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Berlusconi to return to power?
Italy's Prodi summons allies for supportFeb 23 2007
icWales
Italy’s caretaker Premier Romano Prodi called on his coalition allies to give him airtight support for another government.
Leaders emerging from the summit indicated he had lined up enough backing for a Parliamentary majority in his bid for a quick return to office.
Mr Prodi’s summit of coalition party leaders was held hours before their appointment this afternoon with President Giorgio Napolitano, who is trying to determine which politician has enough backing in Parliament for a viable, new government.
After nine months of struggling to control feuding coalition partners, Mr Prodi resigned on Wednesday, following an embarrassing loss in the Senate on his centre-left government’s foreign policy.
State radio quoted several party leaders as saying after the meeting that Mr Prodi had succeeded in obtaining pledges from partners that their party politicians would give him the confidence vote in Parliament that all new governments in Italy are required to win.
The summit yielded “full agreement so that ... Mr Prodi can win a vote of confidence and quickly emerge from the impasse,” the Italian news agencies ANSA and Apcom quoted a key coalition leader, Piero Fassino, as saying.
Prodi aides said he called the meeting to ask his allies for a binding commitment to a policy programme in hopes that a show of unity would attract support from outside the coalition and increase its majority in Parliament.
“Any politician who can identify” with Mr Prodi’s forces “is welcome to join,” said Anna Finocchiaro, a senator with a former Communist party which is the biggest party in Mr Prodi’s coalition.
Mr Prodi narrowly defeated then Premier Silvio Berlusconi in elections last year to end five years of conservative rule.
Italy’s complex election law gave Mr Prodi a fairly comfortable majority in the Chamber of Deputies, but only a paper-thin majority in the Senate, where his bid to get Communists and Greens to back his foreign policy failed on Wednesday.
With a Senate that Mr Prodi cannot fully control and a diverse coalition that ranges from Communists to Christian Democrats, any new Prodi government supported by the same forces would be dogged by instability. To avert the risk, some centre-left party leaders were looking to centrist politicians who have left Mr Berlusconi’s centre-right bloc.
If Mr Prodi can convince Mr Napolitano he has enough support to control Parliament, the president could ask him to try to form another government. Or Mr Napolitano could tap anther politician or an institutional figure above the political fray.
If any of those possibilities fails to be workable, Mr Napolitano as head of state can call for new elections, which now are due in 2011.
Observers say Mr Napolitano would be unlikely to call elections now. Many political leaders have lamented the proportional representation system, which is seen as encouraging small parties and creating instability.
Mr Prodi had been facing rebellion from his coalition’s radical leftists, who oppose the government’s military mission in Afghanistan and the planned expansion of a US base in northern Italy.
icWales
Italy’s caretaker Premier Romano Prodi called on his coalition allies to give him airtight support for another government.
Leaders emerging from the summit indicated he had lined up enough backing for a Parliamentary majority in his bid for a quick return to office.
Mr Prodi’s summit of coalition party leaders was held hours before their appointment this afternoon with President Giorgio Napolitano, who is trying to determine which politician has enough backing in Parliament for a viable, new government.
After nine months of struggling to control feuding coalition partners, Mr Prodi resigned on Wednesday, following an embarrassing loss in the Senate on his centre-left government’s foreign policy.
State radio quoted several party leaders as saying after the meeting that Mr Prodi had succeeded in obtaining pledges from partners that their party politicians would give him the confidence vote in Parliament that all new governments in Italy are required to win.
The summit yielded “full agreement so that ... Mr Prodi can win a vote of confidence and quickly emerge from the impasse,” the Italian news agencies ANSA and Apcom quoted a key coalition leader, Piero Fassino, as saying.
Prodi aides said he called the meeting to ask his allies for a binding commitment to a policy programme in hopes that a show of unity would attract support from outside the coalition and increase its majority in Parliament.
“Any politician who can identify” with Mr Prodi’s forces “is welcome to join,” said Anna Finocchiaro, a senator with a former Communist party which is the biggest party in Mr Prodi’s coalition.
Mr Prodi narrowly defeated then Premier Silvio Berlusconi in elections last year to end five years of conservative rule.
Italy’s complex election law gave Mr Prodi a fairly comfortable majority in the Chamber of Deputies, but only a paper-thin majority in the Senate, where his bid to get Communists and Greens to back his foreign policy failed on Wednesday.
With a Senate that Mr Prodi cannot fully control and a diverse coalition that ranges from Communists to Christian Democrats, any new Prodi government supported by the same forces would be dogged by instability. To avert the risk, some centre-left party leaders were looking to centrist politicians who have left Mr Berlusconi’s centre-right bloc.
If Mr Prodi can convince Mr Napolitano he has enough support to control Parliament, the president could ask him to try to form another government. Or Mr Napolitano could tap anther politician or an institutional figure above the political fray.
If any of those possibilities fails to be workable, Mr Napolitano as head of state can call for new elections, which now are due in 2011.
Observers say Mr Napolitano would be unlikely to call elections now. Many political leaders have lamented the proportional representation system, which is seen as encouraging small parties and creating instability.
Mr Prodi had been facing rebellion from his coalition’s radical leftists, who oppose the government’s military mission in Afghanistan and the planned expansion of a US base in northern Italy.
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