A Vote and More Violence

After Moro 's murder, a trend toward the political center

Italians had reasons for both hope and alarm last week following the obsequies for assassinated former Premier and Christian Democratic Leader Aldo Moro. In local elections affecting two provinces and 816 cities and towns, voters turned out in record numbers (3.4 million, or 10% of the electorate). Shunning the extremes, they cast their ballots for the parties of the political center and handed an unexpected loss to Italy's Communist Party. But as if to prove that the country would have no reprieve from violence, terrorists of the Red Brigades and other radical groups carried out a series of bombings and almost daily hit-and-run attacks against isolated victims in several cities.

Although no parliamentary seats were at stake, the elections were seen as an important index of the national mood. The results surprised even those who had expected the Christian Democrats to benefit from a wave of sympathy after Moro's murder. The party won 42.5% of the vote (up from 39% in the 1976 general election), while the Communists took only 26.5% (down from 34%). Recouping their losses of two years ago, the Socialists came in with a respectable 13.5%. The centrist Republicans and Social Democrats also gained, while the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement and the far left Proletarian Democrats lost heavily.

At Christian Democratic headquarters in Rome, official mourning for Moro gave way to momentary ebullience over the bastonata (thrashing) delivered to the Communists. The victory strengthened the position of Premier Giulio Andreotti and Party Secretary Benigno Zaccagnini as heirs to Moro's leadership. Eventually, however, the election results could give those conservative regulars in the party who are unhappy about collaborating with the Communists new incentive to challenge that leadership. As one Christian Democratic strategist put it: "I knew we should have gone for an early election last winter instead of forming a government with Communist support."

The mood at Communist headquarters was sullen and depressed, although spokesmen argued that the party traditionally does better in general elections than in local contests where Christian Democratic patronage is entrenched. Party officials admitted that, despite their forceful stand against bargaining with Moro's kidnapers, they had been tarred by the terrorists' use of the "Red label" and what they called the "illicit misrepresentation of the Communist name." Giancarlo Pajetta, a prominent Communist leader, fumed against Christian Democratic politicians in the provinces who had called the Red Brigades "the Communists' children" in campaign speeches.

The election will probably not have any immediate effect on the governing agreement between the Christian Democrats and the Communists so skillfully worked out by Moro earlier this year. The day after the results were tallied, in fact, all the major parties gave the government an overwhelming vote of confidence (522 members in favor, 27 opposed, 3 abstentions) for its seven-week-old antiterrorist decree. The measure raises the penalty for a kidnaping-homicide to life imprisonment and gives Italy's police wider arrest and interrogation powers.

Parliament was so busy with terrorism that little notice was given to an unrelated turning point in Italy's social history. Confirming an earlier Chamber of Deputies decision, the Senate, by a vote of 160 to 148, passed a long contested bill legalizing state-subsidized abortion on demand for women over 18 during the first 90 days of pregnancy.

Despite the terrorists' failure to disrupt the government, some Italians are pessimistic about its long-term future. In an interview with Rome Bureau Chief Jordan Bonfante, Gianni Agnelli, chairman of Fiat, the giant $13 billion industrial complex, complained that normal parliamentary life is being displaced by agreement at the top between the Christian Democrats and the Communists. In the future, he said, if Italy is to avoid outright authoritarian rule, it may be forced to settle for a vague extraparliamentary modus vivendi, arranged among what he calls the "real social forces," such as the trade unions, industry, the Ministry of the Interior and the police ranks. The risk of such a "deteriorated form of democracy," he said, is that it could deteriorate further into something like the Peronism of Argentina in the 1950s.

In Rome, police made what may be an important breakthrough. They raided a small print shop where they believed Moro's kidnapers might have prepared the messages that were sent to the government and his family. The raid turned up an IBM typewriter of the kind used in the messages, arms, and Red Brigades leaflets claiming responsibility for the kidnaping of Piero Costa, a Genoa shipping magnate, in 1976. The shop's owner, Enrico Triaca, 30, was arrested along with nine other suspects, whom police were investigating for possible connections to the kidnaping.

Other terrorists, however, carried on their random strikes. Near Milan a masked gang announcing itself as Red Brigades forced its way into the Italian subsidiary of Honeywell Corp. and set fire to a storehouse, destroying $1.1 million in electronic equipment. That attack followed a "kneecapping" (the technique developed by the I.R. A. in Ireland of shooting at the legs) of an Italian executive of the Milan branch of Chemical Bank of New York. The violence has caused some members of the international business community to think seriously about security. Said one Western diplomat in Rome: "I know more than one executive who's been doing some target practice with a newly bought pistol."

Meanwhile, Moro's grieving family, who had shunned the state funeral presided over by Pope Paul VI, held a private memorial Mass in the modern Church of Christ the King in Rome. A cleric read a prayer composed by the slain statesman's widow, Eleonora, who had pleaded in vain with party and government leaders to negotiate for her husband's life. "We pray that we may be delivered from every desire for vengeance," it said in part. "We implore mercy for the executors of the horrible crime, and for all those who. out of fear, meanness and jealousy, consented to it."

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