ITALY : It Could Be Mayor Mussolini Welcoming Clinton to Naples : Dictator’s granddaughter is one of two top candidates in Nov. 21 election. World leaders will hold summit next July.

NAPLES, Italy — What would you think if President Clinton showed up in Naples next summer--half a century after American troops stormed ashore to rid Europe of fascism--and Mayor Mussolini handed him the keys to the city?

Don’t laugh. When leaders of the world’s seven richest democracies gather under Mt. Vesuvius’ shadow next July, Naples’ mayor could also be a veteran Communist reborn as a social democrat.

As Italy’s corrupt and discredited political system steamrollers toward self-destruction, zesty but ramshackle Naples teeters as ever between brio and chaos. It is a microcosm of a nation riven by high-level scandal and organized crime. Naples’ home-grown Mafia, called the Camorra, has been an endemic part of city life and government for decades.

National disgust at a gigantic bribes-for-government-contracts scandal has mauled the reputation of almost every Italian political party. And it is angry voters who will elect a mayor here in Naples on Nov. 21, as well as in other major cities including Rome, Venice, Genoa, Palermo and Trieste.

The nine-candidate race is a duel between left and right and Naples’ first experience at voting for individual mayoral candidates instead of party lists.

Leading is Antonio Bassolino, 46, a Parliament member who by profession is an official of the renamed Italian Communist Party, now the Democratic Party of the Left, known by its initials as PDS.

Polls show Alessandra Mussolini, a 30-year-old rookie national lawmaker and granddaughter of former dictator Benito Mussolini, running a strong second on an unabashed neo-fascist ticket.

Bassolino and Mussolini, who will probably go into a Dec. 5 runoff, loom so large because of the weakness of corruption-tainted centrist parties like the Christian Democrats and their Socialist allies, who have shared national power for much of the postwar period.

“Only candidates who can demonstrate that they are clean have any chance in the present climate,” said Isaia Sales, a PDS official down from Rome to run Bassolino’s campaign.

Naples, a metropolis of 1.2 million, has had no elected government since August; so many of its city council members were under investigation for alleged Camorra links that the Italian government dissolved the council and named an interim administrator.

“Naples has discovered that its ruling class, national and local, has long had strong ties to the Camorra,” said Sales. Three former national Cabinet ministers from Naples stand accused of having links with the Camorra, and so does one senator, one former senator and two Parliament deputies, Sales notes.

Now, fighting the Camorra is the backbone of all nine mayoral campaigns. “Crime is Naples’ biggest problem. In the past, mayors have had to administer a city in fact governed by the Camorra,” said Amato Lamberti, a University of Naples sociologist and a Greens candidate for city council.

Bassolino and Mussolini both have new-wave credentials: he as a muckraking national legislator who has denounced more than one embezzlement of public funds; she as an unbesmirched political newcomer who evokes law-and-order memories of Il Duce.

Like all of Italy, this florid port city is vexed by economic as well as political malaise. Unemployment is estimated at 27%; some mainline industries, such as the local giant steel plant, are dying.

Sales of the PDS says the upcoming election is crucial for Naples’ future: “Sure, there was corruption and bribery in Milan, but there were also some things to show for it. Here, there is nothing. The city has been continuously sacked. A Naples city government with no ties to the Camorra would be nothing short of a revolution.”