Italy to call early elections

Wednesday 06 February 2008

Italy's president is due to dissolve parliament on Wednesday ahead of snap elections that could mark the return to power of Silvio Berlusconi. The parliament would be dissolved some three years ahead of schedule.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano was set to dissolve parliament on Wednesday, paving the way for spring elections and a probable return to power by conservative media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi.
  
Napolitano met Tuesday evening with both speakers of parliament, the prelude to dissolving parliament.
  
Caretaker Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who resigned two weeks ago after his fragile centre-left coalition collapsed, was to head to the presidential palace at 11:30 am (1030 GMT) to counter-sign a decree dissolving parliament, Italian media reported.
  
Later Wednesday, Prodi's outgoing cabinet was to set the date for the elections, which Italian media say are most likely to be held April 13-14.
  
That will be just over two years after Prodi defeated Berlusconi in the closest election in modern Italian history.
  
Prodi's demise was triggered by the defection of a tiny party near the centre of his squabbling coalition, ranging from communists to centrist Catholics.
  
New elections became inevitable after the failure of attempts to form an interim government to correct a voting system that is blamed for the country's political instability by giving too much clout to tiny parties.
  
Berlusconi and his allies on the right have been clamouring for snap elections since voter surveys began favouring them by double-digit margins.
  
The 71-year-old billionaire media tycoon from Milan will face a new rival in the form of popular Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, the new 52-year-old flagbearer of the left.
  
The new face-off makes a change from the three previous duels between the flamboyant Berlusconi and his professorial arch-rival Prodi, both of them now former prime ministers twice over.
  
With 68-year-old Prodi's political star on the wane, the centre-left has been grooming Veltroni, who served as his culture minister in the 1990s, to succeed him.
  
However, the Rome mayor insists he is running only as the leader of the Democratic Party (DP), the left's largest formation, and not the eventual head of a coalition.
  
The go-it-alone stance has the far left fuming and looking for a viable "new form of alliance," in the words of Italian Communist Party leader Oliviero Diliberto, quoted in the daily La Repubblica.
  
"The DP took off with trumpets blaring saying it was going alone to the polls," said Fabio Mussi, head of a DP splinter movement.
  
"If the road has opened for Berlusconi, let's at least not pave it for him," Mussi said.
  
Green party leader Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio warned, for his part: "If the centre-left goes forward divided Berlusconi wins, and the DP will be to blame."
  
The far left will hold a series of "programme primaries" later this month in several cities, according to Franco Giordano of the Refoundation Communist party.
  
Italy's political crisis came to a head on Monday as Senate Speaker Franco Marini threw in the towel after failing to form an interim government tasked with shepherding electoral reforms through parliament.
  
Berlusconi, who heads the largest party on the right, Forza Italia, refused to support Marini's efforts, insisting that only early elections could end the political crisis.
  
The opposition leader has re-emerged as the uncontested head of the centre-right which only three months ago was ravaged by infighting.