Italy's president held crisis talks on Thursday to see if Romano Prodi, who resigned after only nine months in power after losing a Senate vote, has enough support to be reappointed as prime minister or must be replaced.
"We're a country of madmen," said Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema to one newspaper after Prodi unexpectedly stepped down on Wednesday following a foreign policy defeat in the Senate.
But Prodi and D'Alema, who both had previous spells as prime minister cut short, know from personal experience that Italy is accustomed to revolving-door politics -- which explains why financial markets could largely shrug off the latest upset.
After winning the narrowest election in post-war history to lead the 61st government since 1945, Prodi quit after a revolt by the left in his Catholics-to-communists alliance.
The nascent Italianisti in me has always been fascinated by the political machinations that occur in the homeland of Niccolo Machiavelli. This is no exception. The vote that led to Prodi's resignation was the very model of irony. The left and right wings each voted directly counter to their natural inclinations, the left largely voting in support of troop deployments in Afganistan and the expansion of a U.S. airbase in Italy, and the right voting for the opposite view. Throw in a handful of left wing defectors and ("Timber!") there goes the government.
But, of course, what was at issue was not Italian policy concerning the United States, but the premiership of Prodi. What the outcome of all this will be is unclear.
President Giorgio Napolitano, an 81-year-old ex-communist, must now end the impasse with Prodi staying as caretaker leader.
Napolitano scheduled over two dozen consultations with party and parliamentary leaders for the next two days, which one paper called a game of "Russian roulette" for Prodi.
If Napolitano detects enough support on the center left, he could ask Prodi to form a new government or undergo a confidence vote in parliament. A victory would allow him to stay in office.
If support is lacking, Prodi could seek help further afield such as in the Union of Christian Democrats, reluctant allies of Berlusconi. Or Napolitano could ask some veteran like Interior Minister Giuliano Amato to form a "technical" government.
Otherwise Napolitano would have to dissolve parliament and call early elections, though this option appears unlikely.
The reason new elections are unlikely is because the electorate, according to the polls, is most liable to return a government just as fragile as the current one. (See the chart below, cribbed from the BBC) For that reason I expect Prodi to return at the head of a coalition much like the one that failed this time. As a result I wouldn't be surprised to see Prodi resign again, possibly by the end of the year. If that happened there would be the chance of a "technical" government being formed, but not now. After years of Berlusconi the Italian left is going to make another go of it...for now at least.
Ed Morrissey had the following take on Captain's Quarters:
This exposed the hypocrisy of the European Left when it insisted its anti-war activism only applied to Iraq, and that the Afghanistan effort had its support. The basis for this breakdown came from an American request to expand its facilities in Vicenza, which conducts support operations for the Afghanistan mission. This would normally have received a fairly straightforward approval, but in this case the Left wanted to use it as a wedge to end Italy's deployment with the NATO forces in Afghanistan.
It would have failed except for a bit of dramatic betrayal by one of Prodi's ostensible allies. Giulio Andreotti, a former PM himself, promised Prodi that he would support the government and vote for the motion. At the last moment, he abstained instead of fulfilling his promise, and Andreotti's example is believed to have convinced enough of the others to pull the rug out from under Prodi.
They may not have anticipated his reaction. This was not a confidence vote, at least not explicitly, and Prodi could have acted as though the loss meant nothing for the credibility of his government. Prodi apparently felt the sting of this betrayal a little too keenly to just sit back and take it, and instead resigned. That puts the Left in a tough spot. If they want to be part of the government, they have to back Prodi -- otherwise, they either have to win the next election or watch the Right take Italy back.
I'm not sure I agree with all of this. Prodi had absolutely no margin for error in the senate, so this was bound to happen at some point and sooner rather than later. If the government was more robust one might speculate about this sort of back stabbing, but this doesn't feel organized. Prodi's majority in the senate depended upon parties like;
Italy of Values - 4 seats
Popular-UDEUR - 3 seats
The Union - South Tyrolean People's Party - 3 seats
South Tyrolean People's Party - 2 seats
Consumers' List - 1 seat
Olive Tree - 1 seat
Autonomy Liberty Democracy - 1 seat
The Union (abroad) - 4 seats
So it didn't take a back stab. Just breathing on the Prodi government might have did it in. (From Reuters again)
"Even if there is another Prodi government it would be hanging by a thread and would not last long," said Gianfranco Pasquino of the Bologna center of Johns Hopkins University.
"There are too many divisions in this government," agreed shopkeeper Giacobbe Rubin, 50, while on a cigarette break. "They could carry on but in three months they would collapse again."
That sounds about right.
What is interesting to see is that the fragile state of the current Italian government is renewing calls for an overhaul of the Italian system:
With a one-seat Senate majority, the revolt of two senators was enough to corner Prodi, and that prompted calls to overhaul an electoral system favoring coalitions rather than majorities.
"What needs to be done is a reform of the electoral system real quick -- a system that creates stronger majorities who are better able to rule once they are elected," Franco Pavoncello, politics professor at Rome's John Cabot University said.
There is a system that creates majorities. It is called "first past the post" and we in the United States are lucky enough to enjoy the benefits of such a system. I would hope people who (rather naively imho) call for the United States to change to a proportional representation system (see here and here) will actually see in the case of Italy the troubles inherent in such a system. The Italian people have had 61 governments in 62 years. Imagine if the U.S. had had 61 Presidents since World War II. There would be a word for that. It's called chaos. You think Congress has difficulty getting things done now!? Ha! You've not seen the half of it.
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