President Giorgio Napolitano on Thursday began consultations with political leaders after Romano Prodi resigned as head of the centre-left government.
Napolitano will hold talks on Thursday and Friday with parliamentary speakers, party leaders and former heads of state before deciding how to proceed.
Prodi handed in his resignation to Napolitano on Wednesday after his nine-month-old government lost a Senate vote on its foreign policy.
Napolitano "reserved his decision" on whether to accept the resignation pending consultations with political leaders.
The resignation was not a constitutional requirement since the ballot was not a confidence vote.
But Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema's declaration ahead of the vote that the government would resign if defeated left Prodi little choice.
According to political analysts, Napolitano now has six options:
1) The president could send Prodi back to parliament where a confidence vote would be held in both houses to see whether he still has a majority.
2) Napolitano could give Prodi a mandate to form a new government. This would imply that the president believes Prodi has enough support in parliament to muster a majority despite the defeat in the Senate vote.
3) Napolitano could ask another member of the centre-left coalition to form a government.
4) The president could choose a top institutional figure to form a short-term, non-political government which would have a few specific tasks to perform as the country prepares for elections. One of these tasks could be to approve a new electoral law to replace the controversial one pushed through by the centre right in 2006.
5) Napolitano could dissolve the Senate and begin proceedings for elections for this branch of parliament alone. This option is envisaged in the Constitution but it has never been used. It is unlikely that the president will take this line of action since it would result in a hung parliament if the centre right were to win.
6) The president could, in accord with the acting premier, dissolve both branches of parliament and launch the process for general elections. The present government would remain in office to handle straightforward administrative matters.
Early elections appear an unlikely outcome of the crisis at this stage, most analysts agree.
