Prince of Darkness eyes Senate spot

ROME - Giulio Andreotti, 87, who dominated Italian political life for half a century, has said that he would be "pleased" to be elected President of the Italian Senate, which holds its first session since the general election tomorrow.

Seven times Prime Minister, convicted then subsequently acquitted of Mafia association - though only thanks to the statute of limitations, which states that charges for a given crime must be brought within a certain time period - Andreotti has been unavoidable in Italian politics since he first entered Parliament in 1947.

He was made Interior Minister in 1954 and first became PM in 1972.

Despite the serious cases against him, which included ordering the murder of a journalist (he was convicted but subsequently acquitted), Andreotti maintained his poise and characteristic grim sense of humour, and continued to attend the Senate, where he has been one of a handful of "senators for life" since 1991.

In October 2004, Italy's highest court cleared him of Mafia crimes but made it clear that it considered him guilty of "concrete collaboration" with the Mafia up until 1980.

But now the statesman often depicted by cartoonists as the Prince of Darkness has been persuaded to stand for election as the centre-right's candidate to be President of the Senate.

Notionally the equivalent to the Speaker in the New Zealand Parliament, in Italy the President is far more prestigious and can have a critical impact on the work of the Government.

And the importance of the election this time is intensified by the fact that, while Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition will have a working majority in the Chamber of Deputies, in the Senate it will have at most a majority of two.

The two chambers have equal power and all legislation must pass both twice before becoming law.

Senators thus have the power to bring the Government to its knees, and by championing the Christian Democrat Andreotti against the candidate of the centre-left, Franco Marini, Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition is sending Prodi a warning that it will not hesitate to make his coalition's life difficult, and, if possible, very short.

Prodi's coalition won a victory in the general election two weeks ago which has since been confirmed by the Court of Cassation, but it cannot take office until a new head of state is elected to replace Carlo Ciampi, whose term expires on May 13.

Ciampi, 85, has said repeatedly that that he does not want a second term. This means that Prodi will not be able to take up the reins of Government till the second half of May.

An Andreotti victory would exacerbate fears that Prodi's victory was, in Berlusconi's words, a pyrrhic one, and that his Government may be stillborn.

"If Marini loses the election [as President of the Senate]," said one MP in the Left Democrats, the largest party in Prodi's coalition, "it would greatly increase Prodi's difficulties in giving life to a strong Government.

"Anyone on the centre-left who thinks a slap in the face to Marini would be just a trivial thing is making a big mistake."

Berlusconi, who will continue as Prime Minister until Prodi is sworn in, has declared he has no intention of phoning his adversary to congratulate him on his victory. But he is sending out conflicting signals about his plans and expectations for the future.

At a hotel restaurant in Trieste at the weekend he told fellow diners: "The centre-left won't be able to govern, they are just passers-by. Without our accord in the Senate, not even one provision will pass."

But he also entertained his audience with a medley of songs, including one which he said he had composed himself after the election result in which he describes going to live on a tropical island.

And in another indication of his unsettled frame of mind, on Saturday he was overheard telling holidaymakers near his villa in Sardinia that the centre-left Government "is going to last for five years and perhaps longer", adding: "Power unites, it doesn't divide ..."


Giulio Andreotti

* Italy's highest court said Andreotti had a "concrete collaboration" with the Cosa Nostra Sicilian Mafia.
* The relationship is said to have begun in 1968 when the Mayor of Palermo, Salvatore Lima, became an MP and Andreotti's close ally in the Christian Democratic Party.
* Lima had been forced to admit links to the Mob as far back as 1964.
* Andreotti put Lima in the Cabinet.
* Only with the collapse of Christian Democrat power in the face of corruption trials in the early 1990s did the relationship with the Mafia unravel.
* Lima was assassinated by the Mafia in 1992.
* Andreotti denies all involvement with the Mob.

- INDEPENDENT