1979 the DC governed with the external support of the PCI, through the Historic Compromise. Moro, who was the party main leader and who had inspired the Compromise, was abducted and murdered by the Red Brigades. The event was a shock for the party. When Moro was abducted, the government, at the time led by Giulio Andreotti, immediately took a hardline position stating that the "State must not bend" on terrorist demands. This was a very different position from the one taken in similar cases before (such as the kidnapping of Ciro Cirillo, a Campanian DC member for whom a ransom was paid thanks to the local ties of the party with the Camorra). It was however supported by all the mainstream parties, including the PCI, with the two notable exceptions of the PSI and the Radicals. In the trial for Mafia allegations against Andreotti, it was said that he took the chance of getting rid of a dangerous political competitor by sabotaging all of the rescue options and ultimately leaving the captors with no option but killing him. During his captivity Moro wrote a series of letters, at times very critical of Andreotti.. Later the memorial written by Moro during his imprisonment was subject to several plots, including the assassination of journalist Mino Pecorelli and general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa. Pentapartito At the beginning of the 1980s, the DC had lost part of its support among Italian voters. In 1981, Giovanni Spadolini of the PRI was the first non-Christian Democrat to lead a government since 1944, at the head of a coalition comprising the DC, the PSI, the PSDI, the PRI and the PLI, the so-called Pentapartito. In the successive 1983 general election, the DC suffered one of its largest declines in votes up to that point, receiving only 32.5% of the vote cast (a decline of -5.8% relative to 1981). Subsequently, Bettino Craxi (leader of the rising PSI) reclaimed for himself the post of Prime Minister, again at the head of a Pentapartito government. DC re-gained the post of Prime Minister in 1987, after a modest recovery in the 1987 general election (34.2%), and the Pentapartito coalition governed Italy almost continuously until 1993. While Italy experienced steady economic progress in the 1980s, the Italian economy was being undermined by a constant devaluation of the Italian lira and the issuing of large amounts of high-interest treasury bonds, so that,