Italian Parliament Fails to Select House Leaders

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/world/europe/italian-parliament-fails-to-select-house-leaders.html

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ROME — The Italian Parliament met Friday for the first time since inconclusive elections last month but was unable to fulfill one of the first orders of business — selecting the leaders of both houses — portending a rocky path toward the creation of a government for Europe’s struggling third-largest economy.

“Black smoke,” news flashes announced after votes in both houses failed to return a winner, in a play on the suspense-filled conclave that led to the election of Pope Francis on Wednesday. Black smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel means that an agreement has not been reached among the cardinals.

In the vote Friday for the speakers of the senate and the lower house, most lawmakers cast blank ballots, signaling the inability to find a compromise over the candidates. The parties will try to vote again Saturday, but the strategy underscored the current deadlock in Parliament.

A government requires a majority in both houses of Parliament. Elections at the end of February gave the center-left the majority in the lower house but left it significantly short in the Senate.

After nearly three weeks of negotiations, the center-left Democratic Party has not been able to find a solution to the impasse, refusing to make alliances with the center-right bloc of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Meanwhile, the third-place finisher in the elections, the 5 Star Movement lead by Beppe Grillo, a former comedian turned political insurgent, has ruled out making pacts with any party.

“When a wave of blank ballots — from the right and the left — are cast in the ballot boxes of the House and Senate, we will have a visual feeling of the disaster that is looming over this legislature,” one political commentator, Stefano Folli, wrote in Friday’s editions of Il Sole 24 Ore, a daily newspaper.

That was indeed the sense on Friday. The acting Senate leader, Emilio Colombo, urged lawmakers to overcome their differences in the interest of a “country that is experiencing a difficult and complex season.”

The political stalemate, he said, could lead to “institutional paralysis, with dramatic consequences for the capacity to manage the important social and economic problems gripping us.”

Italy has been struggling under a protracted recession, but has been unable to enact the reforms needed to kick start growth and cut its staggering €2 trillion, or $2.6 trillion, public debt.

Little can be done before the parties choose their parliamentary leaders, which is a necessarily prelude to consultations scheduled to begin next week with President Giorgio Napolitano.

He is expected to ask Pier Luigi Bersani, the leader of the Democratic Party, to see whether he can muster support to form a government. If he cannot, Mr. Napolitano could also pass the task to a non-elected outsider.

Without some kind of accord, an early return to the polls later this year is becoming a more likely scenario. But the current electoral law makes it difficult for strong majorities to emerge.

In its first bid at national politics, Mr. Grillo’s anti-establishment party took a quarter of the votes in the elections last month, a success that was read as a sign of Italians’ growing frustration with traditional parties.

On Friday, the party voted for its own candidates for the leadership of the houses, but failed to get enough votes.

“Grillo wants to establish the identity of the movement, and also he’s still campaigning, and for him the stalemate is a political gain,” said Mario Sechi, a political commentator who unsuccessfully ran for office during the elections. “If there are new elections in six months he’s hoping to win them.”

Political commentators joked that maybe the best way to force Italian lawmakers to agree would be to put them in a conclave, just like the cardinals. “We need a conclave of the parties,” said Alessandro Milan on Radio 24. It took the Vatican “48 hours to form a new government, here we’re still waiting.”