Prodi 'working on Italian government'
Romano Prodi, whose centre-left bloc won a slender majority in last week’s parliamentary elections, today insisted he was already working on Italy’s future government despite Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s refusal to concede defeat.
“Someone won and the other side lost,” Prodi told reporters outside his home in Bologna. “Enough is enough. Let’s get to work.”
Prodi, who previously defeated Berlusconi to become premier in 1996, told Italian news agency ANSA: “I am already working calmly for the future government and this is what must be done.
”The country needs to breathe, it needs to soar, it needs joy, it needs to recover.”
The bitter election campaign was taken up more by mudslinging than by serious discussion about Italy’s stagnant economy and tight job market.
“Now let’s leave these things aside and begin to work for the country,” Prodi said.
On Saturday, Prodi renewed his demand that Berlusconi concede defeat and apologise for claiming there had been fraud in the voting. Berlusconi said last week that there had been fraud, but quickly backed away from his comments.
Berlusconi made no public comments over the Easter holiday weekend.
A letter from him published on Saturday in Italy’s main daily, Corriere della Sera, indicated he was maintaining, for now, his claim that “at least on the basis of the popular vote, there’s no winner and no loser.”
On Friday, the Interior Ministry reduced the number of contested ballots from 80,000 down to 5,200. Since Prodi’s forces had an approximately 25,000 vote margin in balloting for the lower Chamber of Deputies, it appeared impossible that Berlusconi’s coalition would come out victorious.
But it could still be weeks before Prodi takes office.
It is up the president to give him 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.
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