1948 Italian presidential election

The Italian presidential election of 1948 was held in Italy on 10–11 May 1948. The result was the election of the liberal Luigi Einaudi, governor of the Bank of Italy.

1948 Italian presidential election

10–11 May 1948

900 voters
(287 Senators, 613 Deputies)
600 or 451 votes needed to win
 
Nominee Luigi Einaudi Vittorio Emanuele Orlando
Party Liberal Party Liberal Party
Electoral vote 518 320
Percentage 57.5% 35.5%

Result on the fourth ballot
(11 May 1948)

  Einaudi 518   Orlando 320   Others 4

  Invalids, blanks, abstentions 58

President before election

Enrico De Nicola
PLI

Elected President

Luigi Einaudi
PLI

Only members of newly-elected Parliament were entitled to vote and this presidential election was the first one voted by a regular Parliament. As head of state of the Italian Republic, the President has a role of representation of national unity and guarantees that Italian politics comply with the Italian Constitution, in the framework of a parliamentary system.

Procedure

In accordance to the new Italian Constitution, the election was held in the form of a secret ballot, with the Senators and the Deputies entitled to vote. The election was held in the Palazzo Montecitorio, home of the Chamber of Deputies, with the capacity of the building expanded for the purpose. The first three ballots required a two-thirds majority of the 900 voters in order to elect a president, or 600 votes. Starting from the fourth ballot, an absolute majority was required for candidates to be elected, or 451 votes. The presidential mandate lasts seven years.

The election was presided over by the President of the Chamber of Deputies Giovanni Gronchi, who proceeded to the public counting of the votes, and by the President of the Senate Ivanoe Bonomi.

Chronology

On 8 May 1948 the new Parliament elected on the 18 April election officially sworn in. According to the protocol, the incumbent President Enrico De Nicola resigned in order to allow the first elected Parliament of the Republic to elect a new President.

De Nicola could actually have run for a second term, but his opposition to the centrist politics of the christian democrat Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi and to the 1947 Treaty of Peace, made him to lose the support of the Christian Democracy party. His candidacy was supported just by the leftists parties, which on the first ballot were able to show De Gapseri how was their strength in the Assembly by voting unanimously for De Nicola and making him the most voted candidate on ballot.

De Gasperi was intentioned to support the candidacy to the presidency of the incumbent Minister of Foreign Affairs, the republican Carlo Sforza. Strongly opposed by the leftist parties for his anticommunism - the Secretary of the Italian Communist Party Palmiro Togliatti once defined him a "servile American marine" - Sforza wasn't able to gain to support of some members of the Christian Democracy group, especially those who were part of the leftist faction of the party led by Giuseppe Dossetti, in that period positioned on more neutralist stances.

On 11 May, after the second ballot in which was clear that Sforza failed to obtain the support of more than 40 christian democrat representatives (the so called franchi tiratori, or snipers), De Gasperi decided to withdraw his support to Sforza's candidacy and decided to endorse the governor of Bank of Italy Luigi Einaudi. As a well-known anti-fascist liberal economist with a socialist past and a strong pro-Atlantic faith, Einaudi was well seen by a large number of representatives, including some liberals and social democrats. His candidacy was instead strongly opposed by the monarchists, although Einaudi had endorsed the monarchy during the 1946 institutional referendum campaign.

On the fourth ballot, Einaudi was elected President by a large margin, while the communists and the socialists decided to vote for the liberal senator Vittorio Emanuele Orlando.

As a sign of protest the monarchists representatives did not participate in the vote. During the first ballot, the nobleman and monarchist deputy Giovanni Alliata di Montereale (1921–1994) decided to tear up his ballot paper in front of the President of the Chamber of Deputies as a sign of offense towards the new republican institutions.[1]

Results

Candidate First round
10 May 1948
Second round
10 May 1948
Third round
11 May 1948
Fourth round
11 May 1948
Enrico De Nicola39633613
Carlo Sforza3534059
Luigi Einaudi2016462518
Ivanoe Bonomi1014
Cipriano Facchinetti1033
Alessandro Casati555
Gaetano Pieraccini49
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando7320
Other candidates264
Blank papers564033329
Invalid papers138
Abstentions62516729
Total900900900900
Source: Presidency of the Republic

Inauguration

Luigi Einaudi giving his inaugural address in the Chamber of Deputies on 12 May 1948

On 12 May 1948 Luigi Einaudi officially sworn in as the new President of Italy.

As required by the procedure, after taking the oath in front of the Italian Parliament, Einaudi gave his inaugural address to the nation, speaking from the seat of the President of the Chamber of Deputies. His address was fair quite short, lasting just 19 minutes.[2]

A central theme of President Einaudi's inaugural address was a call to restore a true democratic system after more than twenty years of fascist dictatorship. He underlined the importance of two liberal principles enunciated in the new Constitution, freedom and equality: "It [the Constitution] affirms two solemn principles: to preserve in the present social structure only what is the guarantee of the freedom of the human person against the omnipotence of the State and private arrogance; and to guarantee to everyone, whatever the fortuitous cases of birth, the greatest possible equality in the starting points".

President Einaudi contained also several references to the international affiliation of the newborn Italian Republic: "Twenty years of dictatorial rule had proclaimed civil unrest, external war, and such material and moral destruction to the Fatherland that every hope of redemption seemed vain. Instead, after having saved, despite the regional and local differences and painfully mutilated, the indestructible national unity from the Alps to Sicily, we are now tenaciously reconstructing the destroyed material fortunes and we have twice given the world admirable proof of our will to return to free democratic political competitions and our ability to cooperate, equal among equals, in the forums in which we want to rebuild that Europe from which so much light of thought and humanity came into the world".

References

  1. "Italian Parliament, 10 May 1948" (PDF).
  2. "il discorso di insediamento del Presidente Einaudi". presidenti.quirinale.it. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
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