Media mogul leads in Italian Election
Media baron Silvio Berlusconi today held a narrow lead in both chambers of parliament in his bid to win back Italy’s premiership with a coalition of right-wing allies - but it was unclear if he had captured the majority needed to govern.
Between Italy’s complex electoral system, uncounted votes from yesterday’s election and several parties refusing to declare their allegiance, it was not immediately clear whether the 64-year-old billionaire businessman had the numbers in parliament.
More than seven hours after the polls closed last night, no one had claimed victory in a country where chronic political stability has yielded 58 governments since the Second World War.
‘‘What counts is the breakdown of the seats in parliament,’’ said Enrico La Loggia, a senior member of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party.
A parliamentary majority is 50% plus one vote.
A combination of slow ballot counting and Italy’s complex electoral system - a mix of direct and proportional representation - held up calculation of the breakdown.
The projections, announced on state TV, indicated Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition would win 42.6% of the Senate upper house of parliament, which was up for renewal yesterday, and his centre-left rival, Rome’s former mayor Francesco Rutelli, would take 39.1%.
Berlusconi’s coalition was projected to win 45.4% of the directly elected seats in the larger, lower Chamber of Deputies, with 43.7% projected to go to Rutelli’s bloc.
Seventy-five percent of the chamber’s 630 seats are directly elected, while the remaining 25% are divided up based on the proportion of parties’ vote. But that calculation depended in part on whether tiny parties won the minimum 4% needed to get into parliament.
In yesterday’s vote, it was unclear whether a key Berlusconi ally, the Northern League of Umberto Bossi, made the 4% cut-off.
