Posted on 04/10/2006 9:13:27 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
CENTRE-left leader Romano Prodi has claimed a knife-edge victory in Italy's general election, but Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's allies dispute the result and are demanding a "scrupulous" check of the count.
Twelve hours after polling stations closed, Mr Prodi declared his broad coalition had secured a majority in both houses of parliament and promised to unify Italy after a divisive, acrimonious election campaign.
"We have won," he told flag-waving supporters who had waited until the early hours in a Rome square as the count ebbed and flowed in the closest election in modern Italian history.
The centre-left said it was on course to win a one-seat majority in the upper house (Senate).
In the lower house, official data showed Mr Prodi had taken 49.81 per cent of the vote to 49.74 per cent for Mr Berlusconi's House of Freedoms Alliance.
Under Italy's new electoral system, the ballot winners are automatically granted 340 of the lower house's 630 seats no matter how small their margin of victory in the popular vote, with the runners-up getting 277 seats.
However, Mr Berlusconi's centre-right alliance contested Mr Prodi's claim of triumph, saying it wanted to check reports that half a million votes had been annulled.
"This is intolerable. What is this? A coup? It reminds me of South America. Auto proclamation (of victory) is constitutionally illegitimate," said Industry Minister Claudio Scajola, a member of Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia (Go Italy) party.
The close race revealed deep splits in Italy and raised the spectre of chronic political instability in the months ahead.
Italy's two houses of parliament duplicate each other's functions and a government needs the support of both to take office and to pass laws.
A one-seat majority in the Senate would leave Mr Prodi vulnerable to the demands of junior partners and would turn every vote into an effective confidence motion.
"We were on a razor's edge, but in the end victory was ours and now it is time to turn the page," said Mr Prodi, who won a 1996 general election but only survived two years in office before being ousted by disgruntled communist allies.
Mr Berlusconi's centre-right alliance contested Mr Prodi's claim of triumph, saying it wanted to check reports that half a million votes had been annulled.Prodi's team of election advisors are headed back to Washington state, Ohio, and Florida.
Yes, there do seem to be certain similarities.
I wonder if Prodi has tried to disenfranchise the military yet...
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