As Italian lawmakers begin the painstaking process of choosing a successor to aging President Giorgio Napolitano, former European Commissioner Emma Bonino has emerged as a dark horse contender to become Italy’s first female president.
Despite gaining significant support from both the left and the right, the 65-year-old Bonino is regarded as an underdog as the 949 members of the Italian Parliament, including four senators for life, and 58 regional representatives begin voting for Napolitano’s successor later today.
Former labor leader Franco Marini, a one-time president of the Senate whose candidacy has been championed by center-left leader Pier Liugi Bersani, is regarded as the frontrunner. Marini is also reportedly acceptable to the center-left coalition headed by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. His candidacy was also given a thumbs up by current Prime Minister Mario Monti, the technocrat who finished a distant fourth in the recent Italian election.
A two-thirds majority is required in the first three rounds of voting while only a simple majority is needed beginning with the fourth round of balloting — if necessary.
Repeatedly elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies over a span of thirty years, Bonino won a seat in the Italian Senate in 2008 as a candidate of the Democratic Party, representing the Piedmont region in northwest Italy.
A former European commissioner for health and consumer protection and a leader in the country‘s tiny Radical Party, Bonino first expressed an interest in the presidency in 1999 when she campaigned under the slogan that she was “the right man” for the job.
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