Two hard-left senators who helped bring down Romano Prodi's government remained unrepentant on Thursday.
Franco Turigliatto of the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC) and ex-Italian Communists' Party (PDCI) member Fernando Rossi both abstained during a Senate vote on Wednesday on the government's foreign policy.
The government - which holds only one more seat than the opposition in the upper chamber - lost the ballot by two votes, leading Prodi to resign.
Given that abstentions in the Senate essentially count as negative votes, the actions of Rossi and Turigliatto were decisive.
Rossi told reporters on Thursday that "I slept well last night and didn't read the papers today".
"When my colleagues saw that the government had fallen, they treated me as if I were responsible, which was understandable. But afterwards, the sensible ones realised that the government would have fallen anyway," he said.
"I say to those who look on me as a traitor that I didn't bring the government down... I have a clean conscience," added Rossi, who was expelled from the PDCI shortly after being appointed senator and currently belongs to the tiny Consumers United movement.
Turigliatto, who was thrown out of his party on Thursday, said after the Senate vote that "I have not repented and I don't feel responsible because I declared my intentions a long time before the ballot".
"I don't want another government but I want to have the possibility of voting according to my wishes on individual issues... I cannot keep voting against myself," he said.
Both Rossi and Turigliatto are against the continuation of Italy's 1,900-strong peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, arguing that the country has become too dangerous for peacekeepers.
They are also angry at Prodi for greenlighting the expansion of a US military base in the northern city of Vicenza.
More than 70,000 people took part in a demo in Vicenza last Saturday in protest at the base's enlargement, including several key Prodi allies - PRC chief Franco Giordano and PDCI leader Oliviero Diliberto.
The issues of Afghanistan and the Vicenza base have caused a rift between Prodi and the PRC, the PDCI and the pacifist Green party.
But the three parties sought to bring rebel members into line for the Wednesday Senate vote.
They also expressed their support for Prodi after he quit, stressing that they would back the former European Commission chief if he is asked to remain in power by President Giorgio Napolitano.
The PRC expressed mortification at Turigliatto's actions.
It said in a statement on Wednesday evening that "there can be nothing more antidemocratic or violent than using a position of privilege to change the decisions and political allegiances of one's party".
Both Turigliatto and Rossi said that they would have voted for the government if bound, as in past Senate ballots, by a do-or-die confidence ballot.
In the immediate aftermath, they gave the impression that they had not understood the potential consequences of their actions.
Rossi told reporters that "my colleagues tried to warn me during the vote that the government was going under but I didn't listen to them, also because I didn't realise what was happening when I looked at the electronic voting board".
Prodi's first, 1996 government was brought down in 1998 by the PRC which went against him in a parliamentary confidence vote.
Prodi lost that ballot by one vote.
