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Divided partner debates future in new Italian government |
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April 28, 2000 ROME, APR 27 (AP) - The Greens party, one of the center-left partners in Premier Giuliano Amato's one-day-old government, on Thursday debated whether to pull out of the coalition over losing the environment ministry.
Nearly three hours into their meeting, there was no sign of whether the Greens would stay in the government, which Amato hopes to lead to elections next spring, or quit, either offering backing in Parliament anyway or go their own way.
Already one prominent Greens deputy, Massimo Scalia, was raising doubts about supporting Amato in the required confidence vote.
"My vote of confidence isn't a given," Scalia was quoted as saying in an interview Thursday in Milan daily Corriere della Sera.
Amato was scheduled in mid-afternoon to address the lower of Chamber of Deputies, pitching for the legislators' vote of confidence in his new coalition.
Should Amato lose the vote, scheduled for Friday evening, he would be forced to resign.
Various tallies by Italian reporters regularly covering the chamber indicated Amato was likely to just squeak by, although the outcome is likely to be close win or lose.
There has been grumbling already in the new coalition by other parties unhappy with their allotted ministries.
To win, Amato needs one more than one-half of those voting in the 630-member chamber.
Amato has a wider margin in the smaller Senate, and should be able to win there despite the announcement of a no vote by Antonio Di Pietro, the former Clean Hands corruption prosecutor who is now a senator in the Democrats, a coalition partner.
Di Pietro has been railing against Amato's links in past decades to Bettino Craxi, the Socialist leader who was brought down by Di Pietro's probes and who died in self-exile last year in Tunisia.
Amato was a top aide to Craxi, although the integrity of the new premier himself was never questioned during the scandals. Amato, now an independent, was a Socialist still in the early '90s when he helped guided the country throught the first years of the scandal.
Amato's chronically bickering parties are united chiefly in their desire to keep Silvio Berlusconi's surging conservatives from power.
They forced Massimo D'Alema to resign last week, 18 months into office, after the center-right led by Berlusconi, a media mogul and former premier, trounced the center-right in regional elections.
Ominously for the future of his eight-party coalition, Amato, a 61-year-old veteran known as "Dr. Subtle" for his political finesse and his slender frame, proved unable to quell squabbling over Cabinet posts even long enough for the oath-taking on Wednesday.
Amato,
who served as D'Alema's treasury minister, put together a coalition
with most of the same faces, with partners ranging from former Communists to
Communist hard-liners to liberal former Christian Democrats.
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