Prodi’s Resignation Shreds Italy’s United Left
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi managed to stay in office 20 months. His center-left alliance of 9 political parties (ranging from Catholics to Communists) collapsed in a heap last week. If there are new elections, the former governing coalition will be trounced by the right led by Silvio Berlusconi. It’s been a long time since a political grouping committed electoral suicide with such deliberate foolishness.
Wednesday, the Chamber of Deputies passed a vote of confidence in the Prodi government. In the Senate, though, the government held the narrowest of majorities. When Clemente Mastella, the justice minister, along with his tiny party, the Udeur, turned on the government, things were bad. Then, 2 senators from Lamberto Dini’s liberal faction withdrew their support. A right-winger who had gone along with Mr. Prodi on a number of issues also announced he’d vote against the government.
The fallout from the loss in the Senate is best expressed in La Republica which said the ruling parties, “only kept going through vetoes, threats and blackmail, weakening the prime minister and forcing him to mediate rather than take the lead.” Massimo Franco in an editorial in Corriere della Sera wrote, “The problem for the centre left is that it comes out of this test reduced to shreds. It does not exist anymore, and the score-settling has not even started yet.”
President Giorgio Napolitano is now trying to convince political parties to come together rather than hold new elections. Given the electoral law currently encourages small parties, a new election probably won’t solve anything. Indeed, it would demonstrate that Italy is deadlocked politically.
Still, former PM Silvio Berlusconi (Italy’s richest man and something of a bad egg) believes an election will bring him back to power. “If we don’t obtain an election, I believe that millions of people will take to the streets of Rome to demand it,” he has threatened. Just what Italy needs, political agitators in the street.
© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
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