Voting for a new Italian president headed towards a fifth round today, after the political deadlock claimed another victim, with centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani saying he will step down.
Bersani told party members late yesterday he would step down once a new president for the country had finally been elected, after his own candidate suffered a humiliating defeat.
The political impasse caused by February’s inconclusive general election has stoked concern about stability in the recession-hit country, the eurozone’s third largest economy.
Bersani’s promise to step down came after the man he backed, former premier Romano Prodi, fell well short of getting enough support in voting yesterday. As voting takes place in secret, deputies are not obliged to toe a party line.
Until the vote Prodi, a former European Commission chief, had been considered the front-runner for the job, but the right refused point-blank to support a politician who has twice inflicted election defeats on right-wing leader Silvio Berlusconi.
And 101 leftist voters also opposed him, leaving him with just 395 votes -- well short of the 504 needed to win.
The vote will now go to a fifth round at 0800 GMT today.
But Bersani said his Democratic Party (PD) would abstain from this round of the vote and resume talks with other parties.
In comments to the ANSA news agency, he acknowledged that his party alone could not get a candidate voted in.
Berlusconi, welcoming the news that Bersani was stepping down, said his party would also abstain from today morning’s vote if the left and the right could not agree on a candidate.
The political in-fighting has dimmed hopes that the political deadlock will be broken any time soon.
Bersani had pinned his hopes on two-time premier Prodi, 73, a sharp about-turn after an earlier bid to work with the right.
On Thursday, a candidate backed by both Bersani and Berlusconi -- former Senator Franco Marini -- failed to win enough votes to get elected.
When Bersani switched to Prodi, hundreds of right-wing protesters made their feelings known, holding up placards outside the lower house of parliament, chanting “Prodi will not be my president!”
Experts had warned that the mutiny from the left over the vote risked splitting the party apart -- and that Prodi’s candidacy was now effectively over. With Prodi defeated, it is not clear who the front-runner is.