Prodi faces tough test as parliament opens

By Giselda Vagnoni

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s upper house of parliament began
voting on Friday for a new speaker in the first test of
authority for prime-minister-in-waiting Romano Prodi.

Prodi’s center-left coalition has just a two-seat advantage
in the upper house Senate and is battling to get former union
leader Franco Marini elected to the prestigious speaker’s post.

He is facing off against 87-year-old elder statesman Giulio
Andreotti, who is being promoted by outgoing prime minister
Silvio Berlusconi, who has yet to concede defeat in the April
9, 10 election which Prodi won by just 24,000 votes.

Political analysts say if Marini fails to win the vote it
will signal that Prodi’s tiny majority was not enough to
guarantee political peace and might be a precursor to chronic
instability that would open the way for new elections.

But newspapers say if his coalition wins the vote easily,
President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi might appoint Prodi prime
minister within days rather than weeks, as previously expected.

Berlusconi has thrown his weight behind the hunched, aged
Andreotti hoping that a handful of center-left admirers might
also back him.

The center-left coalition has a 158-156 majority over the
center-right in the Senate, but there are seven life senators
and an independent — who can vote as they please and could
swing the result Andreotti’s way.

Prodi spent time and energy this week ahead of the first
session of parliament on Friday trying to persuade the floaters
to back Marini. Early indications suggested that the
73-year-old should just scrape through in the secret vote.

“Let’s say that there are the conditions to succeed,”
Marini told reporters as he arrived at the Senate on Friday.

The results of the vote were expected later on Friday.

The center-left enjoys almost a 70-seat majority in the
lower house, thanks to a new electoral system which provided
the general election victor with an automatic winners’ bonus.

Thanks to this, the center-left candidate for speaker in
that chamber, veteran communist Fausto Bertinotti, should be
elected with ease.

Italian newspapers reported that if Marini and Bertinotti
won through, Berlusconi would go to Ciampi this weekend to hand
in his resignation.

Under the terms of the constitution, the president has to
appoint a new prime minister, but the situation is complicated
this year because Ciampi’s mandate expires in May and he wants
his successor to do the honors.

However, concerns over a prolonged power vacuum might
persuade him to do the job himself in the coming days.

Many parliamentarians want the 85-year-old Ciampi to be
given a second mandate. The fact that both he and seven-times
prime minister Andreotti are viewed as serious candidates for
Italy’s top two institutional jobs show the power that the
older generation wields in this rapidly aging country.