Center-left leader Romano Prodi claimed a knife-edge victory in Italy's
general election on Tuesday, but Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's allies
disputed the result and demanded a "scrupulous" check of the count.
Italy's opposition leader Romano
Prodi speaks during a rally by his centre-left coalition in central Rome
April 11, 2006. Prodi said on Tuesday he still did not know the outcome of
Italy's general election, but said he remained hopeful of victory.
[Reuters] |
Twelve hours after polling stations closed, Prodi declared that his broad
coalition had secured a majority in both houses of parliament and promised to
unify Italy after a divisive, acrimonious election campaign.
"We have won," Prodi told flag-waving supporters who had waited until the
early hours in a Rome square as the count ebbed and flowed in the closest
election in modern Italian history.
The Center-left said it was on course to win a one-seat majority in the upper
house (Senate). In the lower house, official data showed Prodi had taken 49.81
percent of the vote to 49.74 percent for Berlusconi's House of Freedoms
Alliance.
Under Italy's new electoral system, the ballot winners are automatically
granted 340 of the lower house's 630 seats no matter how small their margin of
victory in the popular vote, with the runners up getting some 277 seats.
However, Berlusconi's Center-right alliance contested Prodi's claim of
triumph, saying it wanted to check reports that some half a million votes had
been annulled.
"This is intolerable. What is this? A coup? It reminds me of South America.
Auto proclamation (of victory) is constitutionally illegitimate," said Industry
Minister Claudio Scajola, a member of Berlusconi's Forza Italia (Go Italy)
party.
The close race revealed deep splits in Italy and raised the specter of
chronic political instability in the months ahead.
Italy's two houses of parliament duplicate each other's functions and a
government needs the support of both to take office and to pass laws.
A one-seat majority in the Senate would leave Prodi vulnerable to the demands
of junior partners and would turn every vote into an effective confidence
motion.
"We were on a razor's edge, but in the end victory was ours and now it is
time to turn the page," said Prodi, who won a 1996 general election but only
survived two years in office before being ousted by disgruntled communist
allies.
But some of his supporters were clearly dismayed by the result, which was
much closer than opinion polls and the exit poll had suggested.
"I don't understand why they are all dancing and jumping up and down. This
isn't a victory," said Luigi Esposito, a Center-left voter in his 30s.
Labour Minister Roberto Maroni of the Northern League party said the ballot
resembled the 2000 U.S. presidential election, which ended in a bitter recount
battle in Florida.
"The level pegging is very similar to what happened in Florida. With one vote
more or one vote less, you lose or you win," he said.
Official data said the Center-left won the lower house by just 25,224 votes.
A check on all the spoilt ballots, as demanded by the Center-right, could open
the door to a legal challenge of the result.
Berlusconi had trailed in the opinion polls for two years, but he fought a
tenacious campaign, wrong-footing Prodi in the final week by promising to
abolish an unpopular property tax.
Prodi's Center-left alliance, which stretches from Roman Catholic centrists
to communists, expected to tap into voter unhappiness over the stagnant economy
and rising cost of living.
However, Berlusconi painted his opponents as a tax-obsessed coalition that
would bleed the middle classes dry.
If Prodi does take office, he will inherit the task of cutting the world's
third largest national debt pile while trying to breathe new life into an
economy that grew an average of 0.6 percent a year under Berlusconi.
The next government is not expected to take office for at least a month, with
Berlusconi set to stay on in a caretaker capacity until parliament nominates a
successor to President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, whose mandate expires in May.
The president must name the new prime minister and Ciampi says he wants to
leave the task to his successor.