Italian conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi will enjoy comfortable majorities in both houses of the incoming parliament, the final results announced by the interior ministry yesterday showed.
The center-right coalition that won the general elections held on Sunday and Monday will have 168 seats in the Senate — 10 more than the minimum 158 needed for an absolute majority — against 130 for the center-left and three for centrist lawmakers.
Berlusconi won 15.5 million votes, or 47.3 percent, against rival center-left flagbearer Walter Veltroni, who won 12.5 million, or 38 percent, in the Senate race, the ministry said.
Centrist Pier Ferdinando Casini won nearly 1.9 million, or 5.7 percent.
Twenty other formations including communists and Greens in the newly formed Rainbow Left party did not garner enough votes to enter the Senate.
The Rainbow left won slightly more than one million votes, or 3.2 percent.
In the lower house Chamber of Deputies, the center-right will have 340 seats against 239 for the left and 36 for the center.
Polling for the lower house saw Berlusconi’s forces win some 17 million votes, or 46.8 percent, against 13.7 million or 37.5 percent for Veltroni and two million, 5.6 percent for Casini.
Yet Berlusconi’s triumph will send a shiver of apprehension through Brussels where memories are still fresh of the way his government let Italy’s public finances run out of control, threatening the stability of the euro. Romano Prodi, the former European commission president and Italy’s former prime minister who narrowly defeated Berlusconi two years ago, reversed the trend. But to cut the budget deficit, he made the center-left deeply unpopular by putting up taxes and clamping down on evasion.
Italy’s next government faces an unenviable task in trying to reinvigorate a failing economy. That was reflected in the generally cautious rhetoric of both leading candidates in the campaign. Last year, the EU announced that the Italian economy had been overtaken by Spain’s.
Other symptoms of Italy’s failure are legion. They include a flag — carrier airline, Alitalia, which is losing 1 million euros (US$1.58 million) a day, and a refuse crisis that engulfed Naples and the surrounding region of Campania and appeared to many Italians to embody their country’s plight.
During the campaign, Berlusconi vowed to slash taxes and boost infrastructure spending in an effort to stimulate the economy. He insisted the budget deficit could nevertheless be contained by improving efficiency in the public administration and embarking on a huge program of public asset sales.
The turnout, usually high in Italy, was three points lower than at the last general election in 2006 — 82 percent compared with 85 percent, initial data from the interior ministry showed. There was speculation that the drop reflected disillusion, particularly among the young, with an aging and cronyism-prone political class.
Ironically, the country looks set for five years of government headed by a 71-year-old man who has a string of trials behind him for alleged financial wrongdoing. All his convictions have been overturned on appeal and other charges against him expired under statutes of limitations.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including