The New York Times-20080124-Italy Backs Its Coalition But Only Just for Now
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Italy Backs Its Coalition But Only Just for Now
As expected, Prime Minister Romano Prodi easily won the first of two confidence votes in Parliament on Wednesday, but pressure mounted for him to resign as Italy's leader and hopes dimmed that he could keep his wounded government alive.
Mr. Prodi, who lost the crucial support of his former justice minister on Monday, met twice with President Giorgio Napolitano. Italian news media reported that Mr. Napolitano urged Mr. Prodi to consider resigning before the second vote, set for Thursday in the Senate. Meantime, three potential supporters of the center-left coalition in the Senate announced that they would not vote in his favor.
The center-right opposition increased its criticism, accusing Mr. Prodi of dragging out the political uncertainty, and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi continued to call for elections that polls indicate he could win.
This artificial respiration makes no sense, said Gianfranco Fini, leader of the center-right National Alliance, addressing his comments to Mr. Prodi. You might win a majority in the Senate, but you cannot govern Italy with one extra vote. Pull the plug, resign and let's begin a new phase.
Mr. Fini spoke in the Chamber of Deputies, in a raucous session before the first confidence vote. Mr. Prodi's eight-party coalition holds a wide majority there, and he won the confidence measure 326 to 275.
But the vote in the Senate will prove more difficult, perhaps impossible. Even before the government spun into crisis, after a former justice minister, Clemente Mastella, withdrew his small party's three votes, Mr. Prodi's coalition held the slimmest of majorities. And on Wednesday he lost several more supporters, including Senator Dominic Fisichella.
The link of political confidence to this government is exhausted, Mr. Fisichella told reporters after meeting Mr. Prodi.
The question was not only whether Mr. Prodi could scrape through the confidence vote but also whether he could continue to govern Italy with a patchwork majority.
Political leaders lobbied heavily to form a new government, a decision that only President Napolitano can make. The most likely choices, experts say, are new elections or the appointment of a temporary government of technocrats. Mr. Napolitano could also ask another center-left leader to try to form a majority.
In a rare confluence between the right and Italy's Communists, the two groups called for immediate elections. Umberto Bossi, leader of the Northern League, often considered an extremist for his views against immigration and for a separate state in Italy's more prosperous north, used characteristically provocative language, if sardonic, to argue for elections.
If we don't go to vote, we will start a revolution, he told reporters, smiling slightly. Certainly we slightly lack an army, but sooner or later we will find one.
Mr. Berlusconi, trying to plan a return to power ever since he lost elections to Mr. Prodi in April 2006, suggested that Mr. Prodi could act as a caretaker prime minister until the next elections -- elections in the very near future.
Many on the center-left, and indeed some on Mr. Berlusconi's side who have wearied of him, oppose elections because they believe that the former prime minister could well win. Several recent polls show his party with the most support, including one carried out Tuesday by IPR Marketing, a private research group.
The poll found Mr. Berlusconi's center-right party, Forza Italia, carrying the greatest share of the vote, 28 percent, about the same as the center-left Democratic Party. But it showed that in likely combinations of parties on both sides, the center-right had a minimum of five percentage points more support.
The poll, commissioned for the SKY TG24 television news station here, polled 1,000 voters by telephone and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
IPR's president, Antonio Noto, said the most surprising result -- which might not help Mr. Berlusconi -- was a rising number of undecided voters: 30 percent in this survey. He said that seemed to show that the crisis facing Mr. Prodi did not end up helping Mr. Berlusconi.
These are Italians who are most angry and don't think either the left or the right can solve the problems of the country, Mr. Noto said.
