[NV Greens] Fwd: More on Berlusconi's Election Wipeout

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>The Independent
>April 6, 2005
>
>Berlusconi suffers local election wipeout
>
>By Peter Popham in Rome
>
>Silvio Berlusconi has suffered the gravest electoral
>rout of his political life this week, with his centre-
>right coalition losing power in 11 regions from the far
>north of the peninsula to the heel of the boot.
>
>The regional elections appeared to have been blotted
>out of the nation's consciousness by the death of the
>Pope, but in the event turnout was high at 71 per cent.
>And the result was freely admitted to have been a
>disaster by commentators on the right as well as the
>left.
>
>Mr Berlusconi, closeted in Villa Arcore, his palatial
>home outside Milan, blamed everyone but himself.
>
>"Now I really want to see," he was quoted as growling
>down the phone to a close ally, "how my two deputy
>premiers are going to explain themselves! It was their
>fault that we didn't play as a team. Self-criticism?
>It's the others who have to explain why they behaved in
>this fashion!"
>
>It was a remarkable upset for the media billionaire who
>transformed Italian politics by launching his Forza
>Italia party 12 years ago, and whose government has
>ruled for longer than any other Italian government
>since the war. Mr Berlusconi has discovered that
>domination of 95 per cent of the nation's television
>output - enabling him to appear on talk shows that are
>in effect three-hour political broadcasts for himself -
>was not enough to quench growing dissatisfaction with
>his government's performance.
>
>The "House of Liberties" coalition has now lost three
>regional and European elections in a row, each more
>decisively than the one before. The next general
>election is scheduled for the spring of 2006. Tony
>Blair's strongest European ally will need to move
>heaven and earth if he is to avoid a wipe-out.
>
>The only consolation for the centre-right was that the
>candidate of the secessionist Northern League, a
>partner in the coalition, managed to hang on to
>Lombardy by a slender margin. Elsewhere the pattern was
>uniformly bleak.
>
>Massimo Giannini of La Repubblica newspaper saw the
>loss of the other prosperous region, Piemonte, as bad
>news for Mr Berlusconi. The professionals and factory
>owners of the region, he said, "had entrusted Italy's
>keys to 'the Entrepreneur' [Berlusconi], convinced he
>would open the gates to an economic Eldorado". The loss
>of the region, he said spelt "the end of the dream".
>
>Italy's economy has been stagnant for months; the only
>firms to have benefited from four years of Berlusconism
>are those controlled by his family.
>
>But the news from the far south, traditional heartland
>of the post-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale, was no more
>cheering. In Puglia the winner was Niki Vendola, a
>Catholic gay communist and member of the Rifondazione
>Comunista, one of Italy's two communist parties.
>
>The fact that Mr Vendola's triumph is also a potential
>long-term problem for the centre-left - crucially
>ditched by the Rifondazione the last time they were in
>government - does not detract from the embarrassment of
>his triumph. Mr Berlusconi is a visceral enemy of
>communists, attacking them at every opportunity. After
>the Puglia result came in, Gianfranco Fini, leader of
>Alleanza Nazionale and the second most important man in
>the government, said: "If we want to return to win, we
>must give up this crusade against communism."
>
>The rest of Europe may have left communism behind years
>ago, but Mr Vendola proved it is still a force to
>reckon with in Italy.
>
>Mr Berlusconi's leaked comments make it clear that he
>hopes to use the defeat to read the riot act to his
>coalition allies. The problem with this strategy is
>that his own party, Forza Italia, has fared far worse
>than the others in the coalition. As James Walston,
>professor of politics at the American University in
>Rome, put it: "It's more likely that they will read the
>riot act to him."
>
>The result was "an earthquake, it's extraordinary. It's
>a serious wake-up call to Berlusconi and his people",
>Professor Walston said.
>
>"It shows the depth of dissatisfaction, which until now
>no one had understood. It's not the style of
>Berlusconi's government that is the problem but the
>substance: the fact that it hasn't delivered. My
>suspicion is that he's close to his sell-by date."
>
>http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=626816
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand