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Change comes slowly in Italian politics -- consider the postwar decades of Christian Democratic stasis while it faced off the old Communist party. But hints of change are now in the wind, and forthcoming city administrative elections this Spring will be the political equivalent of the American primaries.

May 23 marks the 21st anniversary of the murder of the anti-Mafia Judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo and their three bodyguards, blown up by 500 kilos of dynamite on the highway between the airport at Puna Raisi and the city of Palermo. Most of those considered responsible are in prison. But what is believed to lie behind his murder, and that months later of his fellow magistrate Paolo Borsellino, is still being analyzed by Palermo magistrates investigating allegations that an illegal secret pact had been forged between the government and the Mafia. In the words of Palermo's chief prosecutor, Roberto Scarpinato, "We must take cognizance that the Mafia evil is not outside of us, but also among us."

Right and left in Italy agree on the gravity of the problem. "The house is on fire," thundered Angelino Alfano, titular secretary of the rightist Freedom Party (PdL). "Italy is starting to be frightened - yes, frightened," intoned the moderate leftist professor Ernesto Galli della Loggia, writing in Corriere della Sera. Both lament the politicians' failure to move toward formation of a new government. But there agreement ends, and the impasse over what to do to avoid a dangerous power vacuum continues. Fighting to gain time as the end of his mandate approaches, President Giorgio Napolitano has appointed a 10-man committee of "sages" to try to excogitate points of convergence on reforms.