The indirectelection of the President of the Italian Republic was held on May 8–10, 2006. As a second-level, indirect election, only Members of Parliament and regional deputies were entitled to vote. Giorgio Napolitano was elected head of state of the Italian Republic, a role of representation of national unity and guarantee that Italian politics comply with the Constitution, in the framework of a parliamentary system.
An indirect election is an election in which voters do not choose between candidates for an office, but elect people who then choose. It is one of the oldest forms of elections, and is still used today for many presidents, cabinets, upper houses, and supranational legislatures. Presidents and prime ministers can be indirectly elected by parliaments or by a special body convened solely for that purpose. The election of the executive government in most parliamentary systems is indirect: elect the parliamentarians, who then elect the government including most prominently the prime minister from among themselves. Upper houses, especially of federal republics, can be indirectly elected by state legislatures or state governments. Similarly, supranational legislatures can be indirectly elected by constituent countries' legislatures or executive governments.
Giorgio Napolitano, is an Italian politician who served as the 11th President of the Republic from 2006 to 2015, and the only Italian President to be reelected to the Presidency. Due to his monarchical style and his dominant position in Italian politics, critics often refer to him as Re Giorgio. He is the longest serving President in the history of the modern Italian Republic, which has been in existence since 1946.
A head of state is the public persona who officially represents the national unity and legitimacy of a sovereign state. Depending on the country's form of government and separation of powers, the head of state may be a ceremonial figurehead or concurrently the head of government. In a parliamentary system the head of state is the de jure leader of the nation, and there is a separate de facto leader, often with the title of prime minister. In contrast, a semi-presidential system has both heads of state and government as the leaders de facto of the nation.
Fausto Bertinotti is an Italian politician who led the Communist Refoundation Party from 1994 to 2006 and served as President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 2006 to 2008. On 29 April 2006, after the centre-left coalition's victory in the Italian general election, he was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower House of Parliament.
Franco Marini is an Italian politician and a prominent member of the centre-left Democratic Party. From 2006 to 2008 he was the president of the Italian Senate.
The Italian Parliament is the national parliament of the Italian Republic. The Parliament is the representative body of Italian citizens and is the successor to the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia (1848–1861) and the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946). It is a bicameral legislature with 945 elected members and a small number of unelected members (parlamentari). It is composed of the Chamber of Deputies, with 630 members (deputati) elected on a national basis, and the Senate of the Republic, with 315 members (senatori) elected on a regional basis, plus a small number of senators for life, either appointed or ex officio. The two houses are independent from one another and never meet jointly except under circumstances specified by the Constitution.
According to the Italian Constitution, the election must be held in the form of secret ballot, with the Senators, the Deputies and 58 regional representatives allowed to cast their votes. When the 2006 election was held, the Senate counted 322 members and the Chamber of Deputies counted 629 members; the electors were in total 1009. The election is held in the Palazzo Montecitorio, home of the Chamber of Deputies, with the capacity of the building being expanded for the purpose. The first three ballots require a two-thirds majority of the voters in order to elect a President, in this election equivalent to 673 votes. Starting from the fourth ballot, an absolute majority is required for candidates to be elected (in this election, 505 votes). The election is conducted by the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, who has the authority to proceed to the public counting of the votes. The presidential mandate lasts seven years.
The Constitution of the Italian Republic was enacted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 December 1947, with 453 votes in favour and 62 against. The text, which has since been amended 15 times, was promulgated in the extraordinary edition of Gazzetta Ufficiale No. 298 on 27 December 1947. The Constituent Assembly was elected by universal suffrage on 2 June 1946, at the same time as a referendum on the abolition of the monarchy. The Constitution came into force on 1 January 1948, one century after the Statuto Albertino had been enacted. Although the latter remained in force after Benito Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922, it had become devoid of substantive value.
The Palazzo Montecitorio is a palace in Rome and the seat of the Italian Chamber of Deputies.
Outgoing President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, 85, was asked to run for another mandate by the centre-right House of Freedoms, with the strong support of the centre-left Union. However, Ciampi declined to run again, noting that "none of the past nine presidents of the Republic has been re-elected. I think this has become a meaningful rule. It is better not to infringe it." Ciampi was elected in 1999 at the first ballot, becoming only the second president ever to win on the first ballot, after Francesco Cossiga.
Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was an Italian politician and banker. He was the 49th Prime Minister of Italy from 1993 to 1994 and was the tenth President of the Italian Republic from 1999 to 2006.
The House of Freedoms, was a major centre-right political and electoral alliance in Italy, led by Silvio Berlusconi.
Francesco Cossiga was an Italian politician, member of the Christian Democracy. He served as the 42nd Prime Minister of Italy from 1979 to 1980 and the 8th President of Italy from 1985 to 1992. Cossiga is widely considered one of the most prominent and influential politicians of the so-called First Republic. He has been often described as a strongman and accused of being an "iron minister", who brutally repressed the public protests.
On May 10, Giorgio Napolitano, the candidate endorsed by the Union, was elected on the fourth ballot with 543 votes. His term officially started with a swearing-in ceremony held on May 15.
Ballots
First ballot (May 8)
The Union initially proposed lifetime Senator Giorgio Napolitano as its official candidate, in an attempt to reach an agreement with the House of Freedoms, whose votes would have been necessary to have a successful election at the first ballot; however, the centre-right opposition declared it did not intend to vote for Napolitano, and instead announced its own members would vote for Gianni Letta. After this announcement, the Union declared that its members would cast a blank vote in the first ballot, in order not to waste Napolitano's candidacy, with the exception of the Rose in the Fist, which would vote for either Adriano Sofri or Emma Bonino. Inside the centre-right, the Christian Democracy for the Autonomies and the New Italian Socialist Party voted for the journalist Giuliano Ferrara.
Gianni Letta is an Italian journalist and politician. He is a close advisor of Silvio Berlusconi and a member of the advisory board of Goldman Sachs International.
The Rose in the Fist was a political alliance of parties in Italy.
Adriano Sofri is an Italian intellectual, a journalist and a writer. The former leader of the autonomist movement Lotta Continua in the 1960s, he was arrested in 1988 and sentenced to 22 years of prison, having been found guilty of instigating the murder of police officer Luigi Calabresi. Sofri, and the others comrades convicted with him, have always proclaimed their innocence. The charges against them rested on the testimony of a pentito, Leonardo Marino. While in prison, Sofri wrote for various newspapers, such as Il Foglio, La Repubblica, and Panorama.
The voting operations started at 16:00 CEST; as no candidate obtained the 673 votes requested to win the election, a new ballot was held in the morning of May 9.
This ballot, as well as the first, required a majority of 673 votes. After several discussions about the opportunity to vote for Giorgio Napolitano, the House of Freedoms decided to cast a blank vote too. However, the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats declared its members could vote for Napolitano in the next ballot, an opinion that was not shared within the coalition. Due to the lack of consensus and the row in the opposition, the Union members decided to continue withholding their votes for Napolitano. Rather than casting a blank vote, the centre-left party UDEUR instead decided to vote in this ballot for an own symbolic candidate, Giuseppe De Rita.
Among the other votes, there were one vote each for rock musician Vasco Rossi and Luciano Moggi, general manager of the football team Juventus F.C..
Third ballot (May 9)
After the second ballot, Silvio Berlusconi declared his coalition would never vote for either Giorgio Napolitano or any other candidate associated with the Democrats of the Left, and would continue casting blank votes for both the third and probably also the fourth ballot. However, Pier Ferdinando Casini, leader of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats, an ally of Berlusconi in the House of Freedoms, declared that his party considered it "a mistake not to vote for Giorgio Napolitano as President of the Republic" and expressed a wish for a large consensus among the political forces on Napolitano's name. On the other hand, the Union declared its members would again cast a blank vote in this ballot, but would vote for Napolitano in the fourth ballot, to be held on May 10, for which a plain majority of votes would be required for a successful election.
The fourth ballot is the first one that requires only a simple majority for a successful election, that is, 505 votes; thus, the Union could elect its own candidate without needing to find agreement with the House of Freedoms.
The Union declared its members would vote for Giorgio Napolitano in this ballot. The House of Freedoms declared that its members would cast a blank vote; however, the decision was not taken unanimously, as the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats clearly showed its approval of Napolitano's candidacy. Former secretary of the party Marco Follini declared he would vote for Napolitano.
The voting operations, started at 9:30 CEST, resulted in the election of Giorgio Napolitano as President of the Italian Republic.
There has been criticism from across the political spectrum about the presidential elections, mostly from the minority right-wing coalition. Since the speakers of both houses of parliament were chosen by the winning coalition, the House of Freedoms demanded an impartial candidate for the role of president. The Union stressed the fact that the Italian Constitution demands that the president be a defender of the constitution, hinting that such a quality was scarce among the opposition members.
Most of the criticism focused on how the president was to be elected. Surprisingly, given the enormous heat and animosity shown in the preceding general elections, the two coalition leaders organized a meeting to try to come up with a candidate that was acceptable to both. The attempts failed quickly, with the Union arguing that the House of Freedom was not interested in any candidate, and the House of Freedom arguing that the Union was not proposing any that were acceptable.
Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the opposition, was the most vocal opponent of any candidate that came from the former Italian Communist Party, in line with the anti-communist stance he had taken in the campaign. His allies, especially the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC), openly disagreed with his intransigence but vowed to stick with their ally's decision. Yet, when Napolitano was elected, Silvio Berlusconi gave an interview to one of his political magazines Panorama saying that the UDC betrayed him by letting 60 of his electors cast a blank vote on the first ballot, instead of supporting the official candidate Gianni Letta. When the UDC argued that this might have spelled the end of the Coalition, Silvio Berlusconi quickly changed his stance by saying, as he often had, that he had been "misunderstood" and that he never gave that journalist an interview.
The candidacy of Massimo D'Alema was supported by his party, the Democrats of the Left, and by others parties of the coalition, such as the Party of Italian Communists, the Communist Refoundation Party and Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy, but opposed by others, such as the Rose in the Fist, arguing that his candidacy was driven by a particracy's mentality. Also, part of the left-wing coalition considered D'Alema far too willing to conduct backroom deals with the opposition. Some moderate journalists liked D'Alema because his presidency would have given Romano Prodi a stabler government, since the biggest party of the Union had not been rewarded with any institutional position.
In the opposition coalition, while Silvio Berlusconi vehemently opposed a D'Alema presidency, some of his aides, such as Marcello Dell'Utri, and some aligned newspapers, such as Il Foglio, campaigned for D'Alema. However, the official stance of the centre-right was that D'Alema, being an important left-wing politician and having participated in the election campaign, was ill-suited for president, a role that it is supposed to be impartial.
However, when the Union proposed Giorgio Napolitano, a senator for life that in recent years had not had a prominent role in politics, the House of Freedom objected that the Union should have presented a list of names. In the end, the House of Freedom chose to cast a blank vote. Some right-wing newspapers protested the communist background of the new president.
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