Word: segni
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After 13 days of interregnum, Italy had a new Premier. Christian Democrat Antonio Segni, 64, a lean-featured, soft-voiced professor who looks like a country gentleman of 50 years ago, took over last week where his predecessor Mario Scelba left off, and managed to put together again Italy's four-party, middle-of-the-road coalition...
...first Sardinian ever to become Premier of Italy, scholarly Antonio Segni made his reputation as Minister of Agriculture under the late Alcide de Gasperi. In his zeal for land reform, he once expropriated a quarter of his own estate and compensated his wife, to whom some of the land originally belonged, with a bottle of perfume. Straightforward, witty and courteous, Segni is more at home in the classroom or the law court than in the back rooms of Italian politics. He is not a robust man, yet, in the drawn-out bargaining and bickering process that constitutes Cabinetmaking in Italy...
Truce Between Factions. Not for him was the "opening to the left" offered by Fellow Traveler Pietro Nenni and his 75 left-wing Socialists. Instead, Antonio Segni concentrated on closing the fissure that threatened to split his Christian Democrats wide open. Right-wing Christian Democrats under ex-Premier Giuseppe Pella had been instrumental in bringing Scelba down. Segni placated them with an offer of two ministries: Finance and Administrative Reform...
...Gasperi once complained: "Segni is never well enough to do his job as minister but never sick enough to resign...
Next would come Cabinetmaking, and the question was whether in naming one man or rebuffing another, Segni could hold his pledges together long enough to form a government. "By temperament I am a pessimist," said frail old Premier Designate Segni. "In this way I avoid disappointment when things go wrong...