Hopes Held For New Italian Govt

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31862, 14 December 1968, Page 13

Hopes Held For New Italian Govt

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copuriphtl

ROME, December 13. President Giuseppe Saragat today will swear in a new Government which Italians hope will calm the labour and student turmoil sweeping the country.

As the 27 new ministers take their oaths, Parliamentary officials are preparing to have Italy’s first majority Government for nearly seven months in action by Christmas.

Politicians have repeatedly emphasised there is no time to be lost in tackling the crisis which erupted in the midst of student riots in May. Social tension grew all over the country during the ensuing political deadlock and Mr Giovanni Leone’s minority caretaker Government. Now, as Mr Mariano Rum-

or’s three - party coalition comes to power, hardly a day goes by without strikes, marches through towns and schools occupied. Workers in town and country are demanding a larger share of Italy’s prosperity, higher pensions and welfare schemes that work. People in backward regions want the same pay as those it. richer areas and’ students and schoolchildren want a better education. The three coalition parties, Christian Democrats, Socialists and Republicans, are agreed on a programme of university and school reform. They will also seek higher State pensions a cut in unemployment, and reform of Italy’s antiquated State bureaucracy and creaking legal machinery. The coalition is also committed to setting up a Government inquiry into an old counter-espionage scandal and to allow a free Parliamentary vote on whether to introduce divorce.