Background
Prodi had at the time been in office for 20 months, after winning the elections of April 2006. In February 2007, the Prime Minister handed in his resignation, only to be asked to remain by the President, and winning a vote of confidence in the Parliament.
The coalition on which Prodi had built his government, called The Union, consisted of a large number of smaller parties. This situation was in turn the result of an electoral system of proportional representation, due to legislation passed by Berlusconi three months before he lost power. It was when the leader of one of these lesser parties, Justice Minister Clemente Mastella of UDEUR, came under investigation for corruption that the coalition started to break up. When the media reported an extensive corruption investigation involving Mastella and his wife – an UDEUR politician in Campania – Mastella resigned.
After first promising to support the government, he later retracted this support, and his party followed, in part also due to pressure from the Vatican, for which the government's proposed laws in regards to registered partnerships of same-sex couples, and other liberal reforms were objectionable.
The decision of former Minister of Justice Mastella arrived a few days after the confirmation of the Constitutional Court which confirmed the referendum to modify the electoral system. As stated many times by Minister Mastella, if the referendum would have been confirmed this would lead directly to the fall of the government and it happened.
The fall of the government would disrupt a pending election-law referendum that if passed would make it harder for small parties like Mastella's to gain seats in parliament.
UDEUR's defection forced the question of whether Prodi still had the parliamentarian support to govern. Presenting a motion of confidence to parliament, he won relatively easily in the lower house of the Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, where the coalition's majority was substantial. Yet a win in the upper house – or Senate – seemed unlikely, and President Giorgio Napolitano was said to have warned against going through with the vote.
The vote, held between 3pm and 9pm (CET), was heated and dramatic. During its course the UDEUR party Senator Stefano Cusumano decided to confirm the confidence and to support the prime minister, even against the orders of his party's leader. He was subsequently subjected to the abuse of his colleagues, being called an "hysteric faggot", "traitor", and reportedly spat on by a member of the conservative UDEUR party. At this point Cusumano apparently fainted, and was carried out on a stretcher. Cusumano's defection had no effect, however: Prodi lost the vote with 161 to 156 votes (one member abstained from voting, while three were absent), and promptly handed in his resignation. On the announcement of the result certain members of the opposition, including National Alliance MP Nino Strano started celebrating with champagne and by eating Mortadella (a derogatory nickname for Romano Prodi, because of his origin from Bologna).
Read more about this topic: 2008 Italian Political Crisis
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