It's a solution that came after all other avenues were exhausted. On April 29, more than two months after the Italian elections, the country's Parliament is expected to give life to a coalition government. Led by Enrico Letta, a high-ranking member of the center-left Democratic Party, Italy's new administration will be dependent on support from former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a man many in Letta's party regard as the enemy. Indeed, the deal comes only after efforts to find another solution exposed deep rifts in the Democratic Party. After an election in which no party was able to secure a clear victory, Pier Luigi Bersani, the party's leader during the elections, fervently opposed any compromise with the intercourse-scandal-plagued media mogul, only to resign his position last week after repeatedly trying and failing to get his parliamentarians to vote for his candidates for the Italian presidency. "On any issue of relevance, the party is split," says Roberto D'Alimonte, a professor of political science at Rome's LUISS University. "Letta might get more support from Berlusconi than his own party. That's the paradox." The deal follows weeks of political brinkmanship in which the Democratic Party struggled to strike a deal with the Five Star Movement, a surging protest party headed by the angry comedian Beppe Grillo, who doggedly rebuffed efforts by Bersani to draw him into a coalition. Grillo, who doesn't hold elected office, has condemned the government-forming deal as a corrupt pact between unpopular political parties, one that plays into Berlusconi's hands. His parliamentarians have pledged to stay in the opposition — positioning themselves as an alternative in future elections. (MORE: Beppe Grillo — Italy's Comedian Turned Kingmaker) In the meantime, the pact yields a new government that will only survive through compromise. With the Democratic Party having proved that it is incapable of holding the line, Berlusconi will be able to easily claim to control the government's largest block of support. Recent opinion polls put Berlusconi's party well ahead of his opponents, so there's little question that Letta's government will be(http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=world.time.com&blog=19871253&post=83871&subd=timeglobalspin&ref=&feed=1)
Via: TIME GlobalSpin