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 - 37 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 is expected to be sworn in on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Addressing the so-called 'grand voters' after the result was announced, Napolitano made a point of thanking everyone. 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 the centre-right coalition led by outgoing premier Silvio Berlusconi 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 506 votes was required to elect a winner instead of the previous two-thirds majority of 674.
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 lost opportunity". Berlusconi, who unsuccessfully contested Prodi's election victory and even claimed electoral fraud, said he wished Napolitano well and hoped that he would do the job "in an impartial way".
But the billionaire media magnate also accused Prodi's coalition of "a military occupation of all the highest institutional posts".
Centre-left candidates were also appointed House and Senate speakers although the naming of majority representatives to both speakerships has been the practice for more than a decade. Berlusconi stressed that he had nothing against Napolitano personally, whose political record and character was praised by several allies in his coalition.
"There's nothing objectionable about the person - it's the method which fails to take into consideration one half of the country and creates an unprecedented concentration of power," he said. Prodi's initial candidate was former premier and DS Chairman Massimo D'Alema, a higher-profile party figure than Napolitano. But the choice of D'Alema, also a former PCI member, was seen as too divisive and raised protests even from some members of Prodi's coalition.
Berlusconi's alliance subsequently presented a list of four compromise candidates, including former foreign minister Lamberto Dini and ex-European commissioner Mario Monti, which were rejected by the centre left in favour of Napolitano. Berlusconi himself was strongly in favour of Gianni Letta, his outgoing cabinet undersecretary and former deputy chairman of his family holding company Fininvest.
A populist party in Berlusconi's coalition, the Northern League, refused to cast blank ballots in Wednesday's vote and instead voted for their leader Umberto Bossi. League heavyweight Roberto Calderoli said that "we don't acknowledge Napolitano as president", adding that his party wanted to check the ballots for possible fraud.
Isabella Bertolini, a top member of Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, said that "with all due respect, Napolitano is not the president of all Italians. He only represents centre-left voters".
But another Berlusconi ally, the centrist, Catholic UDC, said that Napolitano would make a "good president".
UDC leader-in-waiting and outgoing House speaker Pier Ferdinando Casini said that "this is proof that bad tactics can yield a good president".
Democratic Left chief Piero Fassino said the centre right had made a "mistake" by not supporting Napolitano but praised the decision of most of its voters to cast blank ballots rather than vote for an alternative candidate. Napolitano is Italy's 11th postwar head of state, an office which is meant to be above the party fray and represent national unity.
