A Breath of Air
In the end, we are free. Maybe. On May the 17th the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano instructed Romano Prodi to form the new government, and since then he is Prime Minister of Italy. But not without a fight.
Since the days of the election, which ended the 10th of April, a huge amount of news happened in Italy.
The election has a big story on its own. The first two exit polls gave Romano Prodi winner with 54% and Berlusconi loosing with 46% of preferences. But as the results of the counting began to arrive to the media it was clear that Romano Prodi wasn't going to win easily as expected. At 23:00 Berlusconi even took over the opponent's coalition and was beaten only at 3:00am (the results were expect a lot before, but we are still talking about Italy after all) with a difference of about 24.000 votes (over about 40.000.000 voting people).
The big fight was at the Senate were Romani Prodi reached a majority of two senators (thanks to the Senators representing the italians living abroad).
No need to say that Berlusconi decleared himself the moral winner of the elections considering the 5 years of unfair opposition by the “communists”.
The following days were filled by Berlusconi's accusations of illegal voting asking an official recounting of some hundreds of thousands of votes.
He also never phoned, as it is usual to happen in these circumstances, Romano Prodi to congratulate.
The votes were verified in a couple of weeks and the results in the end didn't change the situation. Berlusconi is still, today, complaining of illegal results.
After the results were officialised the new Parliament was nominated and the Presidents (of The Senate and of the Lower Chamber) were elected. Franco Marini was elected President of the former and Fausto Bertinotti of the latter. La Casa delle Libertà proposed Giulio Andreotti for the Senate, an 87 years old politician who was our Prime Minister 7 times and was accused of relations with Mafia.
This last month was also the date of the expiration of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi's 7 years long Presidentship of our Republic. It was decided that the new President would nominate the Prime Minister. Giorgio Napolitano is now the 11th President of Italy.
4 days after his election, Napolitano instructed Romano Prodi to form the new government, the same day after 10 years.
It will be difficult for the actual Government to do big changes to our system with a difference of just a few Senators and Berlusconi is already promising he will be back in charge before Christmas (what a present!).
We have our opportunity to do a step over, to take care of this “anomaly” who is Berlusconi. We have time at least to change our Antitrust rules and our laws which regulate the interests conflicts so that even if the new Government wouldn't last more than 6 months, il Nano wouldn't be able to candidate again.
We are now allowed to dream.
