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Italy has 1,800 troops in Afghanistan, which were sent in by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The current government has agreed to keep the troops there, sparking opposition from its own Communist allies.

The defeat prompted Prodi to submit his resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano, Prodi's aides said.

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Its Italians reliance on the capitalists system that has not gotten them far in the last fifty years...

If the Italian bourgieosie were taken out of the picture and the prolitarian were running the country then things would be better..

And your statement does not hold water and youcan say the same thing with the USA....

Were has the stability of a two party dictatorship in the USA gotten the Amrecians over the last fifty years..??

The Prodi resignation is a bit of a formaility. In Italy it happens all the time that the PM resigns and then gets invited to form a new government and in the end it is the equivalent of a cabinet shuffle in Canada.

[ 22 February 2007: Message edited by: Briguy ]

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It was not Iraq that was at issue here. Unlike New Labour (protected by undemocratic electoral laws), the whole of the Italian Left and 80 percent of the population opposed that war. The dispute this week concerned two issues: Operation Enduring Freedom---the satirical self-description of the NATO/UN occupation of Afghanistan--- and the expansion of the US military base in Vicenza in Northern Italy.

Two leftwing Senators voted against the government in the Italian Senate after Prodi and his Foreign Minister D'Alema had made the vote an issue of confidence, arguing that Afghanistan was a legal war because it was supported by the United Nations. He meant, of course, the Security Council with its iron-fisted monopoly of power still firmly under the control of five countries who were victorious in the Second world war. His arguments failed to sway two dissenting Senators from the left.

As a result, a weakened Romano Prodi, the prudent spokesman of an immoderate bourgeoisie, has resigned. His popularity was on the wane (36 percent as against 44 percent who backed the coalition) as was that of his neo-liberal Finance Minister, Tommaso Padoa-Schippo (30 percent) whose attempts at casualisation and short-term contracts for workers have also divided the government, many of whose supporters and a few Ministers participated in the mass protests of last November in defence of universal, publicly-financed social services and against any restriction of social rights.

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
Yes, the instabilities of the Italian governments have gotten that country really far in the past fifty years.

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Mr Prodi's government was brought down when its slender majority of just two in the senate evaporated, as four senators refused to vote with the government on foreign policy measures.

Fernando Rossi is a 60-year-old communist who is nominally aligned with Prodi's centre-left coalition. "Maybe if I knew my vote was so fundamental, I would have reflected a bit," he said after the vote.

Franco Turigliatto, another leftist senator with the Communist Refoundation Party, abstained. Now says he will quit the senate.

Giulio Andreotti, 87, the seven-time prime minister and life senator, abstained at the last minute.

Sergio Pininfarina, 80, a car designer, was named senator for life in 2005. He rarely appears in parliament.

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One of them, Franco Turigliatto, a Trotskyite, is facing expulsion procedures from the Communist Refoundation Party for not being "in line with the [party's] democratic will". The other rebel, Fernando Rossi, has already announced he will resign.

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the two left- wing senators who brought down Italy's prime minister, Romano Prodi, on Wednesday night say they didn't mean to do it.

"Maybe if I knew my vote was so fundamental, I would have reflected a bit," said Fernando Rossi, a 60-year-old communist, sounding apologetic.

"First off, I didn't vote against it. I abstained," said a defensive Franco Turigliatto, who says he will quit the Senate.

"We're a country of madmen," concluded Massimo D'Alema, the foreign minister. "This is a shock. A real shock".

Mr D'Alema, a former communist himself, said ultra-leftists were trouble for a centre-left government like Mr Prodi's that governed with a razor-thin one-seat majority in Senate. "What do you expect, if you put Trotskyists in parliament? This is the least that could happen."

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Originally posted by quelar:
Canadians have, for the last 40 years or so, voted to the left ...

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Firstly, I would argue that Canadians have voted to the centre (are the Liberals that left wing?) and so if the Liberal party broke apart it would be its right wing elements that would hold the balance of powers.

Secondly, Canadian politics is not left-right, it is regional: those are the main cleavages. The Mulroney coalition (English Canadian conservatives plus soft nationalist Quebec) is just as much a winning coalition as any left-right one, if not moreso.

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Originally posted by Parkdale High Park:

They fail to realize that changing the system will also likely change the way voters vote, and the options voters have before them.

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Your other statements I agree with.. and this one especially.

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Originally posted by Wilf Day:
Four who sank the PM:

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So are they now saying they would have ignored their principles in order to keep the government going?

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I want PR because I believe fully that it WOULD change the way voters vote.

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