Italy picked a former communist, Giorgio Napolitano, to be its new president on Wednesday, opening the way for Romano Prodi to become prime minister more than a month after winning a close-run general election.
Napolitano, an 80-year-old senator for life, secured 543 votes from the "grand electors" - parliamentarians and regional representatives -, 38 more than the absolute majority needed.
The result was a crucial victory for Prodi who cannot take his centre-left coalition into power until the new president gives him a mandate to govern.
It was the latest blow to outgoing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon who took three took three weeks to accept he lost the April 9-10 national election by a whisker.
After the vote, Prodi told reporters he expected his government to be sworn in by next Wednesday, after Napolitano takes over from President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi on Monday and begins his seven-year term.
"A man has been elected who will demonstrate the unity of the country and he will be appreciated by everybody," Prodi told Reuters Television.
The president-elect is a member of the Democrats of the Left, the post-Cold War incarnation of what was once Western Europe's biggest communist party. He becomes the first ex-communist to take the country's highest political seat.
Napolitano's victory will have come as a huge relief to Prodi as it showed he does have the political stature to rally his troops to defeat Berlusconi, who remains a strong force as head of the single biggest party in parliament.
Napolitano, a former house speaker and interior minister who was appointed to the rare honorary position of senator for life last year, will be Italy's 11th head of state since 1945.
The post of president is largely ceremonial but he has the power to name the prime minister, dissolve parliament and send legislation back to parliament if he deems it unconstitutional.
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