Italy’s election. Close, but no cigar

Romano Prodi wins by the tightest possible margin--and certainly not by enough to pursue a bold agenda of reform

FOR several hours, as the votes were being counted deep into the night after the Italian election on April 9th and 10th, it looked as if it might produce the worst possible result: a split parliament, with the two opposing coalitions each having a majority in one of Italy's equal chambers. By April 11th, however, it seemed probable that Romano Prodi's centre-left Union would control both houses, but with a wafer-thin margin in the Senate.

That this outcome is still only probable reflects calls by Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right House of Liberties for a recount that could create weeks of confusion, echoing Florida in 2000. Noting that the two alliances were separated by a mere 25,000 votes in the election for the lower-house Chamber of Deputies, Mr Berlusconi demanded a re-examination of some 43,000 spoilt ballots. He also contested the tally for Italians abroad that decided the outcome in the Senate, saying it revealed "many irregularities". Far from conceding defeat, he attacked his opponent and claimed victory. His intransigence could yet spell trouble for Mr Prodi.

If the result stands, the centre-left can at least look forward to a substantial majority in the lower house. Thanks, ironically, to the new electoral system imposed by the outgoing government, the winning coalition gets a "winner's bonus" that automatically gives it at least a 50-seat majority. But in the Senate, a different system applies, making for a tighter margin of only 158 to 156 for the centre-left, with one independent. Most of the seven senators for life lean to the left, however, so Mr Prodi should be able to count on a majority of five or six in the upper house.

In any other country, this would create a delicate enough situation. But with Italy's economic position deteriorating fast, the outcome is even more serious. The economy's problems are structural rather than cyclical, and they urgently require the kind of root-and-branch reforms that Mr Berlusconi's government signally failed to push through during its five years in office. Unfortunately, after such a tight election, there is little chance of the centre-left delivering them either.

For one thing, a new Prodi government will live in constant fear of a new election. Will it want to put any votes at risk by taking on powerful vested interests? Will it have the stomach for a fight with, say, the professional bodies that everybody in Italy--except for the professional bodies--agrees should have their privileges trimmed? Will it be ready to challenge the public-sector unions' jobs-for-life culture, let alone the wage negotiators in the private sector, where pay rises are outstripping Italy's sagging productivity?

The answers to all such questions might well have been negative no matter how Italians voted. But in the centre-left government that now looks probable, Mr Prodi is likely to find himself a prisoner of the radical left. Among the main winners of the election were the Communists of Italy, whose share of the vote in the lower house rose to 2.3%; and the Refounded (but unreconstructed) Communists, who took 5.8%. The leader of this last party, Fausto Bertinotti, wants to scrap one of the few liberalising measures of the Berlusconi government, the "Biagi" law that introduced short-term contracts.

Moreover, neither of the two Communist parties likes privatisation, which could make it far harder for the new government to sort out the public finances. One of Mr Berlusconi's legacies is a growing budget deficit, which is leading to a rising public debt. Even before the polls had closed, Standard & Poor's, a credit-rating agency, had issued a warning that Italy's AA-rating would be at risk if there were no sign of a sustainable and coherent debt-reduction strategy after the election.

Ahead lurk minefields galore, any of which the centre-left could rapidly blunder into. No fewer than three important votes are due before the summer, which offer infinite scope for the trading of political favours, hostage-taking and extortion. First comes the ballot in parliament in May to choose a new president to replace Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who is coming to the end of his seven-year term. Only then can a new prime minister be chosen. Given the narrowness of the result, an increasingly likely option may be to persuade the 85-year-old president to stay in office, at least for a while.

Later in May, there will be elections for mayor in some of Italy's biggest cities, including Rome and Milan, as well as for a new regional government in Sicily. In the second half of June, voters throughout Italy will be called back to the polls to approve or reject one of the more controversial measures passed by Mr Berlusconi's government: a reform of the constitution to turn Italy into a federal state.

The best hope for the survival of Mr Prodi's coalition through all this may lie in its very fragility and vulnerability. Any centre-left leader tempted to break ranks, on a point of principle or for the sake of personal ambition, will do so in the daunting knowledge that, by bringing down the government, he could give Mr Berlusconi the opportunity for which he is waiting. Few will be ready to take that risk.

Aware of the dangers facing the centre-left, Mr Berlusconi has now offered them a seductive alternative. Why, he asked, didn't Italians take a look at what happened elsewhere in Europe? In Germany, the narrow result last September led the two main political parties to form a "grand coalition" of left and right. Italy too was split down the middle. Mr Prodi had made a point of stressing national unity. So why should he not agree to work with the centre-right on the nation's problems?

Yet any such notion seems highly implausible after such a bitter campaign, in which Mr Prodi branded his opponents "criminals" and Mr Berlusconi called opposition voters "dickheads". The two men, who first faced each other in the 1996 election (when Mr Prodi also won), roundly despise each other. They could never sit round the same cabinet table. Moreover, a "grand coalition" alla Italiana would mean trying to get agreement between former neo-fascists at one extreme and people such as Fausto Bertinotti at the other. Even a more restricted coalition, spanning the centre alone, would be hard to assemble--and it would still be unlikely to pass the radical reforms that Italy needs.

One of Mr Berlusconi's allies, Roberto Maroni of the Northern League, got it just right. If the results were upheld, he declared, the centre-left had "not just the right, but a duty to govern".

Romano Prodi wins by a very small margin in the 2006 general election in Italy: not enough to pursue a bold agenda for reform.