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ITALY: King of the South

2 minute read
TIME

Nearly half of Naples came boiling into the streets one evening last week. Tatterdemalion crowds surged and shoved into the battlemented Castel Nuovo, where the kings of Anjou once ruled the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. A huge sign went with them: “For the love of your Naples, do not resign! The ship is in peril, you must stay at the helm!” The mob was out in defense of Naples’ Mayor Achille Lauro, the flamboyant millionaire shipowner and Monarchist whose freewheeling administration has won him the title of Il Re del Mezzogiorno (“The King of the South”).

Lauro’s resignation has long been the aim of the Democratic Christian national government in Rome. Last week Minister of the Interior Fernando Tambroni railed against the staggering Naples deficit ($50 million for this year) and the graft, corruption and chaos of Lauro’s open-handed administration. Naples’ local Communists enthusiastically backed Tambroni’s charges—they cannot match the effectiveness of Lauro’s electioneering techniques, which include the distribution of thousands of left-foot shoes to voters with the promise of the other shoe “when you vote right.”

Immaculate in a dark, double-breasted suit and light-colored tie, jaunty Mayor Lauro, 70, pushed through the throng into the council chamber. He went, not to the mayor’s chair, but to a seat among his Monarchist councilors.

The president of the council read aloud a letter from Mayor Lauro: “I have the honor to present my irrevocable resignation …” The opposition cheered. Heavy glass ashtrays were pounded on the tables. Fights broke out among the spectators. Strong-armed police hustled the brawlers outside. But his opponents cheered too soon. The mayor, continued the council president, was resigning only to announce his candidacy for a seat in Italy’s Parliament.

Well aware of Lauro’s popularity, Naples’ Christian Democrats had hasty second thoughts. They offered a resolution in council protesting that “it is not time to talk of resignations. We invite the mayor to open full discussion of the accusations.” Lauro was not interested.

Leaving the Castel Nuovo, the Christian Democrats passed by a long queue of Neapolitans lined up to receive the mayor’s usual Christmas distribution of free spaghetti and canned tomatoes. As a political argument, it was hard to beat. Groaned a Christian Democratic politician: “It looks as if Lauro wants to move from misgoverning a city to misgoverning the nation.”

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