Silvio Berlusconi faces humiliation as Milan voters support leftwing mayor

Italian voters set to reject the prime minister’s mayoral candidates both in his home city and in Naples An exit poll and early projections show Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, heading for a humiliating and politically ominous defeat in his home city of Milan. The polls suggested his party’s choice for mayor, Letizia Moratti, would be ousted in a runoff with a local leftwing lawyer, Giuliano Pisapia. An exit poll conducted for Sky Italia gave the challenger an advantage of seven percentage points; and an early projection pointed to an even bigger victory for Pisapia, of almost eight points. Projections also indicated that the left was storming towards a big victory in Italy’s third-biggest city, Naples. There, the opposition candidate was estimated to have picked up over 60% of the vote. Balloting in local and provincial elections ended at 3pm local time after a second, two-day round of voting. Milan, Italy’s business capital, was one of 90 towns and cities where a clear winner failed to emerge in the first round, on 15 and 16 May. The contest there was by far the most important. Milan is the city from which Italy’s flamboyant prime minister launched his political adventure, 17 years ago. It is also the one in which he is on trial for a range of alleged financial and sex-related offences. And, not least, it is the stronghold of his key allies in the populist, Islamophobic Northern League. Federico Manda, a tram maintenance technician, was one of a steady stream of last-minute voters at an electoral college around the corner from the courthouse where Berlusconi is a defendant in three concurrent trials. He had voted for “a change in Milan”, he said. “Berlusconi has monopolised this municipality, putting his men in everywhere, often in the wrong places.” Berlusconi tried to turn the ballot into a vote of confidence on his private life and his government’s performance. All the signs are that that was a disastrous error of judgment. After the first round, Moratti came in six percentage points behind her main rival. In the subsequent campaign, the prime minister and his Freedom People movement tried to make up lost ground with an overtly racist campaign directed at Pisapia’s sympathy for Roma and Muslims. Professor James Walston of the American University of Rome said he feared Berlusconi’s tactics could have a lasting impact on inter-racial and inter-faith relations in Italy. “This type of language has been used by the prime minister, not some neo-fascist maniac on the fringes,” he said. “It will be difficult to bring Italian political language back to acceptable European levels.” A victory for the left would be all the more remarkable, since its candidate was not the choice of the mainstream Democratic party (PD) but was one whose past is tinged with radicalism. Pisapia, a lawyer who once defended the Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan, was elected to parliament in the 1990s as an independent on the slate of the hardline Communist Refoundation party. The predicted outcome in Naples would also be as much of an embarrassment to the PD as for Berlusconi. The opposition’s challenge there was mounted by a former prosecutor, Luigi De Magistris, who fought and defeated the PD’s candidate in the first round. Much will now depend on the reaction of the Northern League, which keeps Berlusconi’s government in power. Italy Silvio Berlusconi Europe Race issues John Hooper guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 30, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.