Italy mired in uncertainty of ballot dispute
Judges began inspecting more than 80,000 contested ballots, with Italian politics in turmoil and the country’s future mired in uncertainty following Romano Prodi’s narrow electoral victory and Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s demands for a recount.
Opposition leaders yesterday accused the premier of behaving irresponsibly for not accepting the election results given by the Interior Ministry following balloting on Sunday and Monday.
“Prodi and the centre-left have won the elections, and the premier continues to refuse to accept defeat, behaving in an incomprehensible and, given his institutional role, irresponsible manner,” Piero Fassino, leader of the Democrats of the Left, the largest bloc in Prodi’s coalition, was quoted as saying by Italian news agencies.
Official returns gave Prodi’s centre-left coalition the majority in both houses of parliament in the April 9-10 elections – but the margin was a mere 25,000 votes in the lower Chamber of Deputies.
As is routine after an election, judges were examining 43,000 ballots from the chamber that were not immediately included in the overall official count because there were possible problems, but not enough to invalidate them outright.
They also were examining another 39,000 ballots for the Senate vote. There were some closely fought regions that could swing the overall number of senators in favour of Berlusconi’s coalition. In the Naples’ region, Campania, Prodi’s forces won with 49.6% to 49.1% for Berlusconi.
“We are examining the markings that were left on the ballots. Through markings we will be able to understand why the polling station did not assign a vote to a party,” said Judge Evangelista Popolizio, president of the Lazio region’s electoral office for the Senate.
And according to the law “we either assign or do not assign the vote,” she told AP Television News.
Prodi insisted his victory was on solid ground. “There is nothing to worry about. We are serene,” he said in his home city of Bologna, where he has gone to spend the Easter holidays.
Late yesterday, his office announced that Prodi had received calls of congratulations from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
According to the statement, Merkel told Prodi that she looked forward to working with him. It said Blair and Prodi held “a long, friendly and cordial conversation”.
Berlusconi has refused to concede.
He has also demanded checks “one by one” of at least 60,000 polling stations - almost all of them – and more than one million annulled ballots.
But by law, only ballots that are contested can be checked by the judges. All other complaints regarding blank, null or otherwise irregular ballots must be taken up by parliamentary commissions formed once the new parliament convenes.
Newspapers and politicians say checks of contested ballots so far indicate the ballots would not change the balance, and experts say that it is unlikely, statistically and historically, that either side would win 50% of contested ballots.
Italy’s leading daily, Corriere della Sera, said Berlusconi’s challenge leaves Italy “even more divided than during the electoral campaign”, and in an editorial yesterday compared Italy’s situation to the 2000 presidential race in the US, when the election hinged on a recount in the key state of Florida.
“At this point, it is difficult not to fear a kind of 'Italian-style Florida',” Corriere said.
The process could take weeks. The outcome of the election must be approved by Italy’s highest court, and it is up the president to give the head of the winning coalition a mandate to form a government.
However, the president’s term ends in mid-May, and the current president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, has said he would leave the decision up to his successor.
Parliament has until May 13 to elect a new president, meaning a new government would not be formed until mid-May at the earliest.
Later yesterday, the Interior Ministry defended the role of Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu, who opposition politicians had blamed for not responding to Berlusconi’s criticisms of the electoral process.
“The ministry has guaranteed with its usual care the organisation of the vote and the ensuing release of the provisional results,” the statement said. Pisanu “trusts that the objective knowledge of the facts, the serene understanding of the rules and a common sense of responsibility will finally end the polemics and exploitation that appear especially damaging at such a delicate time for the country’s democracy”.
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