Triumph Before a Fall?

Slow-moving Premier Scelba won an important victory last week in the Italian Senate, pushing through the Paris accords and thus making Italy the first nation on the Continent to complete ratification of West German rearmament. But it looked as if it might be the last piece of major business that he would carry off as Premier. The long knives were out for Scelba.

The Senate debate on European Union was an unseemly brawl in which Communists and Neo-Fascists called each other cowards, ruffians, traitors, deserters, fools, imbeciles, murderers and idiots. Scelba's Christian Democrats did not need the Fascist support, but they had it anyway. In the balloting, only the Communists and their allies, the Nenni Socialists (plus one lone independent), voted against the accords. The tally: 139 to 82.

Clarification? While this was going on, a quieter but more deadly fight was going on inside Scelba's own four-party coalition. With only a twelve-vote majority in the lower chamber, the Christian Democrats need the votes of the junior partners in their coalition. Scelba has proposed new laws to relieve--slightly--the maze of government controls and regulations, dating from the Fascist era, on landowners in their relations with tenant farmers. On this point both Republicans and Liberals threatened to walk out on the coalition--the Republicans because they thought the Scelba changes would give the landowners too much advantage, the free-enterprising Liberals because they thought the nation's millions of landowners were not getting enough of a break.

It was an opportune moment for Amintore Fanfani, the influential, ambitious and impulsive secretary-general of the Christian Democrats. Carefully taking no side in the dispute, he caused consternation in the Scelba ranks by demanding a "clarification" (i.e., showdown) right away. Scelba pleaded for time until certain hurdles were safely past: his own impending good will visit to the U.S. (later this month), the election of a new President in May, the Sicilian regional elections in June.

Bold New Course. For a few days, Fanfani seemed to concur; then he got out his hatchet again. He argued that immediate clarification would give "Amico Scelba" more stature and standing on his U.S. tour. Said Fanfani: "If there is unrest among other parties of the coalition, there is also doubt in the ranks of Christian Democrats about whether we can continue with the present arrangement."

Besides, added Fanfani, Christian Democracy in Italy needs a strong new course--more efficient government administration, passage of new petroleum laws, completion of agrarian reforms, tax laws with teeth, a new public works program for roads and housing, restoring order from chaos in the government-run I.R.I. (Italian equivalent of the Reconstruction Finance Corp.). His implication was clear: Amintore Fanfani, not "Amico Scelba," is the man to lead such a program.

"Once these clarifications start," said a disconsolate Christian Democrat, "it's pretty certain that Scelba will be clarified right out of office."

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