Craxi, Bettino (1932–2000)

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CRAXI, BETTINO (1932–2000)

Italian politician.

Leader of the Italian socialist youth movement, member of the central committee of the PSI (Italian Socialist Party) from 1957 and supporter of the movement toward autonomy, Bettino Craxi, who was born in Milan in 1934, entered the leadership of the party in 1965 and was among the promoters of the unification between the PSI and the Social Democrats. A deputy from 1968 and vice-secretary of the PSI from 1970, he was elected its national secretary in 1976. He followed a political line aimed at reinforcing the autonomy of the PSI, especially from the PCI (Italian Communist Party), against which he entered into an open polemic with the express intent of "re-equilibrating" the forces of the Left; at the same time, he formed a sometimes conflicted alliance with the Christian Democrats.

His criticism of Marxism, rehabilitation of liberal socialism, and accentuation of libertarian principles and socialist humanism, present in the tradition of the PSI, were the result of a reflection undertaken in harmony with the accelerated changes occurring in Italian society. The turnaround was emphasized even in the new symbol of the party (a red carnation), which was added at the Congress of the PSI of 29 May 1978, when Craxi was reelected secretary.

After the end of the historic compromise the socialists of Craxi chose to return to government with the DC (Christian Democrats), thus terminating all dialogue with the Left and indeed initiating a violent offensive against the Communists. Craxi, who was at the time the undisputed leader of the party, made maximum use of the coalition-forming power of the PSI to place himself before the Catholic party as a preferred partner for ensuring the "governability" of the country.

From August 1983 to March 1987 (4 August 1983–27 June 1986 and 1 August–3 March 1987), Craxi remained at the helm of a five-party coalition, composed of the DC, PSI, PSDI (Italian Socialist-Democratic Party), PLI (Italian Liberal Party), and PRI (Italian Republican Party). On 8 February 1984 at the Villa Madama, with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli (1914–1998), he signed the new Concord between Italy and the Holy See.

During the first Craxi government, the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship, was hijacked on 7 October 1985 by four men from the Palestinian Liberation Organization while the ship was sailing from Alexandria to Port Said, Egypt. The hijackers directed the ship to sail to Tartus, Syria, and demanded the release of fifty Palestinians then in Israeli prisons. Refused permission to dock at Tartus, the hijackers shot one wheelchair-bound passenger—an American Jew named Leon Klinghoffer—and threw his body overboard. The ship headed back to Port Said, and after two days of negotiations, the hijackers agreed to abandon the ship for safe conduct and were flown toward Tunisia aboard an Egyptian commercial airliner. The plane was intercepted by U.S. Navy fighters and was directed to land at the naval air station of Sigonella, a NATO base in Sicily, where the hijackers were arrested by the Italians after a disagreement between U.S. and Italian authorities. Craxi and the minister of foreign affairs, Giulio Andreotti (b. 1919), refused U.S. president Ronald Reagan's requests for extradition of the hijackers, declaring that the Italian government had jurisdiction over its own territory, even though the territory in question was a NATO naval base. The decision was probably due both to security concerns about terrorists taking revenge against Italian targets and to an Italian tradition of diplomacy with the Arab world. The hijackers' leader, Abu Abbas, fled to Yugoslavia and was convicted in Italy in absentia.

Long a representative of the PCI at the Socialist International and a member of the European Parliament, Craxi served as a representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (b. 1920), responsible for problems of debt in developing countries (1989), and then as a special counselor for issues regarding the development and consolidation of peace and security. From the beginning of the 1980s, however, the first scandals began to break over the PSI: in 1981, in the course of investigations of the P2 (the Masonic lodge headed by Licio Gelli [b. 1919]), leading members of the Socialist Party were implicated. Among the documents confiscated from P2, record was found of a Swiss account, the "Protection" account, which was destined in the 1990s to set judges on the trail of the illicit financial dealings of Craxi and his collaborators. In 1983 the arrests of several provincial and regional assessors from Turin and Savona set the stage for a mudslide that would sweep over the entire governing elite, and above all the PSI of Craxi, which became a virtual symbol of the corruption.

The year 1992 marked the beginning of Mani Pulite (clean hands), the inquest on kickbacks paid by businessmen to officeholders in order to obtain contracts. The investigation, undertaken by public prosecutors of the Republic of Milan, in particular judge Antonio di Pietro (b. 1950), gave a mortal blow to already tormented parties. On 2 May 1992 the Socialist ex-mayors Paolo Pillitteri (b. 1940), Craxi's brother-in-law, and Carlo Tognoli (b. 1938) were subpoenaed, but the operation did not spare even members of the DC and the PDS (the new name of the Communist Party). On 14 July 1992 the Socialist ex-foreign minister Gianni de Michelis (b. 1940) was also subpoenaed. The Enimont case (January 1993), called the "mother of all kickbacks," revealed how the leading parties in government distributed kickbacks. The scandal led to the suicides of several Italian businessmen, while in Parliament subpoenas began to arrive for all the ministers of the parties of the governing majority, including the party leaders. In the Senate Craxi denounced in vain the collective responsibility of politicians and captains of industry, all of whom were aware of the illegal system of party financing. In February 1993 Craxi resigned from the secretariat of the PSI.

In May 1994 he moved to Hammamet, Tunisia, where he would not miss an occasion to send advice and admonishments and to express his concerns for the fate of Italy and socialism, which was on the route to dissolution (on 13 November, the PSI was disbanded). On 29 July 1994 Craxi and Claudio Martelli (b. 1940), his understudy, were condemned in the affair of the "Protection" account. From then on Craxi was considered a fugitive, though he continued to call himself an exile. The Tunisian government always supported him, refusing to grant his extradition. On 27 October 1995, together with Martelli and other government leaders, he was condemned in the Enimont trial.

On 27 October 1999 his health worsened and there was discussion about the possibility of suspending his sentence to allow him to return to Italy for medical care. After a kidney procedure, he died on 19 January 2000 in Hammamet, of cardiac arrest.

See alsoCrime and Justice; Di Pietro, Antonio; Italy.