|
Berlusconi refuses to concede prodi win { April 11 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/280e96d4-c98b-11da-94ca-0000779e2340.htmlhttp://news.ft.com/cms/s/280e96d4-c98b-11da-94ca-0000779e2340.html
Berlusconi refuses to concede Prodi win
By Tony Barber in Rome
Published: April 11 2006 19:47 | Last updated: April 11 2006 19:47
Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling centre-right coalition yesterday refused to concede defeat in Italy’s general election and demanded a recount in the hope of overturning the victory claimed by Romano Prodi and the centre-left opposition.
Mr Berlusconi, prime minister since 2001, challenged the election result late yesterday after spending much of the day huddled with his political advisers.
“We do not believe that today, as things stand, someone can claim to have won,” Mr Berlusconi said. He also proposed a power-sharing agreement with the centre-left: “I think that maybe we should take the example from some other European country, perhaps an important country like Germany, to see if it would not be the case to unite forces and govern in harmony.”
By contrast, Mr Prodi confidently predicted he would be installed as premier, serve a five-year term and heal the divisions that were exposed by the most closely fought election campaign in modern Italian history.
“The law gives us the obligation to govern, and we shall govern,” he said. “I am awaiting a telephone call from Berlusconi.”
The dispute over the election outcome illustrates the chasm that separates Italy’s two political camps, a gap that has its origins in the cultural and ideological splits between Roman Catholic and communist Italians in the 1940s and 1950s.
At the same time, the closeness of the race cast doubt over the possibility that Italy’s next government would be strong enough to pursue the vigorous policies needed to reverse the nation’s slide into relative economic decline. Fitch, a credit ratings agency, warned yesterday that to avoid a downgrade of Italy’s sovereign ratings the next government “needs to prioritise public spending cuts and structural reform measures” – exactly the sort of policies that may now prove difficult to adopt.
As the nation focused on the political crisis, its attention was suddenly pulled in an altogether different direction yesterday morning when police in Sicily announced the arrest of Bernardo Provenzano, the “capo di tutti capi” of Cosa Nostra, the island’s mafia organisation. He is 73 and has been on the run, wanted for murder, since 1963.
The centre-left secured a 341-277 seat majority in parliament’s lower house, but its margin of victory was only 25,000 votes out of almost 40m cast, a lead so narrow that senior figures in Mr Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party said a recount was necessary.
Mr Prodi’s forces were also set to have a 158-156 seat advantage in the Senate, with one independent and seven “life senators” also sitting in the upper house.
According to interior ministry data, there were about 1.1m invalid ballots cast for the lower house and 1.09m for the Senate. This would give ample scope for the centre-right to contest the election result.
Centre-right strategists said their complaints would focus on the number of spoiled and incorrectly cast ballots, as well as on the counting procedures used in the two-day election on Sunday and Monday.
In what appeared to be a break with usual practice and a jab at Mr Berlusconi’s government, Catherine Colonna, France’s European affairs minister, congratulated Mr Prodi on victory even though the premier had not yet conceded defeat.
|
|
