ROME: Italy’s centre-left is on track to win 2013 elections after supporters picked Pier Luigi Bersani as their candidate for prime minister while the centre-right is steeped in crisis, analysts said.
Democratic Party leader Bersani won in yesterday’s primary with more than 60 percent of the vote in a second round runoff against the 37-year-old mayor of Florence Matteo Renzi.
“Around three million people going to the polls twice in seven days is a lot. This is a resource for the centre-left and for democracy,” said sociologist Ilvo Diamanti, echoing the sentiment of many observers.
“The impression is that the centre-left in general and the Democratic Party in particular have come out stronger,” Diamanti wrote in La Repubblica daily.
In an editorial, the newspaper said the 61-year-old two-time minister Bersani now faces the “most difficult” challenge of uniting the centre-left.
The Corriere della Sera meanwhile commented that by facing down the risk of holding primaries at all despite reservations among party leaders, Bersani had become “an independent and weighty candidate for the post of prime minister”.
James Walston, a professor at the American University of Rome, said: “I think they will go ahead and win the elections.” Bersani and his team will likely manage to preserve unity, he said, since “all of them have a very strong collective memory of how easy it is for the centre-left to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
All recent opinion polls show the Democratic Party will win the parliamentary elections scheduled for March or April of next year, although not with an outright majority which could force it into a coalition.
The centre-left is at a particular advantage since the centre-right has been riven by infighting and fraud scandals ever since Silvio Berlusconi stepped down as prime minister in November last year following a parliamentary revolt.
Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party is effectively imploding as the 76-year-old billionaire media tycoon continues to waver on whether or not he wants to be the party’s candidate in a fourth general election.
The upheaval has plunged the party from 38-percent support in the 2008 elections to around 15 percent in the latest opinion polls.
Rome’s right-wing mayor Gianni Alemanno said he was “envious” of the centre-left primaries and said the centre-right should hold them too.
He added that a Berlusconi candidacy would be “irrational”.
But Berlusconi remains the president and founder of his party and still enjoys considerable support in his electorate so it is difficult for any rivals within the party to declare their challenge openly.
“The left managed to re-launch itself by dialoguing with the electorate,” said Angelino Alfano, secretary general of the party and the successor nominated by Berlusconi who is now at odds with his mentor.
Fabrizio Cicchitto, head of the party’s group in parliament, said: “It’s really a pity that the centre-left primaries have not been accompanied by centre-right primaries.AFP
