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Mariano Rumor

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Mariano Rumor
Prime Minister of Italy
In office
8 July 1973 – 23 November 1974
President Giovanni Leone
Preceded by Giulio Andreotti
Succeeded by Aldo Moro
In office
13 December 1968 – 6 August 1970
President Giuseppe Saragat
Deputy Francesco De Martino
Paolo Emilio Taviani
Preceded by Giovanni Leone
Succeeded by Emilio Colombo
Secretary of Christian Democracy
In office
27 January 1964 – 19 January 1969
Preceded by Aldo Moro
Succeeded by Flaminio Piccoli
Ministerial offices
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office
23 November 1974 – 29 July 1976
Prime Minister
Aldo Moro
Preceded by
Aldo Moro
Succeeded by
Arnaldo Forlani
Minister of the Interior
In office
17 February 1972 – 8 July 1973
Prime Minister
Giulio Andreotti
Preceded by
Franco Restivo
Succeeded by
Paolo Emilio Taviani
In office
21 June 1963 – 4 December 1963
Prime Minister
Giovanni Leone
Preceded by
Paolo Emilio Taviani
Succeeded by
Paolo Emilio Taviani
Minister of Agriculture
In office
15 February 1959 – 21 June 1963
Prime Minister
Antonio Segni
Fernando Tambroni
Amintore Fanfani
Preceded by
Mario Ferrari Aggradi
Succeeded by
Bernardo Mattarella
Secretary of the Council of Ministers
In office
18 January 1954 – 10 February 1954
Prime Minister
Amintore Fanfani
Preceded by
Giulio Andreotti
Succeeded by
Oscar Luigi Scalfaro
Parliamentary offices
Member of the Senate of the Republic
In office
20 June 1979 – 22 January 1990
Constituency
Vicenza
Member of the European Parliament
In office
17 July 1979 – 23 July 1984
Constituency
North-East Italy
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office
8 May 1948 – 19 June 1979
Constituency
Verona
Member of the Constituent Assembly
In office
25 June 1946 – 31 January 1948
Constituency
Verona
Personal details
Born 16 June 1915
Vicenza, Kingdom of Italy
Died 22 January 1990 (aged 74)
Vicenza, Italy
Party DC (1943–1990)
Alma mater University of Padua

Mariano Rumor (Italian pronunciation: [maˈrjaːno ruˈmor];16 June 1915 – 22 January 1990) was an Italian politician and statesman. A member of the Christian Democracy (DC), he served as the 39th prime minister of Italy from December 1968 to August 1970 and again from July 1973 to November 1974.[1] As prime minister, he led five different governments, supported by various coalitions.[2]

Rumor served as Italian Minister of Agriculture from 1959 to 1963, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1974 to 1976, and Italian Minister of the Interior in two brief periods, in 1963 and from 1972 to 1973. Rumor was the secretary of the DC from 1964 to 1969.[3]

Early life and career

Mariano Rumor was born in Vicenza, Veneto, on 16 June 1915. His father, Giuseppe Rumor, was the owner of a printing studio and promoter of a local magazine, The Catholic Worker, founded by Rumor's grandfather. His mother, Tina Nardi, came from a liberal family.[4] He attended the classical lyceum Antonio Pigafetta in Vicenza, then he earned a degree from the University of Padua in literature in 1939.[5]

After his graduation, Rumor became a teacher at an Italian lyceum until his mobilization as a lieutenant in the Italian Army during the Second World War. Subsequent to the Armistice of Cassibile in 1943 between Italy and the Allied powers, Rumor joined the Italian resistance movement.[6] After the end of the war, he was among the founders of the Christian Associations of Italian Workers (ACLI),[7] the widespread lay Catholic associations, and joined the Christian Democracy (DC) party, of which he became one of the main leaders in Veneto, very close to Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi.[8] In the 1946 Italian general election, Rumor was elected with more than 29,000 votes to the Constituent Assembly, for the constituency of Verona–Padova–Vicenza–Rovigo.[9][10]

He became a member of the new-born Chamber of Deputies in 1948. The 1948 Italian general election was heavily influenced by the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, and is best known for the covert political warfare waged by the US State Department and Central Intelligence Agency on behalf of the DC.[11][12] The elections were eventually won with a comfortable margin by De Gasperi's DC that defeated the left-wing coalition of the Popular Democratic Front, which comprised the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI).[13] As a deputy, he became very close to Giuseppe Dossetti, becoming a member of his Christian leftist wing.[14]

Political career

First roles in government

In 1950, Guido Gonella succeeded Paolo Emilio Taviani as National Secretary of the DC; the target of the new secretariat was to build a unitary management of the party in support of the government led by Alcide De Gasperi. In this context, Rumor was nominated for the first time as National Deputy Secretary, together with Dossetti.[15]

The withdrawal from politics of Giuseppe Dossetti, left his faction without a charismatic leader; however, Mariano Rumor played a decisive role in the birth of the new faction, called "Democratic Initiative", which brought together not only Dossetti's followers, such as Giorgio La Pira, Amintore Fanfani and Aldo Moro, but also members of the centrist pro-De Gasperi majority, as Paolo Emilio Taviani and Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.[16] Rumor himself presented the manifesto of Democratic Initiative, published on a magazine with the same name.[17] In this text, alongside the declaration of support for De Gasperi and the Atlantic Pact, Dossetti's principles of a Christian reformist party were reaffirmed, with the aim of moving the country towards a "democratic evolution".[18]

Rumor immediately played a leading role in the faction. This position, led him to hold the first government posts, becoming Undersecretary for Agriculture in De Gasperi's seventh government, a position he also maintained in De Gasperi VIII Cabinet and, after De Gasperi's retirement in 1954, in the short-lived government led by Giuseppe Pella.[19] In the brief first Fanfani government, from January to February 1954, Rumor was appointed to Secretary of the Council of Ministers.[20]

In 1954, after the National Congress of Naples, which saw the affirmation of Democratic Initiative and the subsequent election of Fanfani as party's Secretary, Rumor was elected again deputy secretary.[21] He held this office for the next five years, until Democratic Initiative split up. In fact, many members of the faction, started criticizing the political line of Fanfani's secretariat, who cautiously began to open to the prospect of a collaboration with Italian Socialist Party (PSI).[22] Prominent members of the faction, including Rumor himself, put the Secretary in minority during the National Congress of March 1959. In this way, Democratic Initiative split up between the followers of Fanfani and the dissident group, now renamed by all Dorotei ("Dorotheans"), from the place where they had gathered before the congress, the convent of the sisters of Santa Dorotea in Rome. The new faction was built around Antonio Segni, Mariano Rumor and Aldo Moro, who was elected new Secretary.[23]

In the same year, as one of the faction's leaders, Rumor was appointed Minister of Agriculture, in the second Segni's government, a position he would keep in the governments of Fernando Tambroni, and Fanfani.[24] In this role, Rumor contributed to the definition of one of the first plans for the development and innovation of the national agricultural sector, the so-called "Green Plan".[25]

In 1963 Italian general election, the DC suffered a sharp decline of consensus.[26] Rumor was appointed Minister of the Interior in the short-lived government chaired by Giovanni Leone.[27] As minister, he had to face one of the most tragic events in Italian republican history, the Vajont Dam disaster.[28] On 9 October 1963, a landslide occurred on Monte Toc, in the province of Pordenone. The landslide caused a megatsunami in the artificial lake in which 50 million cubic metres of water overtopped the dam in a wave of 250 metres (820 ft), leading to the complete destruction of several villages and towns, and 1,917 deaths.[29] In the previous months, the Adriatic Society of Electricity (SADE) and the Italian government, which both owned the dam, dismissed evidence and concealed reports describing the geological instability of Monte Toc on the southern side of the basin and other early warning signs reported prior to the disaster.[30]

Immediately after the disaster, government and local authorities insisted on attributing the tragedy to an unexpected and unavoidable natural event. However, numerous warnings, signs of danger, and negative appraisals had been disregarded in the previous months and the eventual attempt to safely control the landslide into the lake by lowering its level came when the landslide was almost imminent and was too late to prevent it.[31] The communist newspaper L'Unità was the first to denounce the actions of management and government.[32][33]

Secretary of Christian Democracy

In January 1964, Rumor was elected the DC secretary, holding the office until January 1969 and leading the party in a complex phase of government cooperation with the socialists.[34] In the five years leading the DC, Rumor tried to reassure the moderate electorate in an attempt to recover the consensus lost in the previous elections.[35]

Rumor embodied the typical characteristics of the Dorotheans: caution, moderation, the propensity for mediation rather than for decision, attention to practical and concrete topics, rather than to major strategies, the representation of the interests of the provincial middle class, the privileged link with the public administration, with the Catholic world and with direct farmers.[36] In the 1968 Italian general election, the DC managed to increase its votes, albeit slightly, gaining 39% of votes.[37] This result was experienced as a success by the Rumor secretariat and he became a natural candidate for the leadership of the government.

First term as prime minister

On 13 December 1968, Mariano Rumor was sworn in as prime minister for the first time, leading a government composed of Christian Democrats, Socialists and Republicans.[38] During his first term as prime minister, a number of progressive reforms were carried out.[39]

In foreign policy, Rumor signed on 28 January 1969 the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; however, his first term as prime minister was deeply marked by the Piazza Fontana massacre, a terrorist attack that occurred on 12 December 1969 when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of National Agrarian Bank in Piazza Fontana, Milan, killing 17 people and wounding 88. In the same afternoon, three more bombs were detonated in Rome and Milan, and another was found unexploded.[40] The attack was planned by a neo-fascist group, Ordine Nuovo (New Order), whose aim was to prevent the country falling into the hands of the left-wing by duping the public into believing the bombings were part of a communist insurgency.[41]

During his first term, Rumor led three different governments. From December 1968 to July 1969, the DC joined with the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) as well as the Italian Republican Party (PRI). From August 1969 to February 1970 he led a DC-only government; its collapse led to a 45-day long period without government, with issues such as Italian divorce law and the status of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) generating instability. After this period, which included an attempt by former Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani to form a government, Rumor led a new coalition with the Socialist, Republican, and Democratic Socialist parties from March until July 1970.[42]

Interior Minister and assassination attempt

In 1972, Rumor was appointed Minister of the Interior, in the government of Giulio Andreotti.[43] In 1973, Rumor was the target of an assassination attempt, planned by Gianfranco Bertoli, a self-described anarchist. Four were killed during the bombing, and 45 injured, while Rumor escaped alive from it. Bertoli was given a life-term in 1975. Bertoli was an informant of SISMI, the "Military Intelligence and Security Service", at the time. Court proceedings later showed that this connection was one of mistaken identity.[44]

Second term as prime minister

After three years under Emilio Colombo and Giulio Andreotti's ministries, Rumor returned to the office of Prime Minister, first leading a coalition composed of Christian Democrats, Socialists, Republicans, and Democratic Socialists from July 1973 to March 1974. After this government collapsed, Rumor formed a new coalition within two weeks, calling upon the Socialists and Democratic Socialists to join with DC from March until October 1974.[45][46] Weathering a cabinet resignation in June 1974, Rumor's final cabinet would fall in October 1974 after failing to come to an agreement on how to deal with rising economic inflation.[47][48]

After the premiership

In November 1974, Rumor was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in Aldo Moro's fourth cabinet.[49] During his ministry, he signed the Osimo Treaty with Yugoslavia, defining the official partition of the Free Territory of Trieste. The port city of Trieste with a narrow coastal strip to the north west (Zone A) was given to Italy; a portion of the north-western part of the Istrian peninsula (Zone B) was given to Yugoslavia.[50]

The Italian government was harshly criticized for signing the treaty, particularly for the secretive way in which negotiations were carried out, skipping the traditional diplomatic channels. Italian nationalists of the MSI rejected the idea of giving up Istria, since Istria had been an ancient "Italian" region together with the Venetian region (Venetia et Histria).[51] Furthermore, Istria had belonged to Italy for 25 years between World War I and the end of World War II, and the west coast of Istria had long had a sizeable Italian minority population.[52]

Some nationalist politicians called for the prosecution of Prime Minister Moro and Minister Rumor, for the crime of treason, as stated in Article 241 of the Italian Criminal Code, which mandated a life sentence for anybody found guilty of aiding and abetting a foreign power to exert its sovereignty on the national territory.[53] The defeat in the 1975 Italian regional elections led to the removal of Amintore Fanfani from the party secretariat. Rumor was proposed by Moro as the new party secretary, but he was vetoed by some members of his own faction. Due to this veto, Rumor abandoned the Dorotheans, approaching the positions of the new secretary Benigno Zaccagnini. Following the Dorotheans' split, Rumor was slowly excluded from relevant positions in the party and in the government. In 1979, Rumor was elected in the European Parliament, where he later became Chair of the Political Affairs Committee in 1980, serving in that post until he left the European Parliament in 1984.[54]

Death and legacy

Rumor died of a heart attack in Vicenza on 22 January 1990 at the age of 74.[55] In the years since his death, Rumor's legacy has been widely debated.[56] The Lockheed bribery scandals, of which Rumor was exonerated by the Italian Parliament, took place under his government and culminated in the trials of two former Defense ministers, Luigi Gui and Mario Tanassi.[57] Rumor was implicated in the scandal after a Lockheed codebook referenced "Antelope Cobbler" as "Prime Minister", which could have been any of Rumor, Aldo Moro, or then-President Giovanni Leone during the relevant time period.[58] While Leone later resigned from the Presidency due to accusations of corruption, none of the three men were ever convicted of being "Antelope Cobbler".[59]

Others have criticized his Presidential Decree No. 1092, a measure which allowed Italian governmental workers to retire after nineteen and a half years of work or fourteen and a half years if they were a woman; such retirees were later termed "baby pensioners" by detractors. The program, instituted in 1973, was terminated in 1992. As of 2014 it was estimated that around half a million pensioners who benefited from the decree were still drawing an average of €1,500 per month.[60]

Personal life

Rumor never married. During all his lifetime and even after his death, speculations arose around his possible homosexuality;[61] however, Rumor had always denied these speculations, which would have ruined his career in a social conservative party like the DC.[62]

Electoral history

Election House Constituency Party Votes Result
1946 Constituent Assembly Verona DC 29,213 Elected
1948 Chamber of Deputies Verona DC 43,002 Elected
1953 Chamber of Deputies Verona DC 49,576 Elected
1958 Chamber of Deputies Verona DC 61,492 Elected
1963 Chamber of Deputies Verona DC 93,735 Elected
1968 Chamber of Deputies Verona DC 168,828 Elected
1972 Chamber of Deputies Verona DC 266,710 Elected
1976 Chamber of Deputies Verona DC 73,729 Elected
1979 Senate of the Republic Vicenza DC 88,028 Elected
1979 European Parliament North-East Italy DC 235,478 Elected
1983 Senate of the Republic Vicenza DC 73,372 Elected
1987 Senate of the Republic Vicenza DC 81,348 Elected

References

  1. Back to citation Scheda di attività di Mariano Rumor, Senato della Repubblica
  2. Back to citation Mariano Rumor, Italian statesman
  3. Back to citation Mariano Rumor – Biografia, Storiologia
  4. Back to citation Mariano Rumor – Dizionario Biografico, Enciclopedia Treccani
  5. Back to citation Mariano Rumor – Biografia, Cinquantamila
  6. Back to citation Mariano Rumor, Patrimonio dell'Archivio Storico del Senato della Repubblica
  7. Back to citation Mariano Rumor e le ACLI vicentine, Franco Angeli
  8. Back to citation "Politician All the Way; Mariano Rumor". The New York Times. 9 December 1968. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
  9. Back to citation Elezioni del 1946: Circoscrizione Verona–Padova–Vicenza–Rovigo, Ministero dell'Interno
  10. Back to citation Einaudi, Mario The Constitution of the Italian Republic The American Political Science Review vol. 42 no. 4 (pp. 661–676), August 1948
  11. Back to citation Corke, Sarah-Jane (1 May 2006). "George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare". Journal of Conflict Studies. 26 (1). ISSN 1715-5673.
  12. Back to citation Mistry, Kaeten (May 2011). "Re-thinking American intervention in the 1948 Italian election: beyond a success–failure dichotomy". Modern Italy. 16 (2): 179–194. doi:10.1080/13532944.2011.557224. ISSN 1353-2944. S2CID 143941092.
  13. Back to citation Ministry of the Interior – 1948 Election Results
  14. Back to citation Mariano Rumor, Memorie (1943–1970), p. 12
  15. Back to citation Guido Gonella – Dizionario Biografico, Enciclopedia Treccani
  16. Back to citation La stagione del centrismo, Francesco Malgeri, page 114
  17. Back to citation Il prezzo della democrazia
  18. Back to citation La stagione del centrismo, Francesco Malgeri, page 100
  19. Back to citation Governo De Gasperi VII, governo.it
  20. Back to citation Composizione del Governo Fanfani I, Senato della Repubblica
  21. Back to citation VIII Congresso di Napoli, Della Repubblica
  22. Back to citation III Legislatura, Della Repubblica
  23. Back to citation I Dorotei, Archivio 900
  24. Back to citation II Governo Segni, Della Repubblica
  25. Back to citation Le "mie carte". Inventario dell'archivio di Mariano Rumor
  26. Back to citation Elezioni del 1963, Ministero dell'Interno
  27. Back to citation I Governo Leone, camera.it
  28. Back to citation Il 9 settembre 1963 il disastro del Vajont: commemorazioni in tutta la regione, Friuli Venezia Giulia
  29. Back to citation "Vaiont Dam photos and virtual field trip". University of Wisconsin. Archived from the original on 29 July 2009. Retrieved 1 July 2009.
  30. Back to citation La cronaca del disastro e il processo, ANSA
  31. Back to citation La tragedia del Vajont Archived 9 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine, Rai Scuola
  32. Back to citation "Mattolinimusic.com". Mattolinimusic.com. Retrieved 29 October 2012.
  33. Back to citation "Vajont, Due Volte Tragedia". Sopravvissutivajont.org. 9 October 2002. Retrieved 29 October 2012.
  34. Back to citation Mariano Rumor, Enciclopedia Treccani
  35. Back to citation I socialisti e la svolta politica del 1962, Mondoperaio
  36. Back to citation Rumor, quando la politica era capace di includere, Avvenire
  37. Back to citation Elezioni del 1968, Ministero dell'Interno
  38. Back to citation Governo Rumor I
  39. Back to citation La DC ricorda Mariano Rumor, Imola Oggi
  40. Back to citation Bull, Anna Cento and Cooke, Philip. Ending Terrorism in Italy, Routledge, 2013 ISBN 9781135040802
  41. Back to citation "1969: Deadly bomb blasts in Italy". BBC News. 12 December 1965. Retrieved 1 April 2006.
  42. Back to citation "RUMOR IS SEEKING TO STAFF A CABINET". The New York Times. 25 March 1970. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
  43. Back to citation Governo Andreotti, governo.it
  44. Back to citation "Neofascists cleared of 1973 bomb attack for second time". ANSA. 1 December 2004.
  45. Back to citation "NEW GOVERNMENT IS FORMED IN ITALY". The New York Times. 15 March 1974. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
  46. Back to citation Ginsborg, Paul (1 January 2003). A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9781403961532. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
  47. Back to citation Paul, Hofman (11 June 1974). "RUMOR'S CABINET RESIGNS IN ITALY". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
  48. Back to citation Shenker, Israel (4 October 1974). "RUMOR'S CABINET RESIGNS IN ITALY". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
  49. Back to citation Governo Moro IV, governo.it
  50. Back to citation The Europa World Year, Taylor & Francis Group
  51. Back to citation Ronald Haly Linden (2002). Norms and nannies: the impact of international organizations on the central and east European states. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 104. ISBN 9780742516038.
  52. Back to citation Valussi, Ressmann (1861). Trieste e l'Istria nelle quistione italiana. p. 62.
  53. Back to citation Aldo Moro e la ferita del Trattato di Osimo, Il Piccolo
  54. Back to citation "Mariano RUMOR". European Parliament. 16 June 1915. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
  55. Back to citation "Mariano Rumor, 74, Premier of Italy for Five Years, Dies". The Washington Post. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
  56. Back to citation Denis Mack Smith, Modern Italy: A Political History, (London: Yale University Press, 1997)
  57. Back to citation Saxon, Wolfgang (24 January 1990). "Mariano Rumor, 74, Italian Chief During Student and Labor Strife". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
  58. Back to citation Philip Willan (12 November 2001). "obituary, November 12, 2001". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
  59. Back to citation Tanner, Henry (16 June 1978). "PRESIDENT OF ITALY RESIGNS IN SCANDAL". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 March 2019; Shuster, Alvin (3 December 1976). "RUMOR, EX‐PREMIER, LINKED TO LOCKHEED". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 March 2019; Honan, William H. (10 November 2001). "Giovanni Leone, Italy's Ex-President, Dies at 93". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 August 2018.
  60. Back to citation Hooper, John (March 2018). "12 people who ruined Italy". Politico. POLITICO SPRL. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
  61. Back to citation Gay di tutto il partito, uscite allo scoperto, Panorama
  62. Back to citation Un premier omosessuale ed ex DC? Ecco chi era, Giornalettissimo
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