Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appears to be grasping at straws in a last ditch bid to stay in power. When general election results gave opposition leader Romano Prodi a narrow but clear victory, Mr Berlusconi immediately cried "foul" and called for a review of 43,000 apparently "spoiled" ballot papers and the checking of 60,000 "statements" of electoral irregularities from across the country.
The April 9-10 election was Italy's closest since the end of World War II. Mr Prodi's centre-left coalition won the Lower House by a mere 25,224 votes out of 38.1 million cast and achieved just a slim 2 seat majority in the Senate with 158 seats against 156 for the centre-right grouping of Mr Berlusconi. However, Mr Prodi would have a working majority of 348 to 281 in the lower house due to the Italian system of awarding bonus seats to the overall winners.
Refusing to concede defeat though, Mr Berlusconi has also advocated the forming of a "grand coalition" after the German model that was established after much wrangling following the very close election last year in that country. That proposal has been dismissed out of hand by Mr Prodi, who claims to have won the election fair-and-square, and points to the fact that his victory has already been recognised by France, Luxembourg and the European Commission. Tony Blair and Angela Merkel have also had telephone conversations with the centre-left leader.
Even Berlusconi's political allies seem resigned to defeat, with Christian Democrats leader Lorenzo Cesa and Ignazio La Russa of the National Alliance Party both suggesting that the recounts were unlikely to change the overall result. The Interior Ministry conceded that over a million blank or defaced votes had not been disqualified, this was by no means unusual and was in fact 60 per cent fewer than in the 2001 election.
Even if Berlusconi's allegations of irregularities are eventually discounted it will still be another month before a new government is formed. Ageing Italian President and highly respected elder statesman Carlo Azeglio Ciampi would normally have the job of declaring the new government and prime minister, but Campi's term ends on May 18 and he is said to be reluctant to make the decision, preferring his successor to do so. That successor will be elected on May 12 by the new parliament that will convene a fortnight earlier. Such is the respect enjoyed by Campi that leading parliamentarians from both the right and left have suggested that, in the interest of national stability, he should run for another term. However, he would be 92 by the end of that term.
Whoever is elected president it is unlikely they will be calling on Mr Berlusconi to continue as prime minister this time around, although his Forza Italia party is still the single largest despite a vote that was down to 23.7 per cent from the 29.4 per cent attained in 2001. Both the right and left coalitions contain groups that are not popular with other Western leaders. The Northern League, which supports Berlusconi, is more or less neo-fascist, while Fausto Bertinotti's Communists will be major players should Mr Prodi form the next Italian Government as expected. The Communists will have 27 senators in the new parliament as against only 4 in the old, and in the lower house their seats have jumped from 11 to 41.
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