Prodi confidence vote leads to 'political meat market'
Italy's president today asked Romano Prodi to stay on as premier and face a confidence vote in parliament.
Leaders in the centre-left majority have been courting outside senators in a frantic effort to ensure the government's victory to end the political crisis.
Prodi stepped down Wednesday after an embarrassing parliamentary defeat on foreign policy, including the government's plan to keep troops in Afghanistan.
Defections by radical leftists, who have been voicing opposition to various government policies, were to blame.
"I will seek a vote of confidence as soon as possible, with renewed impetus and a united and determined coalition," Prodi said after meeting with President Giorgio Napolitano.
But Prodi's majority in the Senate is slim and his allies, which range from Catholic centrists to Communists, have proven unreliable. Centre-left leaders have been shopping for votes among moderates and Catholics to broaden their margin and avert what would be a disastrous loss in the Senate.
"It's a meat market of senators," said Fabrizio Cicchitto, a leading member of the opposition Forza Italia party. "We have reached a point of unbelievable degradation."
Opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi denounced what he said was a market in which the names of some senators in his centre-right coalition were being bandied about as a commodity.
Political analysts noted that winning the confidence vote would not ensure future stability.
"I don't see a legislature here. How can you create a government like that and think it will last five years?" said Franco Pavoncello, political science professor at Rome's John Cabot University.
"The fact that the Senate may vote (its) confidence doesn't mean that the government will have the necessary numbers to govern," said Stefano Folli, a leading political analyst who writes for the financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore.
"The worst part begins the following day."
The centre-left appeared to have won the confidence vote of at least one centrist - Marco Follini, a former deputy premier who has since left the conservative coalition led by Berlusconi.
Follini told the Corriere della Sera daily he would "likely" support Prodi, saying he wanted to free the government from the influence of radical fringes.
Centre-left leaders also are trying to win the support of some of the seven senators appointed for life.
News reports said a vote of confidence in the Senate would not be held before Wednesday, when one of the honorary senators expected to support the government, Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi Montalcini, returns from a conference in Dubai.
According to counts by Corriere and other dailies, Prodi has the support of 162 senators, including four honorary ones, compared to the opposition's 157. Two more senators for life remain in doubt.
Napolitano announced his decision to have Prodi face a vote of confidence after two days of talks with party leaders.
Following the government's resignation this week, all coalition allies told Napolitano they were ready to support any bids by Prodi to return to the premiership.
They signed up to a new detailed government programme that Prodi said would be "non negotiable."
The 12-point platform calls for respecting Italy's international commitments in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and gives the premier the final word on any disagreement in the squabbling coalition.
"We must defend this government, defend the political stability of this country ... and defend the credibility of the Italian left," said Massimo D'Alema, the foreign minister.
No date was immediately set for the votes of confidence, which were expected some time this week.
