Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned on Thursday night after his centre-left coalition lost a confidence vote in the Senate, bringing an end to a government that was doomed to collapse right from the very first day.
The negative vote came after Prodi on Wednesday had won a confidence vote in the lower Chamber of Deputies, where his coalition forces have a comfortable majority. On Wednesday, Prodi’s government won 326-275, but the result of the senate, where the government majority was smaller, was a different story. The Senate voted 161-156 against the government, forcing Prodi to hand in his resignation.
Italy could now face an early election – 20 months after the last one – unless a temporary solution could be found in the formation of a new government. The decision must be taken by President Giorgio Napolitano, after consultation meetings with top officials of all parties represented in Parliament that started yesterday.
In the meantime, Prodi will remain as Prime Minister in a caretaker role.
Prodi, 68, was elected Prime Minister in April 2006 following a tight election, and has led a shaky government ever since. It collapsed after a small Christian Democrat Party, whose votes were crucial to the government’s Senate
majority, voted against after the latest episode of infighting.
The leader of the conservative coalition Silvio Berlusconi immediately called for an early election. But some lawmakers are pushing for a caretaker government to reform the electoral system which has often been blamed for contributing to Italy’s chronic political instability.
Suffice to say that since the end of the Second World War, Italy has had 61 governments, nearly one for every year, with the most recent longest stint having been of the preceding government led by Berlusconi, who led for a full five-year term between 2001 and 2006. And the government that has just collapsed was also the seventh longest in post-war Italy.
This was also the second time that Prodi resigned because one of his allies pulled out. His first term as Prime Minister ended in October 1998 when he lost the backing of the radical left.
On Thursday, Prodi appealed to the senators to back his government so that it could continue working on reforms, including changes to the electoral system that gives small parties so much weight and influence in fragile coalitions such as the one that has just collapsed.
Prodi had also promised to reform Italy’s costly pension system and improve economic growth through the liberalisation of a number of sectors including insurance and banking services.
But any reforms that were introduced often ended up as weak attempts at change following street protests or because of pressure from the radical left in the coalition. Italy’s economy, while emerging from a period of zero growth, remained sluggish.
The issue at stake now is whether Italy will go to the polls once again or whether a new government will be formed. Berlusconi is pushing for an early election, believing that the political crisis that has hit Italy would mean that his coalition could overturn the 2006 election result.
But there are other currents blowing against an early election, with the leader of Italy’s largest party in government, Rome mayor Walter Veltroni, saying that such a decision would throw the country into a bigger crisis.
Italy has been through similar political crises before, and these were largely brought about because the presence of so many small parties gives them exaggerated leverage in coalition governments, making it hard for any Prime Minister to finish the legislature.
Unless Italy carries out an electoral reform that has been greatly advocated – but never implemented – it is highly likely that such occurrences will continue to take place regularly, leading to a political instability that has shackled the growth of the nation.