The New York Times-20080125-Surprising Only a Few- Italy-s Government Collapses
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Surprising Only a Few, Italy's Government Collapses
Italy's government finally fell Thursday, after Prime Minister Romano Prodi lost a confidence vote that made it clear that Italy's leaders know they face a deep political and economic crisis but are venomously divided over how to solve it.
Emblematic of those divisions, during the debate one senator rushed in fury to the desk of a colleague, Stefano Cusumano, and taunted and apparently tried to attack him. Mr. Cusumano, 60, reportedly cried, then collapsed.
If I had the chance, I would have spit in his face, said the attacker, Senator Tommaso Barbato, who had to be held back by his colleagues. His action came after Mr. Cusumano changed his vote to support Mr. Prodi.
After the vote, which Mr. Prodi lost 161 to 156, he submitted his resignation, ending his 20 turbulent months in office and the 61st government here since World War II.
If there was any winner of this hard-fought battle, it appeared to be former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's richest man -- and some would say its most contentious. Mr. Berlusconi, who has tirelessly worked for a comeback since losing elections to Mr. Prodi in 2006, urged President Giorgio Napolitano to call immediate elections, which polls indicate Mr. Berlusconi would be likely to win.
Now we have to go to the vote, Mr. Berlusconi said after the Senate action, referring to an election. I want a large majority in the lower House and Senate that's able to enact tough measures.
But with many undecided voters in a nation that polls indicate is increasingly distrustful of and angry at politicians, nothing seemed certain, including immediate elections.
Mr. Napolitano could call elections, though Mr. Prodi said earlier in the day that the president opposed doing so until the flawed electoral law is changed. The president could also ask Mr. Prodi, or another member of the center-left, to try to form a new majority. Or he could appoint an interim government of technocrats charged with reforming, among other things, the electoral law, which most experts agree creates thin, unstable majorities.
But many experts said they doubted a new government could be assembled without elections, given the opposition from Mr. Berlusconi, among others. Mr. Napolitano is to begin consultations with political leaders on Friday.
With Mr. Berlusconi's return one of the few concrete possibilities, many Italians have expressed frustration at a political system that seems unable to produce new and dynamic leaders when people are already worried about low economic growth and low wages, and whether Italian politics will be able to change itself.
We've tried the right, then a false left, said Beppe Grillo, a political comic and blogger. Where is the difference between right and left? There is none. If we go to elections with the same old law, people face a situation of no hope.
In many ways, Mr. Prodi's government seemed doomed from the start, a reflection of the difficulties of assembling a stable coalition in a nation with scores of small parties, each with a strong sense of self-preservation.
His coalition was composed of nine parties, ranging from conservative Christian Democrats to Communists. They agreed on little, and at times ministers demonstrated against their own government.
After the government fell briefly in February 2007, it collapsed fatally on Monday, after Mr. Prodi's former justice minister, Clemente Mastella, withdrew the three votes he controlled in the Senate. That left Mr. Prodi without a majority there.
But rather than resign immediately, Mr. Prodi, 68, a former economics professor and European Commission president, demanded confidence votes in the two houses of Parliament. Although he won a vote in the lower chamber on Wednesday, it seemed unlikely from the start that he could ultimately survive.
So the confidence votes turned into something like a two-day wake, with Mr. Prodi -- whose sober and high-minded demeanor is often compared to that of a parish priest -- presiding over his own government's funeral.
On Thursday he told senators it was not stubbornness that caused him to press the confidence votes, but a desire to underline publicly each lawmaker's responsibility to make reforms that he said were urgently needed.
He strongly defended his government's accomplishments, including a modest increase in economic growth -- starting from zero -- and said Italy needed continuity to make real change.
We cannot permit ourselves a power vacuum, he said. No one can avoid the obligation to indicate what other government majority program would be introduced in the place of one that is legitimately the choice of the voters.
But in the Senate debate, the opposition hammered at Mr. Prodi, accusing his government of inaction at a particularly downcast moment here.
Often using the words crisis or emergency, senators bemoaned the continuing problems over garbage in Naples and a national contentiousness that led Pope Benedict XVI to cancel a speech this month at La Sapienza University after a protest by professors and students.
The government has reached the end of the line, Senator Renato Schifano, who is with Mr. Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia, said before the vote was taken to eject Mr. Prodi. That's what Italians feel right now, and they're ready, and cannot wait to breathe a sigh of relief.
[Illustration]PHOTO: During a rowdy vote in Rome, Senator Stefano Cusumano was set upon by a colleague and had to be revived. (PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANCO ORIGLIA/GETTY IMAGES)