SICILY: The Night Visitors

Eight months ago, as he whipped up Sicilian voters with the slogan, "Sicily for the Sicilians. Down with the mainland," owl-eyed Silvio Milazzo (TIME, June 22) indignantly denied that he was proCommunist. "I am no Trojan horse," intoned dissident Christian Democrat Milazzo. "I am a pure-blooded Sicilian horse, a noble animal." He became president of Sicily's semi-autonomous regional government, ruling in coalition with the Communists. But last week Maverick Milazzo, no longer regarded as so pure-blooded a Sicilian horse, was put to pasture.

From the day he took office at the head of a raggle-taggle assemblage of Communists, Socialists, ex-Christian Democrats and assorted strays, Milazzo spent most of his time trying to defend his two-vote majority in Sicily's regional Assembly. He was under constant fire from both the Vatican and the Christian Democratic national government of Premier Antonio Segni. To keep his Communist support, Milazzo slipped Reds into government jobs all over Sicily. Fortnight ago, dismayed by the turn of events, four of Milazzo's supporters deserted, thereby wiping out his Assembly majority.

The sequel was recounted early last week to Sicily's hushed Assembly by Deputy Carmelo Santalco: "About a week ago I was approached with offers to betray the [Christian Democratic] Party I have served for eleven years ... I referred the matter to the head of my party, who advised me to play out the game." His late-night visitors, said Santalco, were one of Milazzo's top aides, fast-rising Ludovico Corrao, 32, and a Communist henchman. In Santalco's room at Palermo's Hotel delle Palme, they offered to buy his Assembly vote and that of two other Christian Democrats, promising Santalco $112,000 and a Cabinet post, and $24,000 and lesser jobs for each of his friends. Deputy Santalco had persuaded his visitors to put it all in writing, and he dramatically waved papers before the Assembly which he said Corrao and the Communist had incautiously signed.

Seizing at this chance to dislodge the Italian Communists from their one real toehold in Italy, the nation's anti-Communist press and politicians burst into extravagant professions of horror ("An unheard-of attempt at corruption," cried Milan's Corriere della Sera; "A horrible tale," said Turin's La Stampa). Next day Milazzo resigned. His Communist allies for the most part maintained stunned silence, but to Rome's pro-Communist Paese Sera, it was all very simple. Milazzo, declared Paese Sera, was the victim of a Mafia plot.