The Italian election is over. Polls closed today at 3 pm local time. I’m rooting for Romano Prodi’s The Union coalition, although I suspect I’d support any reasonable opposition to Silvio Berlusconi’s House of Freedoms coalition (which includes his own party, Forza Italia). Seriously, is there a more corrupt, venal, and shamelessly plutocratic leader in the Western world than Berlusconi? (If so, let me know.)
Germany’s Der Spiegel, always a great source for European news and commentary, wonders if this could be “the end of the Silvio show” — see here. Funny passage: “After all the escapades he’s had, the eternally grinning little man — who wears special shoes to make him look taller — has come to be seen by some of his EU colleagues as a mixture between Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, and jittery Italian comedian Roberto Benigni. Not someone to be taken quite seriously, in any case.”
Back in February, I wrote about the Italian election, specifically Berlusconi’s alliance with fascism — see here.
We’ll have more on the election once the results start rolling in and we have some idea how it all turned out.
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With polls closed, here’s the latest from the BBC:
Votes are being counted in Italy’s bitterly contested general election, with exit polls suggesting a narrow win for the centre-left opposition…
According to exit polls, centre-left leader Romano Prodi is on course to beat Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
A Nexus poll shown on Italian TV put Mr Prodi’s coalition on 50-54% in both houses of parliament, with Mr Berlusconi’s coalition on 45-49%.
However, correspondents say exit polls in previous Italian elections have often turned out to be inaccurate.
The interior ministry says early estimates point to a turnout of about 85% – higher in the north than the south, with the lowest turnout being on the islands of Sardinia and Sicily.
The results are likely to be so close that actually governing Italy won’t be easy:
Both leaders face the tricky task of holding together broad coalitions. That task could be made harder by the new proportional voting system, which is expected to result in a smaller parliamentary majority…
There is a chance, depending on which way the regions fall, that the coalition which controls the Senate (upper house) may be different from the one which controls the Chamber of Deputies.
That could result in a fresh election, as a “grand coalition” of left and right would be hard to put together after such a bitter campaign, analysts say.
Stay tuned. One thing for certain is that Italy is never boring.