ROME, Italy (CNN) -- Italy's president is starting consultations with political leaders to decide if he should call immediate elections or push for a caretaker government after Premier Romano Prodi lost a confidence vote and resigned.
Prodi, in office for 20 months, had only a slim chance of surviving the vote. Observers had said a Senate loss could spell a new period of instability in Italian politics.
Addressing senators before the vote, Prodi asked them to back him so he could continue to implement the reforms introduced by his government. He said the Italian economy had been improving under his mandate.
The fiery session later included one senator being spat on, fainting and being carried out on a stretcher, The Associated Press reported.
Prodi acknowledged that he would have to make some changes in his leadership, but he told the senators that the country needed continuity in government and that his was legitimately elected by the people.
The prime minister lost his razor-thin majority Monday when a centrist party in his center-left coalition withdrew its support. The move wiped out the government's one-vote majority in the Senate.
Knowing he faced likely rejection, Prodi could have decided to resign before the vote. His decision to go ahead with it was seen by some as a complicated political gamble.
Most analysts say Napolitano is likely to call for snap elections. It is a scenario that Prodi's Senate foes have said they want to avoid.
Napolitano, too, may hope to stave off elections so he can instead work on reforming Italian electoral law. Among the changes would be limiting the ability of small parties to threaten coalition governments by dragging them through a series of confidence votes.
That is what sparked Prodi's problems in the first place.
Last week, Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, of the centrist Udeur Party, resigned after he was put under investigation, and his wife was placed under house arrest, for alleged corruption. Both deny any wrongdoing.
Mastella then complained that his government colleagues had failed to support him, so he withdrew his party from the coalition.
Prodi took office after one of the closest-fought elections in Italian history. He was forced to resign in February 2006 but was reinstated after a Senate confidence vote.
His predecessor as prime minister, media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, on Thursday cheered and opened a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate Prodi's defeat.
Berlusconi, who is keen to return to office, demanded new elections. "Now, as quickly as possible, we need to give Italians a government that works," he said, AP reported. He said he was "completely" opposed to an interim government.
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