Post-Prodi
February 22, 2007
On Thursday, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano began holding talks with an array of political leaders, in an effort to form a new government.
Napolitano's flurry of meetings Thursday were to continue Friday, consulting with the speakers of the two houses of parliament, the heads of parliamentary groups and the presidents who preceded him.
Prodi, head of Italy's 61st government since World War II, was also prime minister for two years and five months in 1996-98, falling when communists withdrew their support.
Possible reinstatement
Napolitano is widely expected to rename Prodi as prime minister. But he also has the option of choosing a new government leader from the center-left coalition, appointing a technocrat government or dissolving parliament and calling new elections.
While fresh elections are considered unlikely, the economic daily Il Sole 24 Ore warned Thursday against Prodi's simple reinstatement.
"Experience shows that (such) governments are always mediocre, especially when the differences that brought about the crisis are not resolved," it said in an editorial.
And Franco Pavoncello of Rome's John Cabot University said it was "highly improbable" that Napolitano would call an election after the current round of consultations.
Foreign policy trip-up
"I don't think it will happen," he told German news agency dpa. "Italy needs to change its electoral system first and ensure that the new law produces more stable governments in the future," Pavoncello said.
Gianfranco Pasquino of John Hopkins University told Sky Italia television he expected the president would ask Prodi to stay on, but only after ensuring "he has a workable majority" in the Senate.
Prodi stepped down on Wednesday, just nine months after he assumed office, after losing a key vote in parliament's upper house over his government's foreign policy.
A government-sponsored motion received just 158 votes in favor, two short of the required majority of 160. A total of 136 lawmakers voted against and 24, including two far-left dissidents, abstained.
The two communist senators in Prodi's coalition, who are staunchly opposed to the planned enlargement of a US military base in northern Italy, tipped the balance with their crucial "no" votes.
Giovanni Sartori, one of Italy's leading constitutional experts, said the president could decide to form an "institutional" or "technocrat" government backed by an enlarged majority.
"The last thing to do would be to go to the polls," Sartori told Sky Italia.
Berlusconi law
Prodi assumed office in May of last year after defeating Silvio Berlusconi in April's general election, the closest in modern Italian history.
A convoluted electoral law approved by Berlusconi in the final weeks of the past legislature ensured that a future government would be guaranteed a comfortable majority in the Chamber of Deputies, but not in the Senate.
Prodi had been commanding a wafer-thin majority in the upper house and lost Wednesday's vote because two far-left dissident lawmakers refused to back it in disagreement at Italy's peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.
Napolitano began his round of consultations by meeting the presidents of the two branches of parliament, Fausto Bertinotti and Franco Marini, ahead of talks with former Italian presidents and party leaders Friday.
Berlusconi, who leads Prodi in latest opinion polls, Wednesday called for fresh elections.
Searching for alternatives
But many of his center-right allies were Thursday conceding that Napolitano would explore alternative solutions to the crisis first.
"We would like elections, but our alternative is to find a transitional solution to solve the big problems facing the country," said Renato Schifani, a whip in Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.
The Catholic UDC, a small but influential opposition party that has been distancing itself from Berlusconi since last year's election defeat, has said it may decide to join a new government, but only if there is "discontinuity" with the previous administration.
All of the nine center-left ruling parties have indicated that they want Prodi to stay on as premier.
Napolitano was expected to make a decision on Prodi's future on Friday evening or Saturday at the latest.