Jolted Out of Paralysis by Bombing, Italian Parliament Chooses President

ROME â€”  Shamed by a savage Mafia assassination and public derision of government leaders, Italy’s fragmented Parliament broke a prolonged stalemate Monday to elect conservative Roman Catholic Oscar Luigi Scalfaro as the country’s figurehead president.

The selection of the 73-year-old Christian Democrat clears the way for the formation of a new government, possibly including participation for the first time by Italy’s former Communist Party.

Scalfaro’s election ended a rancorous vacuum of authority exacerbated by the most brutal and sensational Mafia murder in a decade. In its aftermath Monday, mourning Sicilians hooted and cursed politicians in the streets of Palermo, claiming that their incompetence was ultimately responsible for the assassination of Italy’s most respected and courageous judge.

A veteran member of Parliament, Scalfaro was elected not on the strength of his policies or personality but as an “institutional candidate,� a compromise to get a wounded and popularly reviled state moving again.

His first presidential task after taking office Thursday will be to name a prime minister-designate to fashion a government succeeding the caretaker regime of Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti.

Running without organized opposition, Scalfaro won 672 of 1,002 votes cast to end the partisan deadlock that has vexed Italy since an April 6 general election recorded nationwide protest against Italy’s traditional ruling parties.

Scalfaro, a strait-laced, grandfatherly former magistrate from the Piedmont region of northern Italy who held ministerial posts in a number of previous governments, has been elected to Parliament without interruption since 1948.

Saturday’s murder in Sicily of Mafia-hunting magistrate Giovanni Falcone was instrumental in jolting Parliament into a consensus on its 16th ballot for a president Monday.

As president of the Chamber of Deputies, Scalfaro delivered a statesmanlike but moving eulogy Sunday for Falcone, killed in the bomb attack along with his wife and three police bodyguards.

By the time a joint session of Parliament convened on Monday evening, Scalfaro had won the let’s-get-it-over-with backing not only of the Christian Democrats but also of parties of center and left. Among them was the Party of the Democratic Left, Italy’s renamed Communist Party, the second-largest party in Italy and for nearly half a century the Christian Democrats’ traditional opposition.

In true Italian political tradition, Scalfaro’s presidency is the result of horse-trading in the corridors of Parliament before the vote. At a critical moment for Italy, the support of the former Communists was decisive. What remains to be seen as Scalfaro takes office is how they will benefit from their votes toward his election.

The election came at the end of a wrenching day for Italy. The vote was delayed to allow members to attend the Palermo funeral of Falcone and the other victims of the Mafia bombing.

In a soaking spring rain, anger and pain spilled from the baroque San Domenico Church into a jammed square outside where a vociferous crowd of Palermitani-- students, housewives and workers on protest strike--movingly applauded the passing coffins. Magistrates robes lay on those of Falcone and his wife, Francesca. The other three each bore a national police cap.

“Giovanni, Giovanni,� the crowd chanted as the Sicilian judge’s coffin passed by on the streets of a Mafia-plagued city where Falcone had masterminded one of Italy’s most effective counterattacks against organized crime.

When acting President Giovanni Spadolini and his retinue of Cabinet ministers appeared at the church, the crowd exploded with jeers, whistles and shouts of “Buffoons! . . . Assassins!�

A policeman who survived the blast was a tearful mourner at Monday’s funeral, where a long line of officials stood to hear Sicilian Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo’s impassioned homily against the Mafia.

“Who informed the Mafia that Falcone was coming? Everyone has responsibility. . . . We are all responsible. . . . This is an attack on the state itself, on our national harmony,� thundered Pappalardo, one of the Mafia’s most outspoken critics.

As the funeral Mass was being transmitted live across Italy, the father of one slain policeman tried to keep politicians away from his son’s coffin.

Rosalia Schifano, 22-year-old widow of one of the slain bodyguards, broke down as she read a prayerful appeal.

“To the men of the Mafia--and they are here (in the church)--even for you there is a chance of pardon. But you must get on your knees and you must change. . . . We beg you, Lord, that those who have turned Palermo into a city of blood, too much blood, turn it into a city of love,� the mother of a 4-month-old pleaded before collapsing near her husband’s coffin.