Italy takes poll plunge

Press, 6 May 1983, Page 6

Italy takes poll plunge

NZPA-Reuter

Italy will hold a General Election next month as a result of the dissolution of Parliament by the President, Mr Sandro Pertini, yesterday. The poll, which comes a year before its time, was effectively forced upon the country by the Socialist Party, which brought down the Government on Friday by withdrawing its support and insisting that elections were needed. Mr Pertini, who is 86, signed the decree dissolving the country’s eighth legislature since the foundation of the republic in 1946 only after the Senate leader, Tomasso Morlino, failed in his last-ditch bid to break the political deadlock. The outgoing Prime Minister, Mr Amintore Fanfani, a Christian Democrat, said that the Cabinet would meet today and choose an election date to recommend to

Mr Pertini. The choice is between June 19 and June 26, Christian Democrats favouring the former because they believe a heavy electoral turn-out would benefit the party. They say that more than a million Italians would be away on summer holiday by June 26. At the last election in 1979 the Christian Democrats took 38 per cent of the vote, the. Communists 30 per cent, and the Socialists just under 10. The rest went to smaller parties. The electoral campaign appears likely when public spending is out of control and inflation, at 16 per cent, is far higher than in most other industrialised nations.

A Leftist guerrilla attack on Tuesday against a Labour Ministry expert has raised the spectre of possible violence during the campaign.