ITALY:Italy yet again faces an uncertain political future following the not unexpected collapse last night of prime minister Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition government. At the end of another dramatic and at times ill-tempered day, Mr Prodi lost a Senate confidence vote by 156 to 161 votes.
Immediately after the vote, the prime minister offered his resignation to state president Giorgio Napolitano, thus opening the first formal act of what may prove to be a protracted political crisis.
Realistically, President Napolitano now has two fundamental options before him - either he dissolves parliament and calls for an early general election or, in contrast, he calls on an "institutional" figure to head a short-term, caretaker government that will oversee state business until a new electoral law can be introduced, prior to the holding of a general election.
When the president tomorrow begins a series of exhaustive consultations with all the parliamentary forces, he will be faced with contrasting requests. On the one hand, centre right opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi and the federalist Northern League are united in their call for an immediate general election. On the other hand, the outgoing government and some opposition figures argue that electoral reform is essential prior to an election.
Many observers feel that the current electoral legislation, hurriedly introduced by the Berlusconi centre-right government prior to the 2006 general election, is deeply flawed and partly responsible for the chronic instability of Mr Prodi's litigious, nine-party coalition.
From the moment this crisis opened on Monday with the withdrawal of the small, ex-Christian Democrat UDEUR party from Mr Prodi's coalition, the prime minister had seemed launched on a mission impossible. Deprived of up to seven votes in a chamber where he has enjoyed a wafer thin majority of sometimes just one vote ever since his election in April 2006, Mr Prodi had nonetheless insisted on forcing last night's vote, in the name of political clarity and out of respect to the primary role of parliament.
In a defiant speech to the Senate, the prime minister once again defended his government's record, suggesting furthermore that, given the current economic climate in Italy and internationally, Italy could not afford a political crisis at this moment.
"With great satisfaction, I present an account of my government's activity. We might have done a lot more if we had had the parliamentary majority that was denied to us by the electoral law passed in a huge rush by the Berlusconi government. That law struck a mortal blow at governability in this country. We have an urgent need of electoral reform," said Mr Prodi.
Throughout the last three days, but especially after he had comfortably won a Lower House confidence vote on Wednesday by 326 votes to 275, the prime minister had insisted that the numbers might not, after all, be against him in the Senate. The uncertain climate, he reasoned, might prompt unexpected developments.
So it seemed for a while yesterday when one of the three UDEUR senators, Nuccio Cusumano, took his two party colleagues and the house by surprise when announcing that he would, after all, vote with the government. That decision prompted an angry reaction from fellow UDEUR senator Tommaso Barbato who launched such a violent, verbal attack on his party colleague that the unfortunate senator Cusumano collapsed on the floor of the house and had to be stretchered out of the chamber.
In the end, the week-long head counts, predicting a defeat for the Prodi government, were confirmed.