The Hindu : International : Prodi vows to form strong regime

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 12, 2006

International

International

Prodi vows to form strong regime

Vaiju Naravane

Berlusconi allies to challenge the official results, demand recount of votes

Rome: After a photo-finish, Romano Prodi's Centre-Left alliance appears to have beaten Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's conservative House of Freedom alliance to wrest power in the most closely and bitterly-fought general election in Italian history.

Mr. Prodi's Centre-Left alliance has won the lower House or Chamber of Deputies by a whisker — a mere 25,000 votes of the nearly 38 million ballots cast, while results for the Senate now depend on votes cast by Italians residing abroad who hold the key to six Senatorial seats. Early reports suggest that Mr Prodi's grouping has won five of the six seats. However, this has yet to be officially confirmed.

Victory speech

In a victory speech on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Prodi said he would lead a strong government, making Europe and peace his priorities. Despite a projected wafer-thin margin of victory over Mr. Berlusconi, Mr. Prodi said his government would be "strong politically as well as technically."

Mr. Berlusconi and his Right-wing allies have decided to contest the official results for the lower House announced by the Interior Ministry. They are demanding a recount of some 500,000 votes that were declared invalid. Mr Prodi's alliance, being the formation that polled the most votes, will automatically be accorded 340 seats in the 630-member Chamber of Deputies, allowing him to form a stable government.

If the Senate were to fall into the hands of the Conservatives, Italy would become ungovernable since the upper House, elected by direct, universal suffrage, has almost as much power as the Chamber of Deputies.

Monday was a day of wild yo-yoing with Mr Prodi up one moment and down the next. From the moment the polls closed at 3 p.m. local time until 6 p.m., pollsters kept on predicting an easy win for Mr. Prodi's alliance and the Prime Minister-in-waiting was getting ready to make a victory declaration.

Tough poll battle

And then, as more and more results came rolling in, the situation began to change. A little past midnight the two political formations were running neck-and-neck.

The exit polls couldn't have got it more wrong. What was predicted to be an easy win for the Centre-Left alliance almost became a historic comeback for Mr. Berlusconi. In many ways this is a Pyrrhic victory for Mr. Prodi who was placed ahead by almost five points throughout the campaign. The last week of campaigning was the toughest. Mr. Berlusconi used every trick in the book to fight back and managed to reduce the five-point lead to a wafer-thin margin.

His TV stations repeatedly violated the "equal air time" rule and his party sent out thousands of SMS messages and made hundreds of telephone calls on the eve of the election — totally banned under electoral rules.

With the threat of new legislation that would change laws he passed giving himself immunity from prosecution and which furthered his own business interests, Mr. Berlusconi is unlikely to give in without a tough fight.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail