The coalition leaders however didn't consider this a wise strategy. Their first interest was in fact in electing the next State president in May 1999 still with the actual majority in parliament. So they started talks with the UDR (Unione Democratica per la Repubblica), a new center party founded by the former State president Francesco Cossiga (1985-1992). This minor force had not been present in the 1996 elections, but had been formed by 70 years old Cossiga as a reaction to the "political analphabetism" of opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi, an entrepreneur with three national TV-stations, who has never learned to divide his private interests from the public one.
Because this enlargement wasn't in line with his electoral mandate, Prodi, who had been invested by State president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro for a second try, didn't quite seem the right person to guarantee such "newly defined political balance".
Prodi's opponents in this phase were D'Alema (who probably felt his last chance to come into office at the same rank as his socialist partners Blair, Schroeder and Jospin), Cossiga (who hoped to change the political balance entering the coalition as the new leader of governmental Christian democrats) and, last but not least, Franco Marini, the leader of Prodi's own party PPI (Partito Popolare Italiano), who hoped to guarantee the election of a Christian democrat as the next president of the Republic, a solution that seemed quite improbable as long as Prodi remained in office. Moreover, a new government lead by Prodi would have given him the opportunity to grow even more as a leader, while all other party politicians considered him already too big to fit in their games.
After the death of postwar leader Alcide De Gasperi (DC) in 1954 Italy has had only mediocre politicians, who have always been careful not to allow anybody to grow out of rank. The end of the Prodi government was again one of these moments that could be defined as the revenge of the dwarves, and therefore it was quite clear, that Prodi wouldn't get a second chance.
Scalfaro invested then the DS-leader Massimo D'Alema with the task of forming a new government. All previous resistance now vanished in a haze. The parties, whose greatest fear was new elections, met within a few days and D'Alema formed a new government including, as well as the Olive-coalition, Cossiga's UDR and Cossutta's new communist splinter party PDCI. The cabinet of this new ten-party-coalition grew from 20 to 25 ministers.
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