ITALY: Italy's prime minister-elect, Romano Prodi, had a bad day at the office yesterday when the new Italian parliament convened for the first time after the centre-left's razor-thin general election victory earlier this month.
Mr Prodi's Union coalition twice narrowly failed to elect its candidate as speaker of the senate in the first key vote of the new legislature.
Holding control of the senate is seen as crucial to the prospects of a Prodi-led government because the centre-left has only a two seat majority in the Upper House. To be sure of holding the house, the centre-left needs support of three or four of the seven life-senators.
An always tight electoral race became even tighter this week when it was confirmed that seven times prime minister Giulio Andreotti, now a life-senator, had accepted to run as the centre-right candidate in opposition to the centre-left's choice, former trade unionist Franco Marini.
Predictably, the contest was close, with Mr Marini registering 157 votes in the first ballot yesterday morning - five short of the absolute majority of 162 required in the first and second ballots.
The centre-left came tantalisingly close in the second ballot in the evening when at first it seemed that Mr Marini had received 163 votes, only for the ballot to be annulled because of three disputed ballot papers.
The first day back to school for the new parliament was marked by farcical confusion when it transpired that some senators had, knowingly or not, misspelt the name of their chosen candidate.
The senate vote requires the senator to enter a special polling booth in the floor of the house with an empty ballot sheet on which he/she writes the name of the candidate of their choice.
In the morning vote, ballot papers emerged with spoiled votes for "Franco Mariti" and for "Franco Marino", rather than Franco Marini. The question of name spelling became even more crucial in the second ballot when two votes for "Francesco" rather than "Franco" Marini were contested by the centre-right.
Had those two votes been awarded to Franco Marini, he would have won the election. In the end, faced with the failure of the senate's politically divided electoral commission to agree on the contested votes, the temporary house speaker, former state President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, had little option but to declare the vote null and void, ordering a new second ballot late last night.
Whatever the final outcome of the Senate vote - and it would seem that Franco Marini's victory has merely been delayed - yesterday's false start confirmed that a Prodi government is certain to face a difficult time forcing legislation through the upper house.
Furthermore, many political commentators speculated that the crucial misspellings-spellings might well have been perpetrated deliberately by centre-left supporters, keen to send a message to the future Prodi government.
The lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, also failed to elect a speaker after three ballots yesterday.
That result, however, was largely predictable with the centre-left candidate, Rifondazione Comunista leader, Fausto Bertinotti, expected to win comfortably in this morning's fourth vote when a relative, rather than an absolute majority will suffice. Unlike in the Senate, the centre-left has a comfortable 348 to 281 majority in the Chamber of Deputies.
Once the two house speakers have been elected, outgoing prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is expected to hand in his resignation to state President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
At that point, the president could opt to immediately nominate Mr Prodi. Given that President Ciampi's mandate expires next month, however, the nomination of the new prime minister may well be delayed until mid or late May.