WASHINGTON, April 13 (UPI) -- There's no quick fix to the political impasse in Italy following the parliamentary elections, and the earliest possible date for the emergence of a new government could well be the summer. The problem is not just the tug of war between Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his center-left opponent Romano Prodi following the closest election in Italy's post-war history. The additional complication is the constitutional time-table involving the selection of a new Italian head of state.
Berlusconi has challenged Prodi's claim to have won the election and has demanded a recount. In a press conference earlier this week, he complained of "irregularities" in the election, accused the center-left of vote rigging and said over one million votes would need to be re-examined. On Thursday, over 100 judges in several key Italian cities were reviewing 43,000 ballots, which turned out to be the real total, and commentators were predicting that the review would not change the final result: Prodi by a hair.
The prime minister also said it would be "irresponsible" to exclude his conservative coalition from the government because that would be rejecting the wishes of half the nation. He advanced the notion of a grand coalition of the major parties across the political spectrum, which was immediately rejected by leading center-left politicians. On Wednesday, Prodi fired back at the prime minister: "Go home."
In what looks like the final tally, the opposition won 341 seats in the lower house -- the Chamber of Deputies -- to the outgoing government's 277. The center-left coalition also gained marginal control of the Senate or upper house, which in the Italian system has considerable clout.
But in Italy it's the president of the republic who decides whom to invite to form a government. Although the position of head of state is largely symbolic, the constitution invests the president with wide political powers at times of political crisis, such as this. On Wednesday, aides to President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who has one month left of his seven-year term, said he would leave it to his successor to decide on who should begin the process of putting in place a new Italian government.
The question of whether a lame duck head of state has any business making such far reaching political decisions as the formation of a new government so close to the end of his term is still the subject of fierce debate by constitutional experts, but Ciampi is said to have reached his own decision. The resulting time-table calls for the newly elected parliament to convene for its opening session on May 12, with the Berlusconi government as a caretaker administration. Almost its first order of business will be the election of a new president of the republic around May 18.
In the initial round of voting this requires a two-thirds majority. Given the lack of elbow room of the opposing political groups, a successful first round ballot is seen as an unlikely prospect. After that, however, the new president can be elected with a 50 percent plus one majority. Unless Ciampi, who is very popular but is also 85 years old, offers himself for a second term, the choice of his successor is expected to be lengthy and acrimonious; and many knowledgeable observers believe it is unrealistic to think Italy could have a fully functioning new government before mid-June.
The outcome of the election does not bode well for a durable Prodi government. Gianni Riotta, the deputy editor of the newspaper Corriere della Sera, writing in the New York Times op-ed page Thursday gives the center-left coalition two years "to make the urgent economic reforms the country badly needs to compete in the global economy." Others feel Prodi is unlikely to last even that long before being forced to call new elections. His former communist extreme left will resist progress, but the prime minister designate, Riotta wrote, "can count on a few moderate parliamentarians ready to help him quicken the somnolent rhythm of the Italian markets. Roman politics, with its tradition of the Borgias, can absorb a lot of his energy."
