Prodi tempted back to take a punt on power

Normal service seemed likely to be restored in Italy yesterday after the head of state, President Giorgio Napolitano, told the Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, to go back to parliament and ask for a vote of confidence. If he obtains a majority in both houses, he will be back in power.

Mr Napolitano's reprieve came at the conclusion of a desperate week in Italian politics. On Wednesday the centre-left coalition led by Mr Prodi lost a vote in the upper house on foreign policy by two votes, plunging the political world into chaos. Hours later the Prime Minister told the President that he was resigning. Mr Napolitano, the first ex-Communist ever to be president, said he accepted it "with reserve".

Two days of intensive talks followed. After sleeping on the problem, Mr Napolitano announced yesterday morning that he was returning Mr Prodi's resignation and giving him another chance to obtain a working majority. "It was clear that at the moment there is no concrete alternative to sending the present government back to parliament to verify through a confidence vote that it has the necessary majority," he told the press. "Looking at Italy's delicate European and international commitments, and the pressing need for economic and social reform, we must express our concern and hope that the country can be governed in a credible and stable fashion."

Ever since winning last April's general election by a mere 25,000 votes Mr Prodi has been dreading a disaster of the sort that befell him on Wednesday. The proportional voting system fashioned by Mr Berlusconi's outgoing government gave him a healthy majority in the Camera, the lower house, but a tiny one in the Senate. His centre-left coalition is composed of a wild assortment of parties, ranging from former Christian Democrats in the centre to two communist parties on the left; it includes Greens and Trotskyites, close allies of the Vatican and anti-church secularists. Silvio Berlusconi claims that the only thing they have in common is their desire to keep him out of power.

But this week that was not enough. The government angered leftwing MPs by refusing to reconsider a Berlusconi agreement with the United States permitting the US to build a second military base in the north-eastern city of Vicenza. It angered them further by agreeing to keep around 1,200 troops in Afghanistan. Last weekend a huge but peaceful demonstration in Vicenza galvanised the left into pressing the government harder on the bases issue, as well as on the Afghan mission.

The Foreign Minister, Massimo d'Alema, a firm friend of the US, warned the left that if they did not vote for the government in the Senate, "we will all go home". In the event only two leftwing MPs abstained in the vote. But three "senators for life", including 87-year-old, Giulio Andreotti, a dominant figure in Italian politics since the 1950s, also failed to support the government and that was enough to send them down.

Yesterday Mr Prodi said: "I will go to parliament as soon as possible with the support of a cohesive coalition determined to help the country at this difficult stage and speed up the economic recovery that is under way." Earlier, he had induced all parties in the coalition to sign up to a 12-point policy programme and promise to back it. But the opposition was rubbing its hands in the expectation of another humiliation for the left.