On Friday of this week, voting will begin on the future Presidents of the Italian House and Senate. Thanks to the "premio di maggioranza", Romano Prodi's coalition obtained a comfortable majority in the Camera (House), so there should be no problem in voting in the candidate of the center-left for President of the Camera, Fausto Bertinotti.

In the Senate, however, Prodi's majority is much much slimmer ("risicata"), maybe as few as one or two seats, and the election of ex-Christian Democrat Franco Marini looks more problematic. The contribution of the new senators elected by the Italians Abroad may well be decisive.

Add to this the fact that the Berlusconi's center-right coalition have proposed a rival candidate of their own, the 87-year-old life-senator Giulio Andreotti, also a former member of the Christian Democrat (DC) inner circle, head of several DC governments and a frequent minister in others. His candidacy is something of a Trojan horse or a spanner in the works.

When the broad-spectrum Christian Democrat party broke up after the Tangentopoli corruption scandal, its members didn't just go home. As politicians tend to do, they stayed on in politics allying themselves "transversally" across the political board.

There are former Christian Democrats on the right and on the left. Pier Ferdinando Casini's center-right UDC is made up of former Christian Democrats, as is Clemente Mastella's tiny center-left UDEUR party. But so is Rutelli's important center-left Margherita, the second most voted political group and the group who proposed rival candidate Franco Marini.

The fear now, since the vote is secret, is of Christian Democrat crossovers from the center-left coalition in favor of such a prestigious (though extremely controversial) Grand Old Man as Andreotti.

And let us not forget that the President of the Senate is the second highest office in the Republic, in other words, the first stand-in for the President of the Republic, currently 86-year-old Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, whose mandate expires in May 2006.

The election of Andreotti would have the effect of tying the new government's hands at the outset of their proposed legislation.
Voting begins on Friday, April 28. If the first round does not produce a two-thirds (i.e., bipartisan) majority, voting continues with a lowering of the electoral bar, making the election of the new President eventually possible with a simple majority vote.

Changing the subject, I am leaving Bologna for a few days in Sardinia starting next Monday. I'll get back to you from there. I won't be staying at Berlusconi's luxury villa on the Costa Smeralda.