ITALY: MEDIA MAGNATE Silvio Berlusconi last night looked poised to win the weekend's Italian general election.
Both exit polls and the initial results suggested that Mr Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party, along with electoral ally the federalist Northern League, have won approximately 44 per cent of the vote, as opposed to the 40 per cent returned by his major centre-left opponents, the Partito Democratico (PD), led by former mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni.
With definitive results not available until early this morning, a precise analysis of the vote remains problematic. However, within four hours of the polls closing yesterday afternoon, some very clear trends had emerged.
Firstly, there seems little doubt that, for the third time, millionaire Mr Berlusconi will be called on to serve as prime minister. Mr Veltroni's spokesman, Ermete Realacci, appeared to acknowledge defeat last night when telling Italian TV: "We know that our political platform presumably does not have a majority in the country."
A second point to emerge from all the initial data available last night was that Mr Berlusconi's electoral ally, the Northern League, had returned a very healthy 7 to 8 per cent of the vote. If this proves to be true, then Mr Berlusconi is likely to find himself with a very demanding government coalition partner whose aspirations towards northern secession, and a much more federalist Italy, are likely to provoke much internal and external tension.
Another important initial result seems to be the relative failure of the "little" parties, those former centre-left and centre-right allies who were forced to run alone. The Rainbow Left, comprising Rifondazione Comunista, the Italian Communists and the Greens, may have returned less than 3.5 per cent of the national vote, whilst the ex-Christian Democrat UDC appears to have returned less than 5 per cent. If all these initial trends are confirmed, then not only will Mr Berlusconi have a cast-iron workable majority bloc of 340 seats in the Lower House, but he will also have a majority in the Senate.
The votes of the seven life senators, who throughout the last legislature voted consistently with the centre-left, and those of the UDC, who will not support Mr Berlusconi, had been expected to create a hung Senate. Yet such appears to be the margin of the centre-right victory that such problems may not present themselves.
It was presumably only a faint uncertainty about the Senate vote which dissuaded Mr Berlusconi from declaring himself the winner last night. Rather, the centre-right leader opted to stay at his Arcore, Milan base assessing the results, prior to what should be a triumphal descent on Rome today.