ROME -- With a parting kiss to the nation's flag, President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro resigned Saturday and left Italy's 16th-century Quirinale Palace, ending a term that saw seven governments in seven years and the remaking of Italy's political system.
Scalfaro stepped down 13 days before his seven-year term expires, clearing the way for Tuesday's swearing-in of newly elected successor Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, an internationally respected banker-politician.Scalfaro submitted his resignation Saturday morning. Stopping his car on the wide-open piazza outside the presidential Quirinale Palace, on the highest of Rome's seven hills, the white-haired 80-year-old scrambled out to shake hands with journalists and well-wishers. He waded into a crowd of horseback color guards to plant a kiss on the tricolor flag.
"They've just freed me," Scalfaro joked before heading to Rome's famed Campo di Fiori, getting a smattering of applause from shoppers and tourists on a spin through the square's market stalls.
Premier Massimo D'Alema paid tribute to Scalfaro's presidency, the latest stage in a decades-long political career. "In long years of transition, Italy had in President Scalfaro a moral guide, an influential arbitrator, a sage and expert moderator," D'Alema said.
As president, Scalfaro made the most of his loosely defined role, whose chief powers include the authority to dissolve parliament and call new elections.
Wielding his powers, Scalfaro frustrated the efforts of center-right opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi to regain the premiership, ignoring the media mogul's calls for early elections.
Designating premiers, Scalfaro favored the gray-suited bland rather than the colorful, ushering in austerity governments like the one that got Italy's economy into shape for the debut of Europe's common currency, the euro.
Under Scalfaro's watch, corruption scandals and a revamping of the election system brought down the parties that had dominated Italian politics since World War II.
Mafia violence was at a height at the start of his presidency, and Scalfaro's first official duty in 1992 was attending the funeral of a Sicilian prosecutor blown apart by a Mafia bomb.
Also during his term, the electoral system was overhauled, and now three out of every four parliament seats is filled by direct election, a reform meant to reduce the number of fractious political parties in Parliament, now numbering almost 50.
Under Ciampi and D'Alema, political leaders are expected to press for direct elections of presidents. Presidents now are elected secretly by lawmakers and regional representatives.
Nicola Mancino, president of the Senate, will fill in for Scalfaro until Ciampi takes the oath Tuesday. Scalfaro becomes a senator for life.