Italy in political limbo as Prodi faces month's wait to take office

Italy was in political limbo yesterday after Romano Prodi, leader of the victorious centre-left coalition in Italy's general election, learnt he would have to wait until the second half of May before taking office.

President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who met Mr Prodi at the presidential palace yesterday morning, warned that the formation of a new executive would "inevitably take a long time" because of "deadlines and temporal procedures that cannot be ignored" and that were "constitutionally obligatory". The procedure is further complicated by the fact that Mr Ciampi's term is about to end, and he wants his successor to swear in the next government.

That means, at a moment when Italy's economy is at a standstill and its accounts in a shambles, Silvio Berlusconi's lame duck government must stagger on for perhaps a month-and-a-half before Mr Prodi's takes its place.

The former president Francesco Cossiga called on President Ciampi not to be "a purist" but to swear Mr Prodi in immediately "without waiting 40 days, during which time anything could happen".

After refusing to recognise Mr Prodi's victory and demanding the figures be checked on Tuesday, Silvio Berlusconi has again disappeared from view. A verification of the vote is in fact standard practice and is expected to be concluded by tomorrow. Mr Berlusconi did not demand a recount.

Even some of Mr Berlusconi's close supporters were urging him to recognise Mr Prodi's win. "I understand that the idea of having lost the election by a fistful of votes goes against the grain," said Vittorio Feltri, editor of the right-wing Libero newspaper, "but let it go. There may have been some confusion in the counting of ballots, but it seems to me improbable that one could succeed in recovering 20,000 votes."

He also questioned Berlusconi's attitude in failing to call his rival. "If I were the Prime Minister I would already have picked up the receiver," he added. "It is a step he has to take."

With only two seats separating the two sides in the Senate, and no more than 40,000 votes between them nationwide, it is the closest election result in Italian history. The centre-left's two-seat margin would be reduced to one if an independent senator voted in by Italian expatriates decides to side with the centre-right.

An extra headache for Mr Prodi is that, as the expatriate senators are by definition based outside Italy, they cannot be relied on to vote. Italian governments often depend on votes of confidence to pass basic measures swiftly.

The solution for Mr Prodi is to rely on the votes of a handful of unelected "senators for life", who include Rita Levi Montalcini, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1986, and Giulio Andreotti, seven times prime minister. Most of the senators for life are sympathetic to the centre-left.

"It's customary not to count them," said Mr Prodi, "but they vote, and they are part of the Senate." Mr Prodi, who indicated that he was eager to get to work as quickly possible, told journalists he was determined to enact a conflict of interest law that would bar Mr Berlusconi or anyone else from becoming prime minister while owning a media empire.

Conflict of interest, he said, "is a problem that Italian democracy absolutely must confront. We have been rebuked for not having done it during our previous period in office (1996 to 2001). Now we will do it with serenity, enacting the law of 'anti-trust.' The law will be neither preferential nor pejorative towards a particular person. We are not talking about a vendetta, everyone is equal before the law."