Revolving Door
February 22, 2007
After Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi handed in his resignation Wednesday, Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano was to hold consultations with party leaders on the future of the government Thursday.
The talks were scheduled to begin with the speakers of the two branches of parliament and former presidents of the republic, followed by meetings with party whips.
Options for new government
Napolitano faces a number of options. He could reject Prodi's resignation and ask him to seek a vote of confidence in parliament, or give him a mandate to form a new government.
Alternatively, he could give the mandate to a different center-left leader or an institutional figure. A final option, seen as less likely at present, would be to call fresh elections that would take place in the spring.
In a drama reminiscent of Italian politics of the 1980s and 1990s when governments sometimes lasted less than a week, Prodi stepped down on Wednesday, just nine months after assuming office, after he lost a key vote in parliament's upper house over his government's foreign policy.
The center-left government was forced onto the defensive over the deployment of 2,000 troops in Afghanistan and the enlargement of a US military base in northern Italy. Both are policies most opposed by far-left parties within Prodi's coalition.
Opposition called for Prodi's resignation
But it is the conservative opposition, led by Silvio Berlusconi,
who was narrowly forced out of the prime minister's office by Prodi in an election last April, who led calls for Prodi to go.
Right wing senators shouted "resign! resign!" after the result of the vote in the Italian Senate was announced. Prodi should "tender his resignation immediately," declared Berlusconi.
The government needed 160 votes in the Senate debate to get a
formal motion of support. But only 158 senators voted in favor and 136 opposed the government. Several left-wing senators were reportedly absent from the upper chamber.
Though it was not a formal vote of confidence, Foreign Minister
Massimo D'Alema said Tuesday that the government would "go home" if it lost.
"It is a grave, serious and worrying fact to not obtain a majority for the speech of a foreign minister," acknowledged Vannino Chiti, the minister for relations with parliament.
Immediately after, Prodi held a crisis meeting with D'Alema, Defence Minister Arturo Parisi and Deputy Prime Minister Francesco Rutelli. He then tendered his resignation to the president. Napolitano, who rushed back to Rome from a visit to the provinces, said in a statement that he "reserves his decision" on the future of the government.
Under pressure over Afghanistan
D'Alema had to defend Italy's military mission in Afghanistan to
senators before the vote. Italy currently has around 2,000 troops deployed in the country as part of a NATO-led peacekeeping mission.
"It's not a NATO mission, but a United Nations mission in which
NATO has an important military function," D'Alema told the parliament. "It is a political and civil mission."
The Afghanistan deployment and the enlargement of the US base at Vicenza in northern Italy are both strongly opposed by the Greens and Communists who are part of a ruling coalition which also includes liberal and Roman Catholic parties.
More than 80,000 people took part in a rally last Saturday in Vicenza against the base enlargement. D'Alema said that to go back on the approval for the base that the prime minister gave last month for the base enlargement would be a "hostile act" toward the United States.
No stranger to controversy
Prodi's Union coalition narrowly won an election in April last year that ended Berlusconi's five year-old government -- one of the longest in recent Italian political history.
Prodi is no stranger to the dangers of running Italian governments.
He resigned as prime minister in 1997 and 1998 when leading governments. The first time he won a vote of confidence from parliament. The second time he had to let D'Alema take over. Prodi, now 67, went off to become president of the European Commission.