Test by the Senate

The Prodi government is on the verge of resignation

Today the Italian Senate will decide the fate of the government of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi . Yesterday he won the lower house of parliament. 326 deputies supported the vote of confidence in the prime minister, 275 were against. Prodi’s success in the lower house of parliament was predictable, because even after the Union of Democrats for Europe (UDE) party left the ruling coalition, the prime minister retained the majority of supporters in the 630-seat chamber of deputies.

Success in the Senate will be much more difficult. Having lost the support of the SDE, Prodi lost his majority in the upper house. The prime minister hopes that seven life-long senators will vote to preserve the government, but even in this case he risks missing a few votes and not receiving a vote of confidence. Last night, three Liberal Democrat senators from Prodi's ruling coalition said they would vote against confidence in the cabinet. And this is fraught with the resignation of the government.

This version of events clearly does not suit Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, with whom Prodi met shortly before the vote in the Chamber of Deputies. Napolitano advised the prime minister to refuse a vote in the Senate. However, Prodi, apparently, decided to take a risk. Yesterday at a meeting of the Chamber of Deputies he spoke with a brief speech in which he called for a vote of confidence in the government in both houses: “The government derives its legitimacy from Parliament, and it is up to Parliament to give it its confidence.”

The government crisis erupted on January 16, when the Minister of Justice in Prodi's coalition government, SDE leader Clemente Mastello, announced his resignation. The reason was the arrest on charges of corruption of most of the leaders of the SDE in the southern region of the Campania region and placement under house arrest for extorting his wife. On Monday, Mastella accused Italy's judiciary of arbitrariness and withdrew his party from the ruling coalition in protest. After this, opposition leader and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi advised Prodi to resign and hold early parliamentary elections. Berlusconi, who lost to Prodi in parliamentary elections in 2006, considers early elections inevitable and is confident that he will win them.

Victor VOLODIN