Outgoing Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced his resignation,
hours after centre-left leader Romano Prodi succeeded in getting his candidates
elected to the influential posts of speaker in both houses of parliament.
Centre left coalition Speaker candidate Franco
Marini (R) looks away as he waits for the results of the vote for the
speaker of Italy's Senate in the upper house in Rome. Marini won the top
Senate job. The Senate speaker is also the country's vice president and
holds the second most powerful position in Italian politics.
[AFP] |
Berlusconi, the narrow loser in the
April 9-10 general election, said he would hold his last cabinet meeting on
Tuesday at 12:30 pm (1030 GMT) and immediately afterwards hand in his
resignation to President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
Ciampi, whose presidential term expires on May 18, must decide whether
formally to ask Prodi to form the new government or whether he will leave the
duty to his successor as head of state.
The political left hopes Ciampi will move swiftly to get a new government in
place and cut short what as been a trying month of uncertainty.
Berlusconi's conservative alliance has sought to block the new centre-left
government at every turn, especially in the upper house -- the Senate -- where
Prodi's coalition has only a tiny two-seat majority.
But on Saturday morning the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, gave the
post of speaker to Fausto Bertinotti, leader of the refounded communist party,
which is part of Prodi's coalition.
And in the afternoon Franco Marini of the centre-left Margherita party,
another of Prodi's coalition allies, won the top Senate job. The Senate speaker
is also the country's vice president and holds the second most powerful position
in Italian politics.
Berlusconi, who has bitterly contested the election result and refused
formally to concede to Prodi, had indicated that he would tender his resignation
to Ciampi once the speakers of both houses were chosen.
But even that was thrown into question earlier on Saturday when "Il
Cavaliere" told journalists he would step down "when the time is right".
The announcement that he would finally relinquish the reins of power, made to
reporters at his coalitions headquarters shortly after Prodi's candidates were
elected as speakers, lifted a considerable weight from the left's shoulders.
"Everything fell into place in the space of four hours," Prodi said after the
parliamentary votes.
The 66-year-old former economics professor now has the means to govern,
despite his narrow election victory.
Prodi's successes on Saturday came after an arduous battle with the right,
which has been accused of deliberate obstruction tactics.
Prodi's Union coalition got off to a shaky start when his choices to lead the
houses of parliament were rejected on Friday.
Bertinotti, 66, only won the top post in the Chamber of Deputies after four
rounds of voting. Some members of Prodi's own alliance -- which ranges from
centrists to communists -- are thought to have voted against him, although he
finally obtained more than the simple majority needed.
It was a harder fought leadership battle in the Senate, where Prodi's
coalition has 158 seats, against 156 for Berlusconi's conservative House of
Freedoms alliance.
Prodi's candidate Marini, a 73-year-old former trade union leader, failed to
win two rounds of voting plus a repeat ballot.
It was not until Saturday afternoon that he clinched a slim nine-vote victory
over right-winger Guilio Andreotti, the 87-year-old former leader of the
Christian Democrats, who dominated Italian politics from the end the World War
II to the early 1990s.
Marini said he would be "the speaker of all the senators, attentive to the
rights of both the majority and the minority".
Both he and Bertinotti were received by President Ciampi on Saturday and
joined him at a commemoration at Ciampino military airport to mark the return of
the bodies of three Italian soldiers killed in Iraq on Thursday.
One of Prodi's next tests, in the face of the right's threat to block every
move his government makes, will come when he seeks a vote of confidence.
"Our objective is to bring it (the government) down as soon as possible,"
said outgoing Welfare Minister Roberto Maroni on Friday.
"Berlusconi knows that if it lasts five years, he will find it difficult to
run as head of government again. But if it doesn't last even a year, he will go
forward," he said.