Arianna Capuani is responsible for foreign relations in the United Kingdom for the Italian localist think tank Fondazione per la Sussidiarietà.
Monday 6pm update:
After results from at 90% of polling stations, Giuliano Pisapia was the winner with 55.15% votes overall against Moratti's 44.85%. Pisapia's spokesman Maurizio Baruffi talked about a victory over lies and defamation, while supporters exhalt in Piazza Duomo. The newly elected mayor was congratulated by the Pd leader Bersani. He added that the government should call new elections.
Milan is not the only city that PdL lost control of, as Naples saw a landslide victory for Luigi de Magistris, the Italia dei Valori candidate, with 64.95% against the Pdl candidate Lettieri, who got a meagre 35.04%. Trieste and Cagliari saw further victories for the centre left coalition.
As a result, the PdL national coordinator Sandro Bondi bizarrely resigned, while saying Berlusconi deserves full support and absolute freedom to decide about the future of the party.
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In Britain, you might be forgiven for thinking that Italian politics is nothing but steamy scandals and the threat they pose to the long pre-eminence of Silvio Berlusconi. But right now, he risks a political disaster of a more mundane, British kind: awful results in local elections.
Losing Milan, the financial capital of Italy and heart of Lombardy, one of the most productive regions in Europe, would be a blow to Berlusconi’s Popolo delle Liberta (PdL). In the latest mayoral elections, the PdL candidate Letizia Moratti scored 41.58% against 48% for Giuliano Pisapia, a lawyer supported by the Left. There is a further vote starting this weekend to proclaim a winner. It is the first ballot the Left have won in a Milanese mayoral election since 1993.
Many people have tried to explain their impressive performance. While a considerable drop in the number of voters has not been recorded, the critical question is whether the rise of Pisapia is due to voters appreciating some intrinsic quality of his programme for the city of Milan or if it’s a reprisal against Berlusconi and his ineffective handling of power.