Leone ad leones
Luigi Barzini
Rome The Neapolitan taxi-driver in Rome the other day, (a real taxi-driver this time, and not at all the journalist's mythical and ubiquitous interlocutor), shook his head and said: 'poor Don Giovannino, whatever did he do to deserve such treatment?' Don Giovannino, of course, is his unfortunate countryman, Giovanni Leone. (The 'don', in his case, is not the artistocratic nor the ecclesiastical 'don', but the affectionate and familiar attribute which goes with power, age, fame and eminence. Benedetto Croce was 'Don Benedetto' for all Neapolitans.) Then the taxi-driver enumerated Leone's sins: he protected and helped his friends, ingeniously utilised all tax loopholes, saw to it that all his relatives enjoyed all possible advantages in the struggle of life, and prodded his sons gently in their careers — particularly Mauro, the very intelligent one, who had polio but had been saved by Madonna of Pompeii with the aid of a few medical luminaries — seeing to it, in particular, that his sons got very rapidly the jobs and honours they would presumably have earned later in life. When he travelled on official business or state visits abroad, he took along extra planes filled with free loading friends, clients, relatives, relatives of relatives, electors, courtiers, and retainers, including his wife's hairdresser. Were these sins? the taxi-driver asked. He wanted me (a foreigner from North Italy) to explain why the poor president had been condemned for performing admirably only what, after all, are considered a man's absolute duties in Naples.
I could have added a few more sins. Leone is a tiny, vaguely comical man, who looks (Cyrus Sulzberger once wrote) as if designed by Walt Disney. He speaks with a thick Neapolitan accent. He also loves to clown and sing Neapolitan songs at banquets or friendly gatherings, and make the kind of daring remarks elderly village priests used to make half a century ago. Leone's oratory is old-fashioned, banal, and obvious, but richly ornate.
Should a man be condemned for not being tall and speaking like Peppino de Filippo, the famous dialect comedian? Who says a president must not be a lover of bel canto? Who says his wit must be sharp, modern, and cosmopolitan? Where is it written he must speak like Cicero? And if Leone's principal sin was favouring his sons, nephews, cousins, and in-laws, wasn't he, a good Catholic, following a venerable precedent? Most popes (until a few popes ago) hurried to enrich and ennoble their relatives immediately after election. Kings, of course, did not do this, but kings did not need to because they usually came from already wealthy, established, and powerful families. Popes, being old men when elected, some of them in fact very old men, knew they had little time, perhaps only a few months, in which to create patrimonies solid enough to go down the centuries, as many of them did.
What could I say to the taxi-driver? Evidently, Leone's crimes were not sufficiently serious, irrefutable, and capable of proof in a court of law, for him to be impeached. In fact, nobody asked for a parliamentary investigation of his conduct. Being himself a capable and flexible lawyer, (although not the jurist he thinks he is), he surely never made a move, took a decision, wrote a letter, recommended a friend, or accepted a gift in a way that would be embarrassing if made public. He surely never taped his intimate conversations and preserved the tapes.
There's no doubt that he paid less income tax than I, a poor journalist, while building for himself a villa on the Via Cassia which cost several million dollars. It is not known where the money came from. I presume it will be difficult or impossible to prove it had illegal sources, such as money paid him for using his influence and position to make some dubious deal possible which depended on government financing and bureaucratic decisions. To be sure, there were many rumours. Leone was an old and intimate friend of the two Lefebvre brothers, Neapolitans, consultants and paymasters for Lockheed in Rome, the men who are believed to have delivered bags of banknotes to the ministers responsible for the purchase of aircraft.
To be sure, Antonio Lefebvre was with him on his state visit to Saudi Arabia, as part of his entourage. It is now known that Antonio was, at the time, trying to clinch a private deal of his own with the Saudis for the sale of a fleet of Lockheed planes. But he also is the highest Italian authority in maritime law, Professor at the University of Rome, and extremely wealthy, because his services have always been sought for years as arbiter in difficult controversies between shipowners. Such services are rewarded everywhere with a percentage of the value of the ships in question and, in this age of supertankers, the figures can reach dazzling sums. Why shouldn't Leone take along such an eminent authority as his adviser? Who can prove Leone actually helped his friend sell planes to the Saudis? If so, who can prove he got a commission for his efforts? Evidently, Leone was by no means the only powerful man to facilitate deals, not all of them necessarily illegitimate, by prodding the Roman bureaucracy.
In Italy the private sector has been shrinking for years, more rapidly than elsewhere. At the same time, the bureaucracy, overburdened with new tasks, has reached an Ottoman level of decay and paralysis. This public interference in all kinds of private activities is by no means always a sign of modernity, but more often a nostalgic return to mercantilist and guild regulations of past centuries. As a result, practically nothing can be accomplished, not even the simplest and most legitimate business deals can be put through, without unwittingly or wittingly violating some law or other and without the recommendation of a highly placed friend. The time will come soon when it will not be possible to buy a postage stamp or a railway ticket without the intercession of a cabinet minister, a bishop, or a trade union leader. The usual way to get anything done is to turn to experts, the scouts who know their way, speak the language of the bureaucratic tribes, and know whose benevolence must be purchased, or the mighty personages who can cut a path through the jungles of laws and regulations with a letter or a telephone call. Leone was not even the highest placed of these influential• personages. The Italian president is merely a figure head. He cannot really decide anything. His power is merely moral and personal.
Why, then, was he forced to resign? Let us dismiss the behaviour of his sons. To be sure, Mauro at times commanded airforce planes or helicopters for his pleasure trips, requested at one time motorcycle escorts in Paris, made the concierge of the George V call him Monsieur le Ministre, was often photographed holding half-naked starlets in his arms, and was a notorious friend of dubious playboys. Such things are forgiven and forgotten easily today. In reality, Leone was thrown to the lions in an attempt to placate the mounting anger of the people against the political class and the omnipotence of the parties. The latest partial elections demonstrated that the voters are beginning to leave the traditional parties in increasing numbers. Therefore, it was necessary to give a demonstration of a new Will to moralise public life, to chastise at least one prominent personage, the more highly placed the better, in order to mollify the electorate and, if possible, to stem the haemo'rrhage of votes.
The fact that the Communists, who traditionally despise moral issues, were the ones who decided (and made inevitable) Leone's resignation, even on insufficient grounds, proves the point. The rising ride of their votes is definitely receding. The Christian Democrats, who lost no votes and gained a few here and there, were obliged to follow.
Leone's retirement to his villa on the
Cassia solves no problems. The people are angry because the optimistic and haphazard welfare state all'italiana unfortunately did not work as generously as they were led to believe. The causes of its failure, of course, are not corruption, decay, and inefficiency. These are merely the inevitable results of a system based on the hope that all problems can be solved by inept bureaucrats, that it is possible to have a prosperous working class in a bankrupt economy and to consume more than one produces.
When the beggars become more numerous than the possible alms-givers, the number of meticulously but ambiguously worded laws reaches the present level, and the elephantine state apparatus is slowly paralysed, the system works only for the astute with powerful friends. Don Giovann ino' was not, admittedly, Cato the Censor, but neither was he the most powerful of all the personages one could turn to for help in Rome.
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