Monday, April 14, 2008
Berlusconi Wins Italian
Election ??
The
ANNOTICO Report
Berlusconi's
opponent Walter Veltroni has conceded defeat, with
Exit polls showing 44.9% of the vote in the
Senate for the Freedom Folk party, against 38.2% for Veltroni's Centre-Left.
Counting for the
lower house, the "Chamber of Deputies", had yet to begin. Exit polls
indicated the gap between the two main parties here was narrower, at two (2) percentage
points.
However, Italian
politicians were being cautious in their predictions after their experience in
the general election two years ago when the balance of advantage shifted during
the evening.
Further
complicating matters, the elections employ a complex system under which ballots
do not necessarily translate into seats. This is particularly true in the
senate where, in each region, the winning party gets a "victor's
bonus". Added together, they could have a decisive effect on the overall
result.
John
Hooper in
Monday
April 14 2008
Veltroni said he called
conservative leader Berlusconi to congratulate him on his victory.
"As is
customary in all western democracy, and as I feel it is right to do, I called
the leader of the People of Freedom, Silvio
Berlusconi, to acknowledge his victory and wish him good luck in his job,"
Veltroni told reporters.
He said the
result is clear even though the final results are not in yet.
Projections
earlier today showed the 71-year-old billionaire and his rightwing allies
heading back to power in the Italian general election with a convincing
majority.
The projections,
based on a small sample of the overall vote, gave Berlusconi's Freedom Folk
party and its allies 44.9% of the vote in the senate, against 38.2% for the
centre-left.
If confirmed as
the count unfolds, the margin would translate into a majority of seats that
would be big enough to allow Berlusconi to govern without needing new
alliances.
However, Italian
politicians were being cautious in their predictions after their experience in
the general election two years ago when the balance of advantage shifted during
the evening.
Counting for the
lower house, the chamber of deputies, had yet to
begin. Exit polls indicated the gap between the two main parties here was
narrower, at two percentage points.
Much will depend
on the showing of smaller parties unallied with either of the two main
contestants. Exit polls commissioned by the Italian state-owned broadcaster RAI
gave them 16-20% of the vote.
Two parties in
particular could yet influence the outcome: the Union of Centre and Christian
Democrats (UDC), which was allied with Berlusconi, and the Rainbow Left, which
takes in Marxists and Greens who were formally united with the centre-left.
Both exit polls
and initial projections pointed to a triumph for a third party, the Northern
League, which is allied to Berlusconi's movement. The stridently anti-immigrant
League could have a big effect on the new government's policies if the
forecasts are borne out.
Polls closed just
after lunch at the end of a day and a half of voting and a campaign stretching
back to the fall of Romano Prodi's centre-left
government on January 28.
With both of the
leading candidates offering strikingly similar programmes,
the contest was a lacklustre affair until the final
week, when Veltroni appeared to be narrowing the gap
on Berlusconi, the clear early favourite looking for
another return to power.
In the last few
days of campaigning, 52-year-old Veltroni drew a
crowd of tens of thousands in Berlusconi's home city of
In his final
rally at the Colosseum, Berlusconi appeared to give
away votes by criticising the local football hero
Francesco Totti, saying he was "off his
head" for wanting to vote for the centre-left in the mayoral election, which
was also being held today.
One issue that
helped to doom Prodi's administration was news from
the European Union that the Italian economy had been overtaken by that of
Both of the
leading contenders to become prime minister offered a formula involving lower
taxes and higher spending, which they insisted could be made to work with a
huge programme of public asset sales.
In the short
term, the biggest task facing
The elections
employ a complex system under which ballots do not necessarily translate into
seats. This is particularly true in the senate where, in each region, the
winning party gets a "victor's bonus". Added together, they could
have a decisive effect on the overall result.
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