(5 of 6)
At the same time, party strength in some other old bastions has been crumbling fast. The judicial system, once a Christian Democratic preserve, has had an influx of aggressive young magistrates who are not inclined to spare the party from their investigative zeal. Even higher-ranking army officers are no longer automatically anti-left. As a Communist parliamentary floor leader, Alessandro Natta, accurately observes, "The whole hierarchy of national powers has been slipping out of their hands."
As a consequence, many Christian Democrats have been searching hard for a way to rejuvenate the party. For a while, in fact, it appeared that reformists intent on bringing in new leaders had gained the upper hand over the party's old guard. One sign was the election last July of Benigno Zaccagnini, 64, an appealing, conciliatory former pediatrician from Ravenna, as party secretary in place of the irascible, fervently conservative Amintore Fanfani.
Zaccagnini's backers began drafting plans for reshaping the Italian economy —less emphasis on cars, TVs and other private consumer goods, more on those neglected mass-transportation facilities, hospitals and schools—and overhauling the party bureaucracy. But the reformist drive has now virtually halted because of the early elections; there is too little time for the party to launch the kind of thoroughgoing program that will regain the confidence of the unions and entice the breakaway Socialists back into another center-left coalition.
But later on, possibly only after another chastening election humiliation, some Christian Democrats see a broad if necessarily gradual renewal, either in an uneasy coalition with the left or in opposition to a Communist-dominated government. "It's the logic of the democratic system to go into opposition," argues Industry Minister Carlo Donat-Cattin, 56, the leader of the Forze Nuove faction. "That's how the system defends and regenerates itself." Even so, there is an obvious hitch: the possibility that the Christian Democrats might stay in opposition for good if the Communists turn out to be less than the committed democrats they profess to be. Says Donat-Cattin with a rueful smile: "This is the little problem that's before us."
A Hope. Many Christian Democrats believe that the party—or Italy, for that matter—will not have to face that problem this spring after all. They are persuaded that the Communists will not do as well this June as they did in last year's local elections. To a great extent, the Communists' success back then was due to a large protest vote. But the issue this time, notes Tourism Minister Adolfo Sarti, "is not Communists but Communism. The Italian knows the difference." Sarti believes that the Christian Democrats will hold on to their current 267 seats in the Chamber of Deputies because of a deep-seated conviction among Italians that "the Christian Democrats can defend the fundamental values—liberty and the West."