Prodi resigns
Italian Premier Romano Prodi resigned last night after his centre-left government embarrassingly lost a Senate vote on foreign policy, including the country’s military mission in Afghanistan.
His diverse coalition – which has been squabbling since he took office only nine months ago – failed to close ranks and support Prodi’s government, with the radical left balking at the idea of giving unquestioned backing to Italy’s traditional pro-US policies.
Only a week earlier, Prodi had forbidden his Cabinet ministers from joining a march to protest the expansion of a US military base in Vicenza, northern Italy. On Wednesday, his Green and Communist coalition partners managed to voice their objections by rejecting Prodi’s entire foreign policy statement.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, as head of state, asked Prodi to stay on in a caretaker role while he determines which political leaders might be able to muster enough support for a parliamentary majority – thus avoiding the need for new elections, far ahead of their 2011 schedule.
Prodi was smiling in the back seat of a limousine as he left the presidential palace and made no comment to reports.
Prodi aides did not rule out the possibility that Napolitano would ask Prodi to try to form a new government, and from first discussions among some allies, support for another Prodi government seemed to be building.
“We are ready to reconfirm our full trust in the Prodi government,” said Dario Franceschini, a leader of the Olive Tree, the largest grouping in Prodi’s coalition.
“Let’s hope the consultations will be useful to clear things up” and to drum up support for putting together another government.
Napolitano planned to meet Thursday morning with the leaders in the Senate and the lower Chamber of Deputies.
The government lost the Senate motion by two votes, despite Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema’s calling for the coalition’s forces – which range from Christian Democrats to Communists – to support Prodi’s policies, including Italy’s continued mission in Afghanistan.
The Cabinet approved a decree for continued funding of the Afghanistan mission, but without the support of three leftists in the government. The decree awaits parliamentary approval.
Italy deployed 1,800 troops to join NATO’s mission in Afghanistan under Prodi’s predecessor, conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi.
Prodi defeated Berlusconi in April elections to take office in May, with Italy’s 61st government since the end of the Second World War. His coalition holds a comfortable margin in the lower parliamentary house, but a razor-thin edge in the Senate.
Berlusconi had predicted Prodi’s government would collapse because of the radical leftists in the coalition. It was not clear Wednesday if Berlusconi, who had a pacemaker implanted in December, would make another bid for power.
A Christian Democrat opposition leader, Pier Ferdinando Casini, predicted it would be tough for Prodi to try to put together a new government.
“He pretends not to see” his problems in mustering a majority, Casini said in an interview on state TV. “If he wants to go ahead, good luck,” but “the country is paying the price".
Prodi could try to reach out now to centrists in the opposition, but it was unlikely they would agree to join any government including leftists that sometimes support anti-Vatican policies.
Prodi’s government needed 160 Senate votes to win backing for its foreign policy program. It received just 158 votes, and 24 senators abstained – which in the Senate is equivalent to a “no” vote.
Prodi is an economist and former head of a now defunct Italian state industrial conglomerate who is generally pro-Vatican, although recent approval by his government for a proposed law to give some legal rights to same-sex and other unmarried couples angered the Catholic Church.
His approval rating had dropped in recent months, after a brief tenure which saw him wage an uphill battle to liberalise Italy’s economy.
He kept his campaign pledge to withdraw all of Italy’s troops from Iraq by the end of 2006.
