The Treasury Minister, Mr Giuliano Amato, was given a mandate by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi last night to form Italy's 58th post-war government. It is expected that Mr Amato will pick a team quickly, submitting it first to Mr Ciampi before facing a decisive confidence vote in parliament next week.
Although not currently an elected politician, Mr Amato (62) is an internationally-respected politician, who served as prime minister for 10 months from June 1992 to April 1993. He is expected to form his government from a centre-left coalition of ex-communists, former Christian Democrats, centrists, moderate Marxists, socialists, Greens and republicans, similar to that led by Mr Massimo D'Alema, who resigned on Wednesday in the wake of the centre-left's resounding defeat in regional elections last Sunday.
If Mr Amato survives next week's confidence vote, he should prove capable of leading the government until elections are due next April, thus avoiding the snap general election that the centre-right opposition leader, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, has been calling for stridently.
Decrying the appointment of Mr Amato as a cheap political manoeuvre and a "violation of democracy", Mr Berlusconi warned yesterday: "Let it be clear to Mr Amato that every day we're going to call him the useful idiot, because his presence in government house is illegitimate and against the people's will."
Stung by the comprehensive nature of its electoral defeat last weekend, the centre-left has been doing all in its powers to resist Mr Berlusconi's calls for a snap election. Given that nearly twice as many regional voters opted for the centre-right rather than the government, the centre-left knows it would be facing another thorough drubbing in a general election.
On the constitutional front, the centre-left has argued hard (and not always convincingly, given Mr D'Alema's resignation) that there is no reason why a regional defeat should prompt a general election.
Furthermore, President Ciampi and the outgoing prime minister, Mr D'Alema, are agreed that everything possible should be done to hold an electoral reform referendum, proposing a 100 per cent majority vote system, already scheduled for May 21st. In his resignation speech earlier this week, Mr D'Alema argued that it would be illogical to hold a general election without first giving the electorate the right to express its opinion on a reform that is intended to create a more stable form of government.
Mr Amato - a long-time political associate of the late, disgraced Socialist prime minister, Mr Bettino Craxi - won widespread praise for the manner in which he led Italy in 1992.
Appointed when the fallout from the infamous Tangentopoli scandals had overturned the last government led by Senator Giulio Andreotti, Mr Amato had the thankless task of steering Italy through a period of economic and social turbulence, which saw him preside over a $75 million austerity budget as well as the September 1992 devaluation of the lira.
Earlier this year, when problems about the appointment of a new managing director of the International Monetary Fund emerged, Mr Amato featured as a possible compromise choice.