Gwen Shlam's Blog: Silvio Berlusconi faces Milan test as voters go to the polls

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Silvio Berlusconi faces Milan test as voters go to the polls

Italian minister resigns ahead of mayoral election that prime minister has turned into referendum on his government

Voters in Milan have gone to the polls for a crucial test of Silvio Berlusconi's diminished political vigour after his government suffered a fresh blow with the resignation of a minister.

Daniela Melchiorre said on Saturday she had quit her job as industry under-secretary because of his public denigration of Italy's judges and prosecutors during last week's G8 summit in France. Television cameras showed Barack Obama looking perplexed as Berlusconi told him Italy had become "almost a dictatorship of leftwing judges".

The Italian prime minister is a defendant in three trials and risks indictment in a fourth. On Tuesday, a court in Milan is due to begin hearing evidence in a case in which he is accused of paying an underage prostitute and using his influence to cover up the alleged offence.

Government supporters played down the significance of Melchiorre's departure, questioning her motives and depicting her as an opportunist. The former magistrate was a member of the last centre-left government before switching to the right.

But it is such floating MPs who pose the greatest threat to the government's tenuous majority. There is also a risk that Melchiorre's defection could be followed by others if Berlusconi loses control of his native Milan.

Almost 6 million Italian are eligible to vote in mayoral runoffs in 90 towns. But the showdown in Italy's business capital is seen as by far the most significant.

Berlusconi's candidate, Letizia Moratti, trailed by six percentage points in the first round of voting on 15 and 16 May 15. Were she to emerge the loser after polls close on Monday, it would be the first time for nearly 20 years that the right had lost Milan ? a stronghold not only of Berlusconi's Freedom People (PdL) movement, but of its coalition partner, the Northern League.

Moratti waged a vitriolic campaign in the runup to the second ballot. She and the prime minister, who has turned the vote for mayor into a referendum on his government, railed at the centre-left's candidate, Giuliano Pisapia. He was accused of wanting to turn Milan into a haven for Roma people and of planning to building a mosque for Islamist extremists.

Early turnout figures suggested the tactics might have had some success. By midday on Sunday, Milan was the only major town in which abstentions were lower than in the first round.

The right's inflammatory rhetoric raised the temperature of an already heated contest. Two people were hurt in a brawl on Saturday between supporters of the opposing candidates.

In Naples, the next biggest city at stake, a fire swept through a PdL electoral office after a similarly ill-tempered campaign. Berlusconi, who flew to the city for the close of campaigning, said he could "categorically exclude" a government crisis were the right defeated.

Much will depend on the reaction of the Northern League, many of whose rank-and-file supporters have declared Berlusconi a liability after the party's disappointing performance in the first round. But the League's leader, Umberto Bossi, has been reluctant to break up the governing coalition.

John Hooper

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