Media mogul Silvio Berlusconi won his third term as Italian prime minister on Monday, but the job would not be easy.

Unsteady coalition

Though Berlusconi-led center-right alliance won a comfortable majority in both the lower house and the Senate of the Italy's national parliament, analysts attributed his victory primarily to the help from his allies.

Berlusconi's People of Freedom party joined hands with two small right-wing partners, the Northern League and the Movement for Autonomy. Both want to see powers devolved from the state to regions.

Walter Veltroni, Berlusconi's main rival and former mayor of Rome, already predicted it would be difficult for Berlusconi to hold the alliance together throughout the five-year term.

"A season of opposition now begins against a majority that will have a hard time keeping together things that are difficult to keep together," Veltroni said when conceding defeat, "I don't know how long this majority will last."

Italy has been locked in years of political instability due to its complex electoral system, under which dozens of small parties manage to slice votes and a single party can seldom form a government on its own.

While there had been 61 governments in place since the end of World War II, collapse of power-sharing coalition was nothing new in Italy. The only government that survived its full five-year term in the past half century is led by Berlusconi between 2001 and 2006.

The newest general election was called after the government led by center-left Premier Romano Prodi collapsed in January.

Lasting only 20 months, Prodi's government fell since he lost majority in the Senate when one of his nine allies, the UDEUR headed by then justice minister Clemente Mastella, quit the coalition, a possible scenario for the new government of Berlusconi.

In fact, it was the Northern League that caused Berlusconi's first government in 1994 to collapse.