ITALY: Italy's lawmakers failed to elect a new president yesterday as a split between Romano Prodi's left and Silvio Berlusconi's right produced a stalemate in the first round of voting for the next head of state.
No candidate secured the two-thirds majority required to elect the president in the first three rounds of voting.
"We need to proceed to a second round of voting," lower house speaker Fausto Bertinotti said.
The inconclusive vote means that Italy's 1,010 "grand electors" will convene again today to try to elect a president, but voting could go on until tomorrow and beyond if Italy's divided political class fails to agree on a name.
Although Italy's president has a largely ceremonial role, finding a replacement for Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, whose seven-year term expires this month, comes at a crucial moment as Mr Prodi cannot take office until the new leader gives him a formal mandate.
Mr Prodi tried but failed to persuade the centre right, which he narrowly beat in April's election, to vote for his candidate, life senator Giorgio Napolitano (80), of the Democrats of the Left (DS), the biggest party in his bloc.
But shortly before the lawmakers went into booths in parliament to cast their secret ballots, Mr Berlusconi said his centre-right bloc would vote for his close aide Gianni Letta.
Mr Letta got the most votes in the election with 369, but 438 ballots were left blank. The two-thirds majority is 674 votes.
Earlier in the day, as it became clear that Mr Napolitano would not secure a two-thirds majority, Mr Prodi told centre-left lawmakers to post blank ballots rather than write the candidate's name, which would have tainted him with defeat.
Several lawmakers made mischievous or protest votes, writing names of notable prisoners, a famous singer and even Mr Berlusconi himself.
Mr Prodi said the centre left had decided on the blank ballot tactic while it waited for more signals from the centre right on the possibility of agreeing on a candidate in the second or third rounds today.
But when asked if the election would succeed today, Mr Berlusconi told reporters: "I don't think that's possible." By the fourth round, due tomorrow if the stalemate continues, a simple majority is sufficient, meaning Mr Prodi may be able to push his candidate through.
But that would only increase the bitterness between the two camps and could make it harder for Mr Prodi to carry through his policy programme once in government.
Whether Mr Napolitano, a former interior minister and parliamentary speaker, remains the centre left's candidate is uncertain. Members of DS, the biggest party in Mr Prodi's coalition, initially wanted its chairman, former prime minister Massimo D'Alema (57), elected to the country's top job, but he was rejected by the centre right as being too partisan.
Some analysts have suggested Mr Prodi only put forward Mr Napolitano as a kind of "stalking horse", intending to revert to proposing Mr D'Alema if Mr Napolitano does not get broad backing.
On Sunday, Mr Berlusconi's allies put forward four names they would like to see as candidates, none of them from the DS: former prime ministers Giuliano Amato and Lamberto Dini, former European commissioner Mario Monti and senate speaker Franco Marini.
Whereas outgoing President Ciampi enjoys cross-party support and was elected in the first round seven years ago, it took 13 days to elect his predecessor in 1992. - (Reuters)