Berlusconi’s Big Win
Silvio Berlusconi has a major electoral win today. The center-right politician has romped to a huge win in the Italian elections and will take over as Prime Minister sometime in May. He will take office with large majorities in both houses of the Italian parliament. The big losers in the election? The hard left. They may have no seats at all after being devastated at the ballot box.
Pollsters' projections, based on partial results, gave Berlusconi a 99-seat majority in the 630-member lower house and an advantage of up to 30 seats in the Senate, which has 315 elected and seven lifetime senators.
That contrasts with the two-seat Senate majority that the last government had under Romano Prodi, who resigned in January 20 months into his five-year term. Berlusconi had set his sights on a 20-seat majority in the Senate…..
…..The big loser of the election was the left. Excluded from Veltroni's Democratic Party, the Rainbow Left, made up of communists and greens, fared so badly it may not win any seats.
With many smaller parties facing a similar fate, Christian Democratic chief Pierferdinando Casini said parliament may have only five parties, compared with some 20 last time — a major turnaround for Italy's traditionally fragmented politics.
Trying to follow Italian politics is not for the weak of course. This is something like the four thousandth government they have had since World War Two (yes, I'm exaggerating - it has been 62 governments). Still, it's interesting that the left element has been effectively pushed completely out of power. It will be worth watching to see whether that makes things a little calmer in Italian politics.
UPDATE: Michael Ledeen at NRO says that the win is even bigger - and more stable - than the Associated Press reports indicate.
Tomorrow's papers will pretend that this didn't happen, and warn that Berlusconi's allies in the Northern League are mercurial and dangerous, and that his majority isn't as stable as it looks. But it is. And there's an even more annoying feature to these elections, as seen by the chattering classes: Berlusconi is an outspoken, even passionate admirer of George W. Bush and the United States of America. Reminds one of the elections that brought Sarkozy to the Elysee, doesn't it? Best to keep that quiet, or somebody might notice that hatred of America doesn't seem to affect the voters in Italy, France or Germany.
World news | Gaius Monday, 14 April , 2008
By Mwalimu Daudi, Monday, 14 April , 2008 @ 7:22 pm
Was not Berlusconi one of our closest allies in the Iraq War? Remind me again how Bush and the Iraq War have destroyed the standing of anyone who happened to agree with us.
If all of the America-hating leaders of Europe fall from power, who will the MSM hold up as our moral and intellectual betters? Iran? North Korea? Syria? China? Sudan? It ain’t easy being a deranged Bush-hater these days…
By martian, Tuesday, 15 April , 2008 @ 2:39 pm
The situation in Italy is kind of a microcosm of our own political situation. Berlusconi was voted out in the last election when his political opposition, the far left (like our very own Dems), spent so much time and effort complaining about his administration that they convinced the electorate everything he stood for was bad. The only problem was that his oppostion (again like our very own Desm) had no ideas of their own, no plans for improvement, they just knew how to complain loudly and convincingly. Once they got in office they had no idea how to run a country effectively. Thus, after being in power for a relatively short time, the whole thing has now been reversed when the Italian people finally figured out the Berlusconi wasn’t all that bad after all - in fact he was a lot better than the alternative. Let’s hope our own electorate figures out the same thing before it’s too late.
By martian, Tuesday, 15 April , 2008 @ 2:40 pm
Oh, and congrats to Silvio - any friend of the United States is a friend of mine!