Word: segni
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Proud Eye. Italy's urbane, frail Premier Antonio Segni comes from Sardinia. As the father of Italy's postwar land reform (he himself surrendered 200 acres of rich olive groves outside Sassari), Premier Segni keeps a proud eye on the Sardinian transformation, and almost every Sunday without fail flies the 125 miles from Rome to his Sassari villa. The new Sardinia may do him political good, too, helping to hold his Christian Democratic pluralities on the island in Italy's nationwide municipal elections a fortnight hence...
Three weeks ago, beset by the threats of strikes among Italy's teachers and civil servants, Premier Antonio Segni passed out an average raise of 12% to every civil servant-an annual total of $425 million. Compared to Italy's gross national product, this generous gesture was equivalent to raising the cost of government in the U.S. by $7 billion at one stroke. Everybody agrees that 1) Italian civil servants are underpaid, 2) Italy's 1,000,000-man bureaucracy is inefficient, cumbersome. Segni, before raising the pay, had had parliamentary permission to change the system...
Only one member of Segni's administration. Treasury Minister Silvio Gava, was spoilsport enough to ask where the money was to come from. When he got no satisfactory answer to his question, Gava threatened to resign, and was only talked out of it with some difficulty...
Last week another member of the Segni Cabinet. Finance Minister Giulio Andreotti, assured the voters that there would be no new taxes. Faced with the impossible prospect of paying for something with nothing. Treasurer Gava went to Premier Segni again. He was quitting, and this time he really meant...
...saved the government from serious embarrassment. A government budget bill was about to be defeated because about 40 government supporters were absent. A Nenni henchman, while publicly opposing the budget, sent 30 or 40 Communist and Socialist members out of the hall to match the missing Christian Democrats. The Segni government was saved from a defeat. Philosophizing on his new strategy (which Italians are calling the Strategy of the Smile), Nenni said: "The slow disintegration of the majority is turning the Houses of Parliament into a sort of jungle . . . We are not concerned with overthrowing ministers by secret votes...