Second attempt to elect new Italian president
The Italian parliament today resumed voting to elect the country’s new president, but no winner was expected to emerge from the second round of voting as the two political coalitions still had not agreed on a candidate.
Election of a president would clear the way for Romano Prodi, whose center-left forces narrowly won elections last month, to finally get the mandate to form a government. The Italian president, as head of state, gives the mandate.
Yesterday evening, Prodi’s bid to persuade outgoing Premier Silvio Berlusconi and his conservative allies in the opposition to vote for former Communist Giorgio Napolitano, a widely respected senator-for-life, failed, forcing another round of voting today.
Prodi’s center-left Union coalition said it would deliver blank votes on the second round of balloting as it had a day earlier, saying it would use the tactic to force Berlusconi’s forces to back Napolitano, Italian news agencies reported.
Casting blank ballots would avoid wasting Napolitano’s candidacy and seeing him lose.
“This signifies a strong support for Napolitano’s candidacy,” Prodi said, speaking a few hours before the second vote. “Let’s hope for an agreement in the not too distant future.”
Berlusconi’s center-right coalition did not appear ready to yield, however.
Former Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli said the conservatives wouldn’t vote for Napolitano, and would also submit blank ballots in the second round.
Public Functions Minister Mario Baccini, with the small center-right party UDC, said his party could eventually vote for Napolitano, but not in the second round of balloting.
In the first round of voting yesterday by the “Great Electors,” comprising more than 1,000 members of Parliament and regional representatives, Napolitano failed to garner the two-thirds majority which is required in the first three rounds of voting.
After that, only a simple majority is required.
Berlusconi’s choice for president, Gianni Letta, his closest aide, attracted the most votes of any one name yesterday, although the biggest bloc of votes were blank ones cast by Prodi’s coalition.
Prodi’s coalition has a small majority in the Chamber and a very slender margin in the Senate, meaning that without the opposition’s help, it lacks the votes on its own to elect its choice before the margin required drops to a majority starting with the fourth round of voting.
Without identifying its sources, the Italian news agency Apcom said that talks last night among Berlusconi allies indicated it appeared likely that the opposition bloc would eventually back Napolitano, but possibly not before the third round of voting later today.
Some 1,000 delegates – politicians from both houses of parliament and regional representatives – are eligible to vote for the president in secret balloting.
President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, whose seven-year term expires later this month, was elected in 1999 on the first ballot. But 16 rounds of voting and 13 days were necessary to elect his predecessor.
