The 1926 Parliamentary Election: The Setback
The 1926 Parliamentary Election would start as a direct result of the legislative and legal battles over President Di Cervo's efforts to exert control over what little private industry the People's Republic of Italy had. His initial 1923 order that all private corporations be integrated into the communes was struck down by the courts. Di Cervo, furious, had attempted to push a bill through the parliament to force the Encouragement of Productivity Act to apply to all corporations, not just the communes. When a mass rebellion of MPs from his own party caused this initiative to fail by a considerable margin, he had issued a second order that a corporate tax should be levied on privately held corporations; despite Di Cervo's protestations that he could somehow read a corporate tax in the existing budget authority, this too was struck down as illegal. The President was already an unpopular and divisive figure after the Krakow debacle. This newest string of orders and actions spurred Di Cervo's critics to charge that the President believed himself to be above the law, that he was acting dictatorially, with an attitude of impunity towards the existing law. Many of his enemies in the CSI - including E. E. Constantino - levied similar allegations against Di Cervo. While the FDL planned mass street protests, disarray in the government drove Premier Massimo Perniciaro to petition Di Cervo to call new elections. Di Cervo agreed.
1. Parliamentary seating diagram, 1926
From the start, whatever happened Di Cervo would remain in power. There was no constitutional method of removing him from his post (he'd made sure of that; he wrote the Constitution). However, his own unpopularity was sure to bite the CSI's electoral standings, even though Di Cervo had many enemies in the CSI. While the CSI's massive dominance of Italian politics made it seem unlikely that they would lose parliamentary elections, if they did, the opposition parties could potentially force their way into government - even if they couldn't remove Di Cervo.
While this possibility seemed remote, there was one spark of "hope" for the opposition. The Legio Tarpea had decided to end its long boycott of Italian elections. In addition to the Il Partito della Italia Nuova and the FDL, there were three parties to oppose the CSI - more than just the token liberal opposition of years past.
2. Samuele Di Cervo, still President of the People's Republic of Italy
In the end, the CSI did win the election, but the victory cost them. They took 321 seats - well over the necessary majority of 251, but a loss of more than a hundred seats from their pre-election total of 435. They had also failed to attain a 2/3rds majority. The loss of a constitutional majority meant they could no longer amend the document at will - not that the CSI had ever done this - but it was a major psychological blow to the party. There were grim faces all around when the much reduced socialist caucus met in the Chamber at the start of the new term. As one CSI deputy said, "we cannot afford another victory like it."
Meanwhile, the Legio had taken 78 seats, emerging as Italy's second party and first opposition party. It had leapfrogged the FDL, which had gained just one seat for a total of 66. The PIN took 35 seats. Turnout was noticeably depressed from the last two elections.
It was not immediately clear what implications of the election were for Di Cervo's government or The Great Leap Forward. The President could still appoint and dismiss ministers at his own discretion, but the slide in CSI numbers probably meant that Di Cervo would rely increasingly heavily on the incumbent Premier Massimo Perniciaro to rally support in the chamber. Given that Perniciaro - also the Interior Minister - had regarded The Great Leap Forward with tremendous apathy during his tenure and heavily thrown his support to the military, many news outlets speculated that Antonio Camilleri would not get the manpower he so desperately needed, and that the military would charge ahead with its campaign of modernization instead.
No one was particularly happy with the results of the election. The CSI had lost almost a quarter of their seats, while the opposition parties had failed to seize a majority. This was particularly disappointing for the Legio, who had wanted to storm into power in great swoop. CSI deputies referred to the losses they suffered in 1926 as "the setback." Rather ominously, so did the Legio.
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