Five ballots to elect Italy’s head of state did not produce a winner, but did produce a clear loser. Democratic Party (PD) leader Pier Luigi Bersani was gambling when he made a pact with Berlusconi to field a single candidate, Franco Marini. He knew he would alienate a large section of his party, but if Marini had been elected the risk may have paid off. When Marini failed to reach the 672 votes required it became clear that he had widened the gaping rift in his party even further.

In the first ballot on Thursday, the 1007 electors voted 521 for Marini and 240 for Stefano Rodotá. None of the other 30 names reached three figures. 2 votes were cast for a certain Franco Marino, and one for Italy’s answer to Pamela Anderson, actress and showgirl Valeria Marini. Was this a Freudian slip or was one of the participants not taking the process altogether seriously? We can assume the latter in the case of the “grand electors” who voted for Veronica Lario, the soon to be ex-wife of Silvio Berlusconi, and porn star Rocco Siffredi (you may have seen him play a horny vampire in the classic Ejacula).

With many disaffected PD voters joining supporters of Grillo’s Five-Star Movement (M5S) in chants of “Rodotá! Rodotá!” outside parliament, and his rival Matteo Renzi heading to Rome from Florence, Bersani played for time, announcing that his members would vote scheda bianca (white ballot paper), i.e. abstain, for the following two rounds. In other words, they would wait for the fourth round when a simple majority would suffice. As the votes were tallied, President of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini repeatedly called out, “Bianca, Bianca, Bianca”, until her counterpart at the Senate, Pietro Grasso quipped under his breath, “This Bianca woman is going to be elected.”

On Friday morning, Bersani tried a new approach. The cheers and standing ovation that greeted his announcement that the PD would now be voting for former Prime Minister Romano Prodi seemed to indicate he was on the right track. Prodi is Berlusconi’s nemesis, the only leader to defeat him at the polls, and that alone is enough to make him a hero for many in the PD for whom Berlusconi is the devil. Alessandra Mussolini, Benito’s granddaughter and a deputy in Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party (PdL), was of a different opinion, as she made clear by wearing a top crudely painted with the words “Il diavolo veste Prodi” (The Devil wears Prodi – a joke not really good enough to justify ruining a perfectly good T-shirt.)

With both the PD and the PdL abstaining, electors rushed through the third round in order to reach the fourth ballot, where Prodi would require only 504 votes to become the 12th president of Italy. It soon became clear that the parliamentarians would be working on Saturday and voting at least one more time. Prodi finally totalled 395, while the votes for Stefano Rodotá held relatively firm at 213. Beppe Grillo’s M5S had proved much more disciplined than the PD, which should have been able to rely on the votes of 410 parliamentarians, as well as those of allies in other parties on the left.

The repercussions were quick to follow: Prodi withdrew his candidacy and made it clear that he was not at all happy to have been placed in such a position, and the President of the PD, Rosy Bindi, resigned. And then the rumours were confirmed; Pier Luigi Bersani had announced that he would resign as soon as the successor to Napolitano was elected. His pact with the devil had led to his downfall.

Tag: berlusconi, Bersani, Grillo, Italian politics, Laura Boldrini, M5S, Prodi, Quirinale, Renzi, Rodotà

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