Rome, Jan 25 (DPA) Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has tendered his resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano after losing a make-or-break Senate confidence vote Thursday.
Napolitano, who, according to news reports, “reserved the right” on whether to accept Prodi’s resignation late Thursday, convened the speakers of both houses of Parliament for consultations Friday.
Earlier, Prodi’s government was defeated 161-156 in a Senate confidence vote, after the premier decided to test his support in Parliament following the defection of a key ally earlier this week from his centre-left coalition.
He won the first confidence vote Wednesday in the lower Chamber of Deputies.
Napolitano has the power to dissolve Parliament and set early elections or to ask candidates to form a new government.
Prodi’s demise in the Senate – where the government’s majority was already slender – came in the wake of recent defections, including his former justice minister Clemente Mastella, who voted against the premier Thursday.
The evening vote took place after a stormy Senate session in which a member from Mastella’s UDEUR party announced that he would break ranks and vote for the premier. He was then loudly insulted by another UDEUR colleague and fainted.
Senate Speaker Franco Marini suspended the session for several minutes, while Nuccio Cusumano was carried out of the chamber on a stretcher after he fainted.
Cusumano later recovered to vote, but his contribution was not enough to save Prodi.
The vast majority of the opposition including former premier Silvio Berlusconi – who is leading in opinion polls – repeatedly demanded Prodi resign and that new elections be held.
The Democratic Party, the largest in the centre-left government, had urged that if Prodi were to fall, electoral reforms – aimed at giving Italian governments more stability by decreasing the influence of small parties – should be introduced before a new poll.
Prodi took office 20 months ago, after winning Italy’s closest post-World War II election by just 25,000 votes in April 2006.
In office, Prodi had to call more than 30 confidence votes to push through legislation, including the government’s budget and foreign policy, and to bring to heel his coalition, which ranged from moderate Catholics to diehard Communists.
He briefly resigned once in February 2007 but was reinstated after Napolitano asked him to form a new government.
In the Senate, where the centre-left majority has wavered over a handful of votes, Prodi often had to rely on the support of six of the seven life senators.
This week, with the defection of the UDEUR, followed by the announcement by three Liberal colleagues that they would also vote against the government, Prodi’s fate and with him that of Italy’s 61st post World War II government was sealed.