Andreotti: Rebus Sic Stantibus

"I am not a Little Red Riding Hood who looks only at the nightcap and thinks that it's her grandmother," says Italy's urbane Premier Giulio Andreotti. "But at the same time, I am not so reckless as to throw oil on the fire and ruin everything." Metaphorical mixture aside, such political caution and practicality explain how Christian Democrat Andreotti, 57, has managed for the past four months to keep a weak one-party government in power, primarily propped up by the "benevolent abstention" in Parliament of a strong Communist Party.

Communist cooperation in the parliamentary process is a disturbing new anomaly for Western European democracies, and few Italians are pleased by the development. Many Communist rank and filers resent what amounts to their party's support on key votes for the Christian Democrats. Andreotti's critics, meanwhile, charge that by accepting Communist "non-opposition," the Premier is providing the Communists with an opportunity to enter the government eventually. Andreotti has qualms about accepting support from the left under these circumstances, but, he says, "in order to come out of our economic crisis, it would be foolish not to utilize the parliamentary nonbelligerence of any political group that believes this government the only one possible." He adds, "In politics there is a clause that is always valid: rebus sic stantibus [circumstances being what they are]."

Delicate Truce. For the short term, Andreotti needs the Communists, reported TIME's Rome bureau chief Jordan Bonfante last week, and the Premier is convinced that for the moment at least, they intend to act responsibly and without their usual revolutionary deviousness. But Andreotti is limiting the relationship to parliamentary cooperation; he has turned down a suggestion by Communist Leader Enrico Berlinguer for a round table of major parties to draw up economic policy. In the longer term, the Premier believes Euro-Communists should be encouraged to follow democratic procedures not so much within national governments but in the emerging, popularly elected European Parliament, which would be a less critical ground on which to demonstrate their conversion.

The delicate truce with his principal opposition has enabled Andreotti, a seasoned politician who has three tunes been Premier and was a minister in 16 governments, to crank out an intensive program of austerity measures--including stiffer tariffs, higher government-controlled prices, and proposed wage restraints--aimed at curing the sickest partner in the European Common Market. Italy's current inflation rate is 18%, its internal deficit is estimated at $20 billion, and its foreign trade deficit has doubled in only a year, to $4.4 billion. So weak is the lira that it has to be supported by a 7% surtax on foreign exchange purchases. Italy's accumulated foreign debt of $17 billion has all but exhausted her credit: the International Monetary Fund has held up since March a $530 million loan request.

To hasten the IMF'S decision and to seek still more assistance from the U.S., Andreotti is due in Washington this week for meetings with President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger. The Italian leader also hopes to talk to Jimmy Carter--or at least the President-elect's transition team--particularly since during the campaign Carter specifically viewed Communists in Western European governments as a concern but not a catastrophe and indicated interest in opening avenues of communication with them as President.

Before leaving Rome, Andreotti discussed his concerns in an interview with Bonfante. While admitting that the economic crisis was severe, the Premier was faintly optimistic. "Some of the capital that fled abroad has returned, and there is a much greater awareness than there was a year ago that we have to face up to the crisis. The balance of payments used to be regarded as a problem for technicians. Today people understand that it bears on the price of meat at the butcher in the morning."

Asked Bonfante: "It has been calculated that Italy spends 120% of its income. Why don't Italians work and produce more?" Replied Andreotti: "There is a decided commitment under way to recover output and productivity. In fact, we've been able to abolish seven holidays, which would have been unthinkable in other times."

While Andreotti has no illusions about the Communists' ultimate thrust for absolute power, he also realizes that they do not want Italy's capitalistic structure to collapse completely. Said the Premier: "If the Communist Party does not aim at revolution and dictatorship, it is only natural that it should support the recovery plan. The Communists know full well that if the lira plunges to the bottom, it would mean entering a risky area ... It seems to me that this sense of collective responsibility cannot be misinterpreted as the historic compromise, as some would have it."

Creative Art. Is this not a situation almost inevitably leading to Communist entry into the government? Andreotti does not believe Italy's present governing formula makes that "either easier or more difficult." As for the future, the entire political reality may change, he says. "Politics is also a creative art. Works of art are not programmed." The Communist question, moreover, has a "European dimension." If the Communists were to join the broad democratic left of the European Parliament after that new body's first popular election in 1978, Andreotti says, this could create a "berthing place" for their professed democratic pledges. Alongside Western European socialists and social democrats, the Communists would be smaller fish in a bigger pond where it would be safer to test their "untried propositions that are quite new in the history of Communism and have never been successfully realized in the past." For the moment, Andreotti judges, it is a mistake "to take for granted a transformation process that is barely hinted at," yet also wrong to dismiss it out of hand "in hopes of provoking a lacerating collision."

Andreotti indicates that it would be unseemly for the U.S. to seek any kind of relations with Berlinguer and his new-look Communist Party. Such interference would work against Italy's delicate political balance. The view he brings to Washington is that of the man who wants no oil near his fire: "The relations must be between governments. Any involvement in our internal political questions--such as 'pressure for the center left' or 'support for the right'--or of any other sort, would be erroneous and counterproductive."

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