Prodi vows to govern for full term in Italy

Centre-left leader Romano Prodi said today he intends to govern Italy for the full five years of Parliament’s term, and said Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s refusal to acknowledge that Prodi won the elections is “not my problem, it is his.”

Prodi spoke to Sky TG24 TV in Bologna, where he lives, a day after an Italian appeals court certified the final votes – in Prodi’s favour – for the Senate, following Italy’s April 9-10 election.

A few days earlier, a separate court had confirmed Prodi’s victory in the lower house of Parliament.

“We will stay united, and we will stay so for five years,” Prodi told Sky and other reporters. He was referring to Parliament’s term, which is supposed to last for five years, although political crises over past decades have often seen early elections called.

In a rare political feat in Italy, Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition, despite squabbles, was able to govern through the full term of the legislature.

“We won the elections and we have the right and the duty to govern,” said Prodi, who took the Chamber of Deputies with a razor-thin majority, and whose coalition holds a narrow majority of seats in the Senate. “We will do so in the service and interests of all the country.”

Asked about Berlusconi’s refusal to call him with congratulations on his election victory, Prodi said: “that’s not my problem, it is his.”

In the past few days, some of Berlusconi’s closest allies abroad, including the administrations in Washington and Moscow, have called Prodi to congratulate him.

Prodi’s office said that Russian President Vladimir Putin called him on Saturday and expressed the conviction that Italy and Russia will work closely together.

Prodi told reporters that he was working to give Italy “a government with prestige and strength” to be able “to turn the corner” on its problems, which include an economic slump.

The appeal court ruling on Saturday confirmed Prodi’s two-seat majority in the Italian Senate, giving him the final certification he needed to win Italy’s elections.

On Saturday, Berlusconi’s lawyer and a top lawmaker in his Forza Italia party, Niccolo Ghedini, insisted that Berlusconi would exhaust all means, including going to the new parliament and further appeals courts, to challenge the vote results.

“We’re going ahead because I think it’s the right of all Italians to know who really won the elections,” Ghedini was quoted by the ANSA news agency as saying.