ROME: Italy’s centre-left voted yesterday to choose the candidate who will be the leading contender to succeed Mario Monti as prime minister after an election in March and take charge of steering the country through a deep recession.
Opinion surveys show Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani is the frontrunner among five candidates, followed by Florence mayor Matteo Renzi, who has vowed to shake up Italy’s political establishment if he
is chosen.
The vote will eliminate a major element of uncertainty before the election to choose a successor to Monti’s technocrat government.
The centre-left alliance is well ahead in opinion polls for the parliamentary election and the winner of the primary vote is in pole position to take over Monti’s efforts to control strained public finances and tackle a year-long recession. Support for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s deeply divided centre-right People of Freedom party (PDL) has crumbled to less than half than it recorded in the last election in 2008. REUTERS
