Word: pertini
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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...
...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...
Democrats have signed up 'to speak against the bill, Chamber President Alessandro Pertini has announced that "we will divorce ourselves from our summer vacation" unless progress is prompt. Since no one wants to remain in Rome in August, the Deputies are expected to approve the bill late next month. The Senate will then be able to act on it after the August break...