Four-time former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi extended his surge in Italy’s opinion polls on Friday, increasing prospects that the center-left Democratic Party now leading the race will have to seek a pact with outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti’s centrist bloc.
With a little over a month to go before the vote, Berlusconi narrowed the gap with Pier Luigi Bersani’s center-left coalition by 4 percentage points in just a week, but still trails by 6 percentage points, a poll published on Friday showed.
His gains follow a blitz on almost every TV talk show in Italy, where the 76-year-old billionaire has mixed blistering attacks on Monti’s technocrat government, Germany and the left with promises to restore growth and scrap a hated property tax.
Photo: Reuters
Berlusconi sought to maintain the momentum on Friday by announcing he would sign a new “contract with the Italians,” reproducing a famous stunt from a triumphant campaign in 2001, when he set out five election promises and signed them on prime time TV.
“I’ve heard Monti will do the same, but in his case it will be a contract with the Germans,” Berlusconi told his own Canale 5 TV channel, reiterating a frequent line that Monti’s austerity policies have been more in the interests of Germany than Italy.
The surge has been reminiscent of 2006, when the flamboyant showman clawed back 10 percentage points and nearly robbed Romano Prodi of what looked like certain victory just a month before the election.
However, so far, despite similar results in several recent polls, there seemed to be little chance of an election shock giving Berlusconi a fifth term after the stew of scandals and the financial crisis forced him to step down in 2011.
“This time around, Berlusconi’s ability to stage a comeback is limited,” said Maurizio Pessato, vice chairman of SWG polling institute, which conducted Friday’s poll.
“Berlusconi has lost a lot of credibility, more than he had before the 2006 vote, because of the failure of his government in 2011, and his personal scandals.”
The poll showed the center-left alliance of the Democratic Party and the leftist Left, Ecology, Freedom party at 33 percent, down from 34.9 percent a week ago, with Berlusconi’s alliance on 27.2 percent and Monti’s bloc at 13.7 percent.
If the result is confirmed, the center-left would have a solid lower-house majority.
However, due to electoral law peculiarities, Berlusconi could lose to the center-left in the national vote tally yet still win enough seats in the Senate, where voting is calculated region by region, to stop Bersani gaining an upper house majority.
That is important because legislation in Italy must be passed by both houses.
The center-right has traditionally controlled Italy’s most populous regions, like Lombardy, Veneto and Sicily, which are awarded more Senate seats.
This means the center-left, even if it garners a small Senate majority on its own, might seek Monti’s support in the upper house to avoid a replay of Prodi’s doomed second term, which ended after his wafer-thin majority collapsed.
“Under the rather perverse logic of this race, Monti has to hope Berlusconi does well to ensure that Bersani has to include him in a center-left government,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, Italy’s top election expert.
A former European commissioner, Monti is credited by investors and foreign leaders with having restored Italy’s credibility, and any role he has in a future government is likely to be welcomed by markets.
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
RSS