Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi was set to defend his government's record before the Senate Tuesday on the eve of a confidence vote that could decide his political future.
Prodi, who was due to appear at 5:00 pm (1600 GMT), will have to convince senators that he can still govern after suffering the humiliation last week of losing a vote on troops in Afghanistan, which prompted his resignation.
Although Italian President Giorgio Napolitano reappointed him on Saturday, he stipulated that the 67-year-old prime minister should submit to a vote of confidence in both houses of parliament. "It will be the most difficult speech of his career," the liberal daily La Stampa wrote Tuesday.
Prodi has also called a cabinet meeting for an hour before he makes his crucial speech. There he is expected to make a statement that, according to press reports, could signal a move towards the political centre-ground.
"Prodi has to manage to talk to other people than his own... and get away from political games," said the economic daily Il Sole-24 Ore. This change of political direction could involve reforms to the electoral law, blamed in large part for the current political crisis, La Stampa said. Prodi might call on the opposition to help him draft a new law, the paper speculated.
Wednesday's Senate vote will be the first and probably the most difficult of the two hurdles. Even with centrist Italian Senator Marco Follini saying Saturday he would probably back Prodi in the confidence vote, the centre-left ruling coalition only has a majority of two.
If most of the seven senators-for-life decided to back Prodi then he should carry the day, but their support cannot be relied upon with absolute certainty. Prodi will have to steer a careful course between the radical left and the centrist elements of his coalition.
It was the abstention of the communist senator Franco Turigliato, ostensibly a member of the ruling coalition, that contributed to last Wednesday's defeat by just two votes in the debate on Afghanistan.
Turigliato said Monday he was still considering his position, but was unconvinced by some elements in the 12-point "non-negotiable" programme that Prodi has drawn up. If Prodi wins the Senate over then he will have to appear before the House of Representatives, probably at the end of the week. That should be a more straightforward affair, as his 30-seat majority should ensure he wins the vote.
But even if Prodi meets both these challenges, it may only be a brief respite.
The radical left elements of his coalition have already made it clear that they are not happy either with proposed pension reforms or with the presence of Italian troops in Afghanistan.
And both items are on next month's parliamentary agenda. Waiting in the wings is the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was narrowly defeated in last April's elections. "This government does not have the capacity to continue," he said late Monday. "There is an irreparable fracture between the so-called reformist left and that which is much more resolute, maximalist and radical."