until the Christian Democrats gave a firm commitment to carry out the leftist reforms in housing conditions, higher education and social welfare that they had promised-but not delivered-in the previous government...
...least partly of his own making. The former Social Democratic leader was reportedly so vexed with the poor electoral showing of his old party-now merged with the Socialists-that he actively backed dissident members who wanted to stay out of the coalition. Saragat apparently feels that Nenni made too many concessions to the Christian Democrats and is thus responsible for the Socialists' lack of success...
They kept part of those promises. But as it turned out, Nenni, now 77, gave far more than he got. The Italian economy lost its fizz, and the Socialists found themselves forced to support their big coalition partner in a series of effective but unpopular anti-inflationary curbs that pinched consumer pocketbooks and cut back government expenditures on the promised social reforms. His United Socialists paid the price at the polls, winding up with a significantly reduced slice of Italy's political pizza (see chart...
Some 1,500,000 voters, a quarter of the Socialists' 1963 total, defected from the Socialist ranks. In the Chamber of Deputies, that meant Nenni lost four seats, mostly to the Communists. The Communists picked up 800,000 votes, a 1.6% increase, giving them eleven extra seats in the Chamber. Thus the party maintained its postwar record of steady gains-and moved closer to its goal of a leftist majority in Italian politics. Other Nenni Socialists went over to their former ally, the pro-Communist Proletarian Socialists (P.S.I.U.P.). This far-left party gained 4.5% of the votes...
...present, Premier Aldo Moro's Center-Left coalition remains the only viable form of government in Italy, and Nenni's Socialists have gone too far in their partnership with Moro to reverse direction now. But the coalition's survival depends largely on a program reformist enough to restore confidence in the Socialists without undermining the Christian Democrats' and Republicans' new-found support from the right. A neat trick, if it can be done...