Courtesy of Mish.
The seven-year term of president Giorgio Napolitano is up in May. The Italian parliament has the task of voting for the next president. However, parliament is so splintered that no suitable candidate has surfaced.
The first three rounds of voting require a two-thirds majority. In the first round of voting, Pier Luigi Bersani, the left party leader struck a deal with Mr Berlusconi to support Franco Marini, an 80-year-old former Christian Democrat trade unionist.
However, in a secret ballot vote shocking to Bersani, about 200 center-left politicians voted against the deal as did Beppe Grillo’s Five star movement.
The second round vote also failed as did the third given no candidate can come to a two-thirds majority.
The 4th round of votes only requires a simple majority. For that vote the center-left abandoned Marini in favor of former prime minister Romano Prodi.
The rally around Prodi attempt may gather in some center-left votes, but Berlusconi wants nothing to do with Prodi. He was willing to back Marini in belief that Marini would shield him from prosecution, but will not back Prodi.
The Financial Times reports …
Mr Berlusconi’s People of Liberty attacked Mr Prodi head-on and declared that it would consider backing the candidacy of interior minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, who has been nominated by the small centrist party led by caretaker prime minister Mario Monti.
Mr Monti gave a press conference in parliament to make a strong endorsement of Ms Cancellieri, who would become Italy’s first female president.
“She is not a representative of the old politics, nor of politics in general and is not a member of any party. She is a servant of the state, independent and authoritative,” said Mr Monti, who would have been a leading candidate for the presidency himself had it not been for his decision to shed the neutrality of a technocrat and launch his own party, which polled only 8 per cent in February’s elections.
Mr Monti, a former European commissioner, praised Mr Prodi – his former colleague as European Commission president – but said at this moment Italy needed a figure who would unite not divide the parties.
On paper Mr Prodi has 495 votes if the Democrats and the allied Left Ecology and Freedom party remain united. That leaves him needing just nine more to gain the absolute majority he needs in the fourth round, when the requirement of a two-thirds majority expires.
…
