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Aug 5,2007-Aug 12,2007 |
Giorgio Napolitano elected Italy's Head of State
The 80-year-old senator obtained 543 votes, 38 more than needed
Originally Published: 2006-05-14
Rome - Life Senator Giorgio Napolitano was elected president of Italy on Wednesday, becoming the first former Communist to fill the country's highest institutional post.
The 80-year-old senator, the candidate of the centre-left coalition led by incoming premier Romano Prodi, was elected on the fourth round of voting with 543 votes, 38 more than needed.
A member of the Democratic Left (DS), the largest party in Prodi's coalition, and a former interior minister and House speaker, Napolitano succeeds President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi whose seven-year mandate expires next week.
His election was an important victory for Prodi, who heads an unwieldy and potentially fractious nine-party coalition. With the coalition theoretically able to count on 541 votes, the outcome showed compact support for both Napolitano and Prodi.
It also meant that Prodi could finally take office, more than a month after narrowly beating outgoing premier Silvio Berlusconi in Italy's April 9/10 general election.
It is the president's job to give the winner of Italy's elections the mandate to govern, a task Ciampi preferred to leave to his successor.
With Napolitano set to take office on Monday, Prodi's government could be sworn in by Wednesday.
Addressing the so-called 'grand voters' after the result was announced, Napolitano made a point of thanking everyone and stressing that he would be "impartial."
The Neapolitan was elected in a joint session by members of the House, Senate and representatives of Italy's 20 regions, some 1,000 in all. Most members of Berlusconi's coalition cast blank ballots which totalled 347.
Berlusconi rejected Napolitano's candidature, citing his past as a member of the former Italian Communist Party (PCI).
This meant Prodi's coalition had to wait until the third day of voting and the fourth ballot, when a straight majority of 505 votes was required to elect a winner instead of the previous two-thirds majority. Prodi expressed his satisfaction after the vote, saying: "The centre left was united. I'm sorry that the centre right failed to understand that Napolitano is truly a president for all Italians... It was a wasted opportunity."
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