ITALY:The dark night of the Italian political soul continues. At the end of four days of consultations with all political parties, state president Giorgio Napolitano last night said he would take "a moment's pause for reflection" before any decision that might resolve the crisis provoked by the fall last week of Romano Prodi's centre-left government.
The choices facing Mr Napolitano were forcibly underlined in meetings yesterday with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and with the Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, the respective leaders of the two biggest parties in parliament: Forza Italia and the newly formed Democratic Party.
For his part, Mr Berlusconi repeated his call for an immediate election, saying the country needs "an operational government as soon as possible".
In contrast, Mr Veltroni argued that "an election today will mean more instability tomorrow", given the failings of the electoral law.
To that end, he urged that elections be delayed until either spring 2009 or early this summer, until such time as new electoral legislation (and other reforms) can be introduced.
Many commentators argue that the electoral legislation, introduced by Mr Berlusconi in 2005 and representing a return to pure proportional representation, is deeply flawed. By lowering the threshold to 2 per cent, the legislation enabled smaller parties with only a handful of seats to hold the balance of power. Thus the ex-Christian Democrat UDEUR party, with just 1.4 per cent of the vote and three out of 322 seats in the Senate, was instrumental in bringing down Mr Prodi's nine-party coalition last week.
Mr Berlusconi, doubtless buoyed by opinion polls that suggest his centre-right coalition would prove an emphatic winner of any early election, defended the system, saying he was sure it would guarantee a stable majority.
"There's no way to go other than to an early election. The current legislation allowed Mr Prodi to govern in the Lower House but not in the Senate because he didn't get enough votes there."
Mr Napolitano, however, is believed to be reluctant to call a snap election under the current legislation. To that end, his first choice may be to appoint an interim prime minister with a short-term mandate to oversee electoral reform.
Given that not all the centre-right forces want to go to an early election, commentators last night speculated that an interim "electoral reform" prime minister could perhaps call on a senate majority of 171 votes.
As of now, the leading candidates for the job are former prime minister and current interior minister Giuliano Amato or Senate speaker Franco Marini.