Friday,
April 18, 2008
Italy Moves Toward 2 - Party System - From
26 to 6?
The
ANNOTICO Report
A
surprise casualty of
The ballot box unexpectedly eliminated all but one of
Italian
dailies used apocalyptic tones to describe the shake-up, saying parliament had
been hit by an ''earthquake'' and a ''tsunami'' which would leave it with no
more than six parties compared to the previous 26.
Smaller parties wiped out in surprise outcome
(ANSA) -
April 15, 2008
A surprise casualty of
Despite a 2005 return to proportional representation and a convoluted electoral
law, the ballot box unexpectedly eliminated all but one of
Italian dailies used apocalyptic tones to describe the shake-up, saying
parliament had been hit by an ''earthquake'' and a ''tsunami'' which would
leave it with no more than six parties compared to the previous 26.
Tired of the instability created by smaller parties wielding blackmailing
powers disproportionate to their size, voters opted for the major par ties,
pushing
The development could end the system of revolving-door administrations in a
country which has been through 61 governments since the end of the war.
The fate of outgoing Premier Romano Prodi was
emblematic when his centre-left nine-party government was toppled by the
defection of a Christian Democrat ally whose party had scored less than 1.5% in
the 2006 election. The biggest party in the new parliament will be election
winner Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right People
of Freedom party (PDL), which gained 37.4%,
followed by defeated candidate Walter Veltroni's
centre-left Democratic Party (PD) on 33.2%.
The Northern League, a populist, devolutionist party
allied with Berlusconi, will be the third largest force after seeing its
support jump to < STRONG>8.3% from 4.6% in 2006.
Next in line is the unaligned centrist, Catholic UDC, a
former Berlusconi ally which won 5.6% on a national
level but only managed to muster two seats in the Senate where voting is
regionally based and parties standing alone must exceed 8% in order to gain
representation - a feat the UDC only managed in one region.
Veltroni ally Italy of Values (IDV)
led by former anti-graft prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro will be the fifth
biggest group after winning 4.4%.
The only remnant of the past was the teeny Sicilian-based party, Movement
for Autonomy (MpA) which gained 1.1%
but was saved by its alliance with Berlusconi and a catch in the complicated
electoral law allowing the 'readmittance' of the
most-voted party in a coalition which falls below the 2% threshold needed for
representation.
LEFT OUT OF THE PICTURE.
Instead, the once-mighty Socialist party, a constant
presence in parliament since its creation in 1892, will vanish from the scene
together with the Communists, whose hammer and sickle
logo has been a parliamentary feature since 1921.
The disappearance of the Communists, allied with the Greens
in a federation called the Left-Rainbow (SA), was one
of the most surprising outcomes of the vote.
SA leader and former House Speaker Fausto Bertinotti, a 68-year-old leftist veteran who was standing
for premier in the Sunday-Monday vote, was devastated when the SA failed to
gain more than 3.1% and promptly quit.
The historic leader of the Communist Refoundation
Party, Bertinotti had teamed up with other hard-left
groups and the Greens expecting to at least match the 10% the parties had
chalked up in the p revious election.
His own party had garnered 5.8% in 2006 with regional peaks of 10% and more to
make it the third-biggest party in Prodi's winning
coalition.
''This is a total disaster - a drubbing of such unexpected proportions and a
heavy personal defeat,'' Bertinotti said on Monday
evening in announcing his resignation after a life-long career of activism.
Hard-right groups were similarly penalised, including
the recently-formed The Right which had been pinning
its hopes on glamorous premiership hopeful and self-professed Fascist Daniela Santanche'.
The Right overestimated its chances of stealing votes from a much larger rival,
the National Alliance (AN), hoping to profit from the risk AN created of
alienating its voters by merging with Berlusconi's PDL party two months
ago.
Instead, Santanche' won just 2.4%, losing her seat in
parliament in the process.
The Church was seen as another loser b y some political observers after the
UDC, which embraces traditional, Catholic values and is close to the Vatican,
saw its voter support fall from 6.8% to 5.6% and other smaller heirs of the
Christian Democrat tradition were eliminated from the picture.
Another party campaigning on a one-issue, pro-life ticket, led by prominent
conservative newspaper editor Giuliano Ferrara,
mustered no more than 0.4%.
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