Sergio Mattarella was elected
Italy's new president on Saturday.
The 73-year-old, a former member of the once-dominant but
now-defunct Christian Democrat (DC) party, becomes Italy's 12th
president and replaces 89-year-old Giorgio Napolitano, who
resigned as head of State this month.
Mattarella, who will be sworn-in as Italian president in
the Lower House at 10:00 local time on Tuesday, said his first
thoughts after being elected were devoted to "difficulties and
hopes of the citizens".
"That alone is enough," added the new head of State after
being formally informed of his election at the Constitutional
Court.
Lower House Speaker Laura Boldrini had proclaimed
Mattarella Italy's new head of State earlier, saying he won 665
votes of the 1,009 presidential 'grand electors' - lawmakers
from both houses of parliament and regional representatives.
The announcement was greeted by a long standing ovation,
although members of the 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the rightwing
Northern League did not join in.
Mattarella, who will now have to leave his post as
Constitutional Court justice, was the candidate of Premier
Matteo Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and had the
backing of several groups.
These included the opposition Left, Ecology and Freedom
(SEL) group and the New Centre Left (NCD) of Interior Minister
Angelino Alfano.
The M5S candidate Ferdinando Imposimato came second with
127 votes.
Three-time premier Silvio Berlusconi's opposition,
centre-right Forza Italia was opposed to Mattarella and ordered
its members to cast blank papers - 105 of which were counted.
The right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) and Northern League
parties voted for journalist Vittorio Feltri, who got 46 votes.
The first three rounds of voting for a new president, when
a two-thirds majority was needed, were inconclusive on Thursday
and Friday after the PD and FI told their members to cast blank
papers.
On Saturday Renzi sent a text message thanking his PD
after Matterella's election, which should help bury the memory
of the debacle the party endured in the 2013 presidential vote.
On that occasion two candidates proposed by then-PD leader
Pier Luigi Bersani were scuppered by internal revolts, forcing
Bersani and chiefs from other parties to beg Napolitano to start
an unprecedented second term.
Napolitano agreed to avert a crisis, but stressed that he
would not serve the whole of his second seven-year term.
In Italy the president is a figurehead of national unity
and the arbiter of Italian politics.
Earlier this week Berlusconi has said that, by choosing a
candidate he is unhappy with, Renzi had broken the terms of the
so-called Nazareno Pact they struck last year for a new election
law and a revamp of Italy's slow, costly political system.
Mattarella once resigned as minister rather than vote a
broadcasting law that favored Berlusconi's Mediaset empire.
But on Saturday, three-time premier Berlusconi sent
Mattarella congratulating him, ANSA sources said.
Mattarella became a founding member of Renzi's PD years
after the DC folded, and is also famous for being the architect
of Italy's last-but-one election law, the so-called Mattarellum.
Mattarella's brother, Piersanti Mattarella, also a DC man,
was murdered by the Mafia in 1980 while he was governor of
Sicily.
His father, Bernardo Mattarella, served as a DC cabinet
minister several times in the 1950s and 1960s.
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