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Prodi claims narrow victory in the confidence vote |
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Written by Andrew Davidson
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Thursday, 01 March 2007 |
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi narrowly managed to hold his seat in the office after he won the confidence vote in the senate by a margin of just four seats.
Prodi was forced to render his resignation after his foreign policy was rejected by senators, some of whom were from his own coalition. The Italian President managed to convince Prodi to stay in the office and call for a confidence vote, which he managed to win by a narrow margin of 162-157.
Speaking to the reporters after the vote, Prodi said, "I am very satisfied, now we'll go to the lower house". Unlike in the senate, Prodi has a comfortable margin in the lower house. However not many believe that he will complete the full five years with over 39 percent of those polled in a Corriere della Sera daily survey saying that he will last for just a few more months.
The vote ends a week of drama in Italian politics when Prodi sent his resignation after just 10 months in office when senators from his coalition government voted against the presence of troops in Afghanistan and US plans to expand its airbase in the country.
Two of the communist senators who voted against Prodi are unlikely to continue n the office after one of the senators, Fernando Rossi, has announced that he will resign while another senator, Franco Turigliatto, is facing expulsion from the Communist Refoundation Party as his vote was not "in line with the [party's] democratic will".
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