Italy's parliament failed to elect a new state president in the first two votes on Thursday, with a centre-left rebellion against leader Pier Luigi Bersani torpedoing his official candidate and prolonging political stalemate.
Until the new president is elected, the paralysis hobbling attempts to form a government since February's inconclusive general election will continue but a chaotic day of voting on Thursday showed how fractured the political landscape remains.
Bersani's candidate Franco Marini, a former Senate speaker, fell far short of the required two-thirds majority of the 1,007 electors in the first vote and in the second he won no votes at all, with many members of both centre-left and centre-right blocs casting blank ballots.
Political sources said the casting of blank ballots was intended to protect Marini from further humiliation after a centre-left rebellion against his candidacy made it impossible to win the two thirds majority of electors from both houses of parliament plus regional representatives.
Marini's failure, in a vote which is key to filling a government vacuum since the deadlocked general election in February, was a slap in the face for Bersani. He badly split his party by nominating Marini in a deal with centre-right boss Silvio Berlusconi.
Bersani said he needed to accept that the election had entered "a new phase", indicating Marini, 80, would be dropped as a deeply divisive candidate. The centre-left would make a new proposal for the presidential election, he said.
Many rebellious centre-left parliamentarians voted in the secret ballot for academic Stefano Rodota, candidate of the populist 5-Star Movement of former comic Beppe Grillo.
The vote for a successor to President Giorgio Napolitano, whose term ends on May 15, is a crucial step towards resolving the stalemate since an inconclusive election in February which left no party with enough support to form a government.
However the choice of Marini provoked fury in Bersani's Democratic Party (PD) and an open revolt by his rival, Matteo Renzi, the 38-year-old mayor of Florence.
The head of state is a largely ceremonial figure but has a number of vital political functions, as Napolitano demonstrated in 2011 when he put Mario Monti at the head of a government of technocrats to replace the scandal-plagued Berlusconi.
It will be up to the new president to end the political deadlock left by the election, either by persuading the parties to come to an accord that would allow a government to be formed or by dissolving parliament and calling a new national vote.
