ABSTRACT: The white paper on the "reality of democracy" in Italy which has won out over the democratic model indicated in the Constitution. The democratic institutions, from Parliament to the government, have had all their power pre-empted by the parties. The Constitution is constantly violated. The State news services have twisted information to serve the exclusive interests of the parties in the government and have eliminated all the voices of dissent. "By now the party-power system is a system that runs parallel to the constitutional one and is nourished by corruption and illegality. Financial and military lobbies, hidden power centres, Mafia families and subversive [Masonic] lodges run through all sectors of the political ranks and determine the politics of the various parties".

(RADICAL PARTY, May 1983)

Considered up to now a paradox or a curiosity of European politics, the "Italian case" is today an unknown factor that must be disclosed. The system that seemed to be founded on a provincial and backward recipe, behind or, at least, on the margins and a capacity for planning that no political expert would have wanted or been able to believe.

The facts that we have linked together here will allow, despite their incompleteness, for a first acquaintance with the new things that are going on in Italy. It could be superfluous or distracting for us in this phase to give our interpretation of this process. For now what counts is to find the thread linking apparently disconnected facts, thus liberating all from the fear that in this way they will be accepting the positions of a political camp.

THE LEGISLATIVE FUNCTION

During the 35 years of the republic there have been 38 changes of government. All except four fell because of extra-parliamentary decisions. This is the first proof that the Italian Parliament does not exist. The houses of Parliament, in fact, have been deprived of any control over the state's budget and financial law which is a main factor in parliamentary functioning. Negotiated between the government, local agencies, labour unions, business associations, and pressure groups, the budget and the financial laws are generally distorted by decree laws up until the very last moment and then presented to the houses of Parliament for formal ratification within the shortest possible time.

These latter then have no methods and no tools for controlling the way in which they are actuated. Thus the actual flow of expenditures is unchecked by public control.

In order to block real debate and to eliminate opposition, in 1981 and 1983 the government imposed a vote of confidence on even the individual articles of the financial law, and in 1982 it incorporated dozens of heterogeneous articles into a single one.

The legislative function is impeded by the government's continual recourse to urgent decree laws which the Constitution only foresees for exceptional cases (art.77).

During the last legislature (1979-1983) the government presented 269 decree laws to Parliament for ratification: one for every three and a half working days. Thus the work of the Chamber of Deputies is paralysed which in itself becomes new grounds for emanating further decrees.

According to the Constitution, decree laws must be converted into laws by Parliament within 60 days, but the government eludes the deadlines by presenting the same decrees again after their expiration and restoring the effects of the expired ones with new ones.

The abnormal recourse to urgent decrees was accentuated in the Seventh Legislature (1976-1979), with the advent, that is, of national unity and the so-called government by assembly based on the anomalous formula of "not voting no-confidence". The almost unanimous majority (more than 90%) that was then formally constituted and that ranged from the Christian Democrats to the Communist Party, was in fact particularly fragile because of its distance from the social reality it pretended to represent. Even afterwards, despite the change of formula, the practice of national unity remained operative, and with it all the weak and precarious factors. It was the work of the Radical opposition to make this process explicit.

At the same time the independence of the individual deputies in the Chamber was eliminated. Art. 67 of the Constitution affirms that "every member of Parliament represents the nation and exercises his functions without the bond of a mandate". The elected representatives, instead, receive an imperative mandate from their parties and must adhere to the discipline of their Parliamentary groups which in turn are direct emanations of the parties.

THE REGULATIONS IN THE CHAMBER

In the last two legislatures the Speaker of the larger of the two houses has not been a member of the majority but of the opposition, and particularly of the Communist Party. This anomalous procedure has sanctioned the PCI's renunciation of the opposition and its de facto involvement in the Parliamentary majority and the government's choices. And it is thanks to this that the pre-empting of the Parliament as an institution has been accelerated which has now reached its final phase with the attack on the regulations in the Chamber. Already in the Seventh Legislature the regulations in the Chamber had been distorted by a series of interpretations by the Speaker to the damage of the minority. In the legislature which has just been truncated with an exasperated recourse to "experimental interpretations" of the regulations, with radical modifications and subsequent "interpretations" of an always more restrictive kind, a situation has been created of total arbitrariness and the absence of any regulations at a

ll.

With the elimination of all possibilities for obstructionism, an extreme but essential element of any parliamentary system, with the Speaker's interpretation of the regulations and the new proposals for modifications, the following results are being pursued:

a) "abrogation of the deputies' rights to make amendments" by giving the Speaker discretionary power to submit the amendments to a vote "for the sake of economising on the debate";

b) "abrogation of the deputies' rights to take the floor" by "limiting" the discussion time and assigning each group a certain number of minutes for its speeches: in no case can a single deputy take the floor without the permission of his party whip and thus of his party itself;

c) "abolition of the secret vote", thus cancelling the possibility which today each group has to ask for a secret vote and raising the number to thirty of those asking for it which limits this faculty to the larger groups alone (during the last legislature this would have excluded the Radicals, Republicans, Liberals, Social Democrats, neo-Fascists [MSI], the PDUP [Proletarian Unity], and mixed groups).

The exceptional gravity of these measures can be explained by the desire to neutralise the opposition of the Radical Party which entered Parliament in 1976 with four deputies (1% of the vote) and which passed on to eighteen deputies in the 1979 elections (3.4% of the vote). It was the only party to put pressure on the rules of the game with which the block of old parties, the government and the opposition had for thirty years blocked the entrance of new parties into the institutions (the only exceptions being those created from splits in the old parties). But above all, by activating to the utmost the Parliament and its powers through pushing the rules to their extremes, the Radical deputies revealed the involvement of the Communists in the choices of the majority and the pre-empting of Parliament as an institution which had been done gradually and painlessly in the past.

Today the elimination of the Radicals' dissent is a pre-condition for annulling what is left of the Parliament's independence.

THE EXPULSION OF THE DEPUTIES

Attacks on the opposition have by now reached the point of physically expelling them from the chamber of Montecitorio [seat of the Chamber of Deputies, ed.].

If one compares the preceding period to the one after 1976, one notes that in the first six legislatures - in 28 years - the Speaker of the Chamber interdicted its work for a total of 35 days. In the last two years, covering only seven years, the days of interdiction have reached 90 days, of which 75 were at the expense of the Radical deputies alone. The larger part of the sanctions were imposed during the last two years: 74 days between January 1981 and March 1983, of which 59 were imposed on Radical deputies. If one then considers the reasons for the interdictions, one notes the disproportion of those against the Radical deputies. In the past, for having overturned the urns during a secret vote in December 1953, the deputy Messinetti (PCI) was penalised with five days of interdiction. The deputy Pozzo (MSI) was merely censured for ripping a plank out of a bench and threatening other deputies with it; and the same was meted out to the deputy Laconi (PCI), one of the most violent in the same sessio

n. Deputy Cianca (PCI) was also merely censured for having seized an ink-well on January 25 and Deputy Scarpa (PCI) who brandished a microphone in the same session.

No action was taken against Deputy Pozzo (MSI) for moving menacingly onto the chamber floor on November 6, 1956, and two days of interdiction were imposed on Deputy Leccisi (MSI) for aggression against other deputies on March 14, 1958.

On the other hand, ten days of interdiction were imposed on the Radical Deputy Crivellini for having made public the recording of a closed session of the Budget Commission in protest against the imposition of the State Secret Rule and the covering up of the ENI-Petromin scandal. Twelve days on interdiction were inflicted on Radical Deputy Cicciomessere for jumping up onto the government's bench to call the Speaker's attention to the aggression taking place against his party whip, Adelaide Aglietta, who was being slapped by a Communist deputy. No action was taken against the deputy who slapped Aglietta and distinctly lighter sanctions (four days) were taken against Deputy Spataro (PCI) who on that occasion kicked and punched Cicciomessere.

During these same days Deputy Madaudo (PSDI) was interdicted for eight days for having knocked out a minister with a sudden punch.

Six days each were given to Radical Deputies Facio, Tessari, and Calderisi on July 8, 1982 for refusing to leave the chamber at the end of the session in protest against the Speaker for having denied them the floor.

Fifteen days of interdiction to Radical Deputy Cicciomessere for "insulting the Speaker" in the session of March 24, 1983 - to be precise for having used strong words ("it is politically obscene") to describe the decision of the Speaker to not take a vote on the opposition's amendments to the financial bill. Radical whip Emma Bonino, for her part, was given six days for a worse offence: for having, that is, repeated Cicciomessere's words on the following day.

THE NON-EXISTENT GOVERNMENT

The expropriation of Parliament's functions does not result in a strengthening of the Executive, which on the contrary is, if possible, even weaker and more precarious than Parliament. If 34 governments of the 38 that have been formed since the end of the war until today have fallen because of decisions made outside of Parliament, this is not only an accusation against the impotence of the Houses.

Governments are made and unmade by the parties.

It is not the Prime Minister who has power but the party chiefs. Ministers and under-secretaries are officially party "delegates". They are chosen on the basis of rigid and publicly-known rules of power-sharing and they are not answerable to the Parliament but to the parties that have chosen them. The Council of Ministers is not the collective organ foreseen in art. 95 of the Constitution, but a market-place of officially recognised party "delegations". All important political decisions are made outside the Council in the periodic "summits" among the party chiefs and the Prime Minister.

The distinction in the jurisdiction of central and local powers is so blurred as to eliminate all real autonomy, not only that of the local agencies, but of the government itself. As a result there are daily negotiations between the government, the regions and the local agencies, or more precisely, between the political forces that have the majority among them (this is one of the mechanisms that explains why the PCI cannot be considered to be in the opposition, but rather a participant in the power-sharing regulations that is practised in the various power centres).

The Executive's power, in short, has been entirely expropriated.

This is the confirmation of a practice that was established even before the Constitution came into force, in the period of transition between the Monarchy and the Republic, and whose first victim was the Parri government in 1945, the government of the Resistance. On the desire of the parties in the coalition, Ferruccio Parri resigned November 24, 1945 denouncing to the press the hidden "coup d'etat" which had just taken place. Few listened to his words at the time. But that practice survived the advent of the Constitution and, in the end, took its place.

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE FASCIST CODES

From the day after it came into effect, the Constitution was reduced to a marginal role to the advantage of a politics of continuity of the old regime which has in recent years led to the full development of the corporative system worked out and started off by Fascism.

It is no coincidence that the great reforms provided for by the Constitution have been actuated late or never.

The reform of the Regions was accomplished in 1963, fifteen years after the Constitution came into effect.

Popular referendums were made operative 23 years late, in 1971, when the coalition of parties, in the government as well as in the opposition, reached what they considered to be the necessary cohesion to block or neutralise initiatives originating from outside Parliament.

In fact, when in recent years the Radical Party's referendum policy forced this issue the law establishing the referendum was abrogated de facto by various interpretive sentences of the Constitutional Court strongly conditioned by the parties.

The penal codes in force are still the Fascist ones of 1931 drawn up by the Minister of Justice Alfredo Rocco. A limited number of modifications have been made to them and they have been worsened in many ways.

Two examples: Law no. 15 of February 6, 1980 ("the Cossiga law") which extended preventive detention to ten years and law no. 304 of May 29, 1982 on the penitent terrorists which establishes as proof the declarations of the accused who, in exchange for total or partial impunity, accuses his real or presumed accomplices ("furnishes proof"). This special legislation which is justified by the war on terrorism but which is in practice extended to all penal trials has annulled the trial guarantees of the citizen. As a consequence of this, Italy has been internationally condemned various times.

THE PARTY-POWER SYSTEM TAKES OVER

The controversy going on between the supporters of the "great institutional reform" and those pushing for the complete actuation of the Constitution is in error. It is a dispute over names which leaves in the shadow the essential elements of the Italian case. It is no longer a question, in fact, of a formal or material constitution, nor of a constitution which has not been actuated, and even less of an obsolete constitution. It is no longer a question of a constitution at all. The forces which appear formally in disagreement on this or that point are in reality in agreement on in bringing to completion the real "great reform" that they started some time ago.

By now it is clear: in a constitutional context reduced to a mere formality and where there is a systematic violation of the law, a new power set-up has taken over which defies definition and thus evades controls and sanctions. The traditional separation of powers has been abolished, the functions of the institutions expropriated, the factors and the powers of decision transferred from their Constitutional locations to the party coalitions which act like state organs.

The Constitution provides for the formation of political parties as an expression of the right of citizens to associate "for participating in determining national policy". In reality they are power structures aimed at producing, organising and maintaining consenses - a function which is closer to the model of the National Fascist Party than to the constitutional one. Today there is much talk in Italy of the party-power system. This system assures that the parties are no longer antagonistic forces. In fact they do not represent different ideals and policies that dispute leading the country during the daily political battles and election times. Nor are they coherent concentrations of interests capable of proposing themselves as a [working] majority.

Rather they are litigious factions of a single corporation defending its privileges without any real confrontation with public opinion - a kind of super-party which has taken the place of the Parliament and the Government and occupies all the levels and branches of the public structure.

In such a system, power is based on the lack of an alternative which is replaced by a kind of corporative negotiations which, outside the bounds of the formally constituted majorities, realises wider involvements of a unanimistic tendency from time to time through the sharing of power. Thus the praxis of so-called national unity is an essential and permanent requisite of the present regime.

Paradoxically, after having been practised for twenty years in a hidden way, it went into a crisis only during a brief period (1976 - 79) when it was formalised in an almost unanimous majority in Parliament and the government. Once this experiment failed, it was necessary to return to hidden forms of corporative compromise and national unity.

UNIONS AND LOCAL POWER

This system hinges on two basic points: the labour unions and local power. The unions are of a kind that are divided along party-power lines but united in a corporative inter-classism; that do not guarantee any kind of democratic control on the part of the member workers or in their place of work; that is led to compensate for a lack of representation in its own and in its traditional functions with powers of a corporative kind that are allowed to it by the regime. It is a union which by now negotiates much more with the government than with the social parties, which negotiates and concludes solutions of problems which in democratic systems belong to the sovereignty of an autonomous parliament.

To become conscious of the weight carried by this corporative structure, it is enough to remember that the three official federations together administrate an annual budget of at least 1,000 billion lire which are outside of any administrative or political control.

Equally anomalous is the local power picture. The regions have been denied the legislative autonomy guaranteed by the Constitution in many matters of which the national Parliament ought to have been unburdened but in which, instead, it continues to drown. Rather administrative powers have been delegated to them by the state which the Constitution foresees only in exceptional cases.

The regions have no from of financial autonomy. The cities have also been deprived of the only one which they traditionally have been able to impose with their own powers.

One of the consequences of this is that the Communist Party, which has more than a third of local power under its control - and which in the past has reached to 50% - must negotiate with the government parties the financial quotas to be transferred by the state to the local agencies. Another consequence is that the regions, from being organs of legislative decentralisation, have been changed into organs of decentralisation of the party-power system's power of patronage.

But the general effects are even more devastating. When the ministers convene the regional councillors almost as if they were prefects; when the regional councillors negotiate directly with the Finance minister,; when the ANCI - the National Association of Municipalities, which once represented institutional instances of autonomy - also operates like a tool of corporative negotiations; when the Christian Democratic, Communist and Socialist labour union leaders dictate to their parties, through direct negotiations, the legislative solutions to problems which are not within their competence - in these cases it is not only democracy which is deformed, but the very policies of the parties themselves are conditioned and made meaningless.

In this power system, there prevails over the formal differences among the parties a basic solidarity that unites the parties in the manipulation of power and the violation of the penal code itself (as we shall see further on). As a result the popular vote loses its meaning and only keeps its function as a score-keeper for the patronage due to the various parties.

The solidarity of the party-power system also shows in the intolerance towards any political force - the Radical Party in particular - which refuses the seal of approval and prefers to return to the parties and the institutions the functions and powers established by the Constitution.

THE CONTROL OF INFORMATION

The principle tool used by the party-power system to conserve its own power, control dissent and avoid confrontation with public opinion is the information system. Through it the party leaders spread and impose the image they want to give of themselves quite apart from the politics they actually practice. Publishing is probably the industry that receives the most assistance in a country in which assistance is imposed as a governmental practice and as culture. The figure of the publisher, pure and independent of parties and power centres does not exist. The parties blackmail the press with government hand-outs, the dividing up of advertising, the concession of bank loans. And they control it directly through the share-holdings of public agencies, banks, and enterprises divided into lots. The SIPRA, the state advertising agency which manages television advertising (administered by a Communist, a Christian Democrat and a Socialist), directly finances the party press.

The Rizzoli publishing empire, now gone into bankruptcy, is the emblem of the intertwining of politics, finances and publishing. What is striking - the managing director of FIAT, Romiti, said in an interview in September 1982 - is not only the moral aspect, but the enormous percentage of resources thus subtracted from useful production and earmarked for investments that have never produced a single job opening. And he knew what he was talking about.

The television medium, which is outside any real Parliamentary control, has grown enormously in influence over political life. But this too has occurred in violation of the Constitution which imposes completeness, impartiality and objectivity of information as requisites of a state monopoly, together with its being open to all for the expression of opinions, ideas, and propaganda (art. 21 of the Constitution and sentences of the Constitutional Court).

The recent establishment of private networks has put another gear at the disposition of the power centres that already control the state media and who are now rushing to divide up the private ones too. No legislation is being worked out for the new broadcasters in order not to compromise the oligopolistic control of the market and, at the same time, to keep it in fear of precariousness.

The Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, whom the magistracy has asked to investigate the private TV broadcasters, instead ordered the closing on April 2 of Radio Radicale which broadcasts live throughout the country the sessions in Parliament and of all the party congresses thus assuring that public service which until now the state TV has held back.

THE FIGURES ON CENSORSHIP

On April 12, 1983 the Chamber of Deputies rejected the majority's report on the activities of the Vigilance Committee on the RAI-TV. In effect, the actual use of this medium negates the kind of public service prescribed by the Constitution, aimed as it is at maintaining the party-power system in force and gagging the opposition.

In the last two years (from February 1982 to April 1983) the First Program's TV news programme with the highest audience ratings has granted the Radical Party secretary two interviews totalling 2 minutes and 39 seconds, or slightly more than a minute a year. In the same period the Christian Democratic party secretary has had 2 hours, 6 minutes and 25 seconds. The secretaries of parties with an electorate equal to or less than that of the Radicals have been given from 23 to 57 minutes. The division of time on the Second Programme has been analogous.

At the beginning (1979) of the campaign against death from starvation in the world promoted by the Radical Party there was almost no TV news and it decreased little by little in proportion to the growth of consensus with the campaign, even on an international level (the appeal of the 80 Nobel Prize winners; the bill advanced first by 1,000 Italian mayors and then by 3,200 representing something like 30 million citizens; the declarations of theologians, parish priests, bishops and the Pope himself, all censored like Pannella; the deliberations of the European Parliament, the Italian one, the Belgian Senate, etc.).

Between June 1 and July 31, 1981 the two main TV news broadcasts devoted respectively 0.21% and 0.48% of their total time to the starvation problem. After instructions approved by the Parliamentary Vigilance Commission demanding that the RAI guarantee adequate information on the subject during peak listening time, the time given to the subject changed to 0.56% and 0.47% respectively (August 1, 1981 - April 30, 1982). They remained stationary after a second order from the Commission (0.62 % and 0.57% from May 1 to July 31, 1982) only to fall subsequently to below the 1981 levels and to near zero (0.14% and 0.25% in the period from August 1, 1982 to March 26, 1983).

But besides the Radicals and their activities, the Parliament itself was eliminated from the TV news broadcasts. Programmes a few minutes long and special broadcasts that goon the air after midnight or in the afternoon with an insignificant audience rating. Furthermore the information is exclusively limited to describing the government's positions.

CORRUPTION AS A SYSTEM

From the ministries to the local agencies, from state enterprises to the banks, from the press and the RAI-TV to the universities, from the myriad of state agencies to the ports, to the aqueducts, to the milk production centres, to the secret services themselves, the party-power system occupies every branch of public life.

Power sharing has the force of law.

Even though they are financed by the state (about 80 billion lire in 1983), the parties constantly violate the law in order to grab ever greater financial resources.

The recent scandal about the Turin city administration brought to light the existence of a political-business super party that involved city and regional administrators and aldermen of the PSI, the PCI and the DC as well as men from FIAT. The Turin scandal is an exception only because of some unexpected factors - an honest mayor who called in the magistracy, an entrepreneur who refused to abide by omertà [the conspiracy of silence, ed.], a group of truly independent judges - revealed it and thus made it punishable. Otherwise it represents the norm practised in all cities.

Contracts for purveying to the public administration, building licenses, easy credit to industries, the intricate system of state and regional contributions to productive activities - all this is regulated by the patronage system that the parties actuate in favour of their adherents and clients.

Pay-offs to the parties are the rule.

Corruption has struck at the Financial Police forces, perhaps also because of their enormous power of discretion deriving from the muddled state and malfunctioning of the fiscal system. Commanders of the corps, generals, colonels, and other officials have been incriminated by the magistracy for much more serious scandals than the Lockheed affair (1). Party leaders, local administrators, entrepreneurs, officials, the military are cross-examined daily by the magistracy. It is a labour of Sisyphus which is generally neutralised - not only pressure from the benefactors of patronage in the magistracy, but by the abnormal use of Parliamentary immunity and immunity of the investigating commissions on ministerial crimes. In order to assure immunity, the administrative party secretaries are all members of Parliament.

The State Secrets Act is normally employed by the government to cover up scandals, embezzlements, and pay-offs.

In comparison to other countries, where corruption is certainly not unknown, the Italian situation has one singular feature: it seems that there are no measures to re-establish balance. To be known as corrupt or a liar is not very serious for government or party leaders. In the face of detailed and widely known facts of fraud, corruption, extortion and embezzlement of all kinds, the number of politicians who pay for their crimes is insignificant. Some of them even find their power and the fear they inspire increase.

HIDDEN POWER AND THE PARTY-POWER SYSTEM

The party-power system is solidly tied to centres of hidden power. Judicial and parliamentary documents prove that for years the parties and criminal organisations are tightly intertwined: from the Mafia to the Camorra [the Neapolitan mafia, ed.] to the arms-traffickers; from the bankrupt financier Michele Sindona, today in prison in the United States, to the bankrupt banker

Roberto Calvi who ended up dead under a Thames bridge. In the archives of Licio Gelli, head of the subversive [Masonic] lodge P2, were found the names of three ministers and three under-secretaries, a party secretary, a Parliamentary whip, an ex minister.

And furthermore: a chief of protocol at the Quirinal [residence of the President of the Republic, ed.], the Secretary General of the Farnesina [the Foreign Ministry, ed.], plus cabinet heads of the Prime Minister. And further: the head of the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, four generals and five high officers of the Air Force, 14 generals and 24 high officers of the Army, six admirals and 22 officers of the Navy, six generals and 39 high officials of the Carabinieri, the commandant, five generals and 18 high officers of the Financial Police; the highest officials of all the secret services (SISMI, SISDE, CESIS) and of the disbanded SID (2).

And further: any executives of state-owned and private industry and banks - in particular, the president and Vice-president of ENI, the president of FINSIDER, the president of Condotte, the president of STET-Selenia, the director general of Italimpianti, (3) 56 directors of private industries of which 12 were presidents of corporations.

And further: the vice-president and numerous directors of the RAI-TV; owners, administrators and managers of the largest Italian publishing conglomerates; the owner of the most important private television network; numerous politicians, members of Parliament, journalists, judges, and university professors.

The number one man of the P2, Gelli, for years maintained relations with the highest authorities of the republic, starting with ex Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti.

By now it is a proven fact that Gelli and his P2 acolytes entirely controlled the largest Italian publishing group by means of an intricate ownership web which involved Roberto Calvi, Ortolani and Tassan Din (4) (It was Gelli who drew up the ownership set-up formalised in 1980).

The most important national daily, "Corriere della Sera", was completely under Gelli's control. And this was possible thanks to the connivance of the parties who first brought about the financial strangling of the concern and the dilapidation of its resources and then abandoned it to the mercies of the

Vatican - P2 financiers.

All of the facts we have stated and will state further on regarding the P2 have been taken from parliamentary or judicial documents.

THE P2 LODGE, CALVI AND THE PARTIES

The DC, the PCI, the PSI, and the PSDI or the newspapers connected with them have received financing of 88 billion lire from the Banca Ambrosiana of the P2 member Calvi whose corpse was found in London on June 17, 1982.

The Christian Democrats, on the request of their president Flaminio Piccoli, guaranteed about 40 billion lire in financing from the headquarters for two newspapers: the Venice "Gazzettino" and "L'Adige".

Between 1975 and 1982 the Socialist Party contracted a debt with the Ambrosiano of about 15 billion. (On July 10, 1981, speaking in the Chamber on the question of confidence in the first Spadolini government, PSI Party Secretary Craxi neglected the main political issues in order to take up an intensive defence of the banker Calvi whom the Milanese judges had just arrested.)

Between 1980 and 1982 the Communist Party contracted a direct debt with the Banco Ambrosiano for 11 billion and for about 21 billion by way of the company that published "Paese Sera" [a Communist daily, ed.] (which was then bought by unknown purchasers and today is in bankruptcy).

The PSDI contracted a debt of about half a billion, while between 1979 and 1981 the PRI obtained from the bank two overdrafts on their account of 600 million which were not utilised.

Despite these disquieting facts, the budgets of the parties, by decree of the Speaker of the Chamber on July 28, 1982, were not obliged to indicate their financial situation: their debts to banks, their stock shares, their real estate holdings. This is not an accidental oversight and conflicts with the law on the public financing of parties. The party-power system does not accept being put on trial and the Communist Speaker of the Chamber stoops to being their tool.

Many episodes of the involvement and connections among parties, political figures, and the P2 system have been kept hidden mainly by their being removed from the proceedings of individual magistracies on the initiative of the Rome District Attorney's office with the blessing of the Supreme Court of Appeals (decision of September 2, 1981).

On June 4, 1982 the Attorney General Gallucci, successor of the P2 member Spagnolo, requested absolution, closing of the cases or amnesties for politicians, judges, and others involved with public offices. In March 1983 this request was granted by the examining magistrate Cudillo.

In Parliament too an offensive is on to cover up the responsibilities of politicians. In the February 8, 1983 session a large majority of the commission investigating the P2 placed a veto on iinterrogating the politicians implicated in facts connected with the lodge; they opted for "consultations" with the secretaries of "all" parties which, furthermore, never took place on the excuse of early elections. At the same time the Socialist

Senate whip, who was supposed to be interrogated, was changed into an examiner by being put on the commission. With the passing of the months the obstructionism against attempts to deepen the investigation became stronger and stronger.

Many chapters of the P2 affair have not been publicly explored because they are under investigation by the Parliament. But from these emerge a picture of the Republic during the last decade as marked by a war of gangs each of which has had political associates, secret service men, captains of state-owned industries, financiers, high military officials, and businessmen who found their meeting place and the composition of their conflicts in the P2 organisation.

Ever since 1969 Gelli has been entrusted by all branches of the Masons with the task of building a super secret organisation, probably on the initiative of some group of national and international secret service. Christian Democrats like Andreotti, Fanfani [DC] followers in the president's entourage, Flaminio Piccoli, Socialists like Craxi, Martelli, Formica, and Labriola turn out to have been repeatedly involved in the internal affairs of the P2 system. Without the consensus or the lack of control of the parties making up the government majority coalition in the last ten years, the P2 system could certainly not have developed.

MADE IN ITALY...

The circle is closed. The party-power system by now is a power system parallel to the Constitutional one and is nourished on corruption and illegality. Financial and military lobbies, secret power centres, Mafia families, and subversive lodges run through all the political ranks and determine the policies of the various parties. The men connected with this trafficking hold almost immovable power within the party apparatuses. One should also consider that even while acting by now like political institutions, the parties are not obliged to observe any internal laws or statutes that guarantee the effective participation of their members or changes in leadership.

Therefore it only seems paradoxical to affirm that effective power, which has been expropriated from the institutions, cannot be identified either in the parties nor in their statutory organs. The system of party power has pre-empted them and estranged them from any real political confrontation. For many months now the main leaders of the industrialists have been spokesmen of a shadow government which appears to lay claims on the governing of the country. One already speaks of a DC coup, but one continues to ignore or underestimate the real processes which we have described. Therefore the alarm appears to lack much credibility, as does any improvised event, extraneous to the context, made without preparation. For now we conclude that what distinguishes the Italian situation and turns it into a "case" are not the single phenomena of involution nor the single episodes of authoritarianism, but much more the fact that all of them enter into a coherent "system" that has grown outside the constitutional chan

nels. We believe that the best way of defining it is to describe its manifestations.

Therefore we leave it to the reader to interpret it in one way or another. We have only proposed to call attention to the seriousness of what is happening and of the need to react, to defeat resignation and apathy.

Democratic culture has always been highly sensitive to the denunciations of coups d'etat. Here we are not speaking of events of a traditional kind but, perhaps, of a third way in the historical contest between authoritarianism and democracy. Our national press has always been silent or else raised the dust. The international press in the face of this situation is taking the same attitude as it did in the Thirties when the existence and the actions of anti-Fascists were presented in the way we all remember. It is a grave error. Perhaps what is happening in Italy today will interest other European nations tomorrow. It would not be for the first time.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Lockheed scandal - The discovery of pay-offs made to high government authorities in exchange for the purchase of Lockheed's Hercules aircraft.

2) SISMI (Servizio per l'Informazione e la Sicurezza Militare);

SISDE (Servizio per l'Informazione e la Sicurezza Democratica); CESIS (Comitato Esecutivo per i Servizi di Informazione e di Sicurezza); SID (Servizio Informazione Difesa).

3) All state-owned industries.

4) Ortolani, etc.