Bersani Headed for Election Win in Italy?

Scofflaw

Italian election results due out later today, with a possible pro-austerity winner:

Pier Luigi Bersani, the ex-communist who campaigned to maintain budget rigor, is on track to win Italy’s first election since Europe’s financial crisis broke out, according to a SkyTG24 Tecne poll.

Italian bonds and stocks rallied as the poll showed the populist campaigns of Beppe Grillo and Silvio Berlusconi fell short against the austerity advocates. Staying the course set by outgoing premier Mario Monti in the world’s third-biggest debtor is crucial to Europe’s effort to contain the turmoil that forced Berlusconi out of office in 2011.

...

Polls closed at 3 p.m. The Interior Ministry is expected to release official results later today.

It may take a month before a prime minister is formally nominated and a government formed. Italy’s new parliament will meet for the first time March 15, with the first order of business the election of presidents for both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the head of state, will then appoint a premier.

Monti was installed by Napolitano in November 2011 with Italy’s 10-year borrowing costs near 7.5 percent and Berlusconi, who is on trial for paying for sex with a minor and is fighting a tax-fraud conviction, the butt of jokes among his European counterparts.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-02-25/bersani-headed-for-election-win-as-berlusconi-loses-poll-shows

Perhaps Berlusconi is a busted flush at this stage, in what may be something of an indicator that while the current "austerity" governments are necessarily going to be unpopular, those that led their countries to the crisis in the first place may not automatically benefit.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Boulevardier

Things looking less and less clear cut:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/25/italian-election-results-live-coverage

Scofflaw

Boulevardier wrote: »

Things looking less and less clear cut:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/25/italian-election-results-live-coverage

Indeed:

Centre-right coalition (Berlusconi): 31.9%

Centre-left coalition (Bersani): 28.7%

Five Star Movement (Grillo): 24.9%

Centrist coalition (Monti): 8.4%

We're still waiting for the projections from the Chamber of Deputies, but if they contradict the exit polls in the same way this may mark an amazing comeback for Berlusconi. Either that or his centre-right coalition will dominate the Senate while the centre-left dominates the Chamber of Deputies – deadlock.

Unless, of course, all polls and projections so far turn out to be wrong …

I won't say "would they really re-elect Berlusconi?", because even a close outcome means that they would!

cordially,
Scofflaw

View

Berlusconi is the Italian for Fianna Fáil I take it?

Capt'n Midnight

1 in 4 have voted for the party of someone who hasn't given any interviews on Italian TV

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21327856

The Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle or M5S) is an anti-establishment citizens' movement which has done very well in recent regional polls, and is the brainchild of outspoken satirist and blogger Beppe Grillo. It is a wild card in the electoral pack. Mr Grillo leads the movement but is not running for election himself.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21573155

Beppe Grillo has been one of the stories of this Italian election. He is a comedian who has filled the piazzas across Italy. He does not deliver speeches. He rants and rages against the political class in Italy and the elites in Europe.
...

Yet he has built a protest movement which demands nothing less than a political revolution in Italy.

He may win 20% of the vote, perhaps even more. If he achieves that it will have been done without giving any Italian TV interviews. His is an internet-based campaign. He draws momentum from the crowds and the streets.
...

Mr Grillo could well have a say over Italy's future. He may demand electoral reform as the price of supporting any coalition government.

Europe's leaders will be watching anxiously in case Italy sends a powerful message to the rest of the continent of anger and despair over recession, corruption and the high price being paid to save the single currency.

Capt'n Midnight

Grillo got nearly 30% in Sicily (via Tg 2)


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/25/beppe-grillo-italy-election-success

Twice in the last two decades, outsiders have burst onto the political scene. Both have done so by exploiting their understanding of the medium that was most relevant at the time. Berlusconi took Italy by storm in 1994 after creating a virtual monopoly of private television; Grillo has relied instead on making himself a master of digital communication.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/25/italian-election-results-live-coverage

A representative of Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Rome, Alessandro Di Battista, told the news agency Ansa:

We are waiting for the official figures. First, we need to know how many we are: count ourselves up. Then we’ll meet, listen to the web and decide what to do.

He stressed that the movement’s elected representatives would take their decisions independently of Grillo, John Hooper reports.

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British thinktank Demos has been studying the Beppe Grillo phenomenon. The thinktank has surveyed Facebook supporters of the Five Star Movement and found that only 8% trust the government, 3% trust political parties, 2% trust parliament, 2% trust banks and financial institutions and 6% trust big companies – lower, on every measure, than the Italian general public. Only 11% trust the press (against 34% of Italians overall) and less than 4% trust TV (against 40% of Italians). In stark contrast to this, 76% of Grillo's Facebook fans trust the internet, where the movement was born and which it has used to organise itself. Demos writes:

Owldshtok

Updated % of votes in both houses of Italian parliament here as they come in http://lastampa.it/

The yellow bits on the map are where Grillo's 5 star movement came 1st in the polls.Apparently the main TV stations didn't show the enormous crowds that came out in towns all across Italy to hear him speak but edited it and only showed shots of him,so scared were the vested interests.He spoke in the main square of towns all over the country every night for the last six months.He campaigned in both the most old fashioned way and most modern way by using the internet.
Italians are totally pissed off with the same old cronies.Grillo wants to put fresh new faces in parliament who have never had affiliations with anybody - intelligent professional people from different walks of life.
The upheaval will cause confusion and misery in the short term,but its a long awaited breath of fresh air.
We need more movements like this all around Europe,and before anybody says 'oh the markets wont like it' - well tough ****.The financial system is one of the major causes of peoples misery around Europe today.

Owldshtok

Grillo's blog in English for anyone who's interested http://www.beppegrillo.it/en/2013/02/

Kristopherus

Owldshtok wrote: »

Updated % of votes in both houses of Italian parliament here as they come in http://lastampa.it/

The yellow bits on the map are where Grillo's 5 star movement came 1st in the polls.Apparently the main TV stations didn't show the enormous crowds that came out in towns all across Italy to hear him speak but edited it and only showed shots of him,so scared were the vested interests.He spoke in the main square of towns all over the country every night for the last six months.He campaigned in both the most old fashioned way and most modern way by using the internet.
Italians are totally pissed off with the same old cronies.Grillo wants to put fresh new faces in parliament who have never had affiliations with anybody - intelligent professional people from different walks of life.
The upheaval will cause confusion and misery in the short term,but its a long awaited breath of fresh air.
We need more movements like this all around Europe,and before anybody says 'oh the markets wont like it' - well tough ****.The financial system is one of the major causes of peoples misery around Europe today.

Guess who owns those TV stations that did'nt show Grillo?:D

Irish Stones

Kristopherus wrote: »

Guess who owns those TV stations that did'nt show Grillo?:D

Even those TV stations not owned by the man you say didn't show the crowd at his rallies.
One thing must be taken in account. He always chased all the TV's off the squares where he kept his rallies, because he hates reporters, he says they are as corrupted as politicians, so he only relies on videos he makes of himself and that he puts on his blog and on YouTube.
What TV stations air are the videos he made on the spot or those that some rare accreditated reporters did.

Everybody dectracted from him, because they said he hasn't any experience in politics and without experience he can't do good. Well, those that do have experience because have been seated on those chairs for decades didn't do any good either.

What we have now is a country with no chance of a full government chance. The Senate has a centre-right majority while the Chamber of the Deputies has a centre-left majority. Nothing will work, it's a stalemate.

Boulevardier

Its beginning to look a bit like the Lisbon referendums here: wrong result first time, never mind, another result wil be along soon.

As someone else has tweeted, a lot of Italians chose to vote for a complete comedian, but Beppe Grillo also did well!

Scofflaw

Ah, Italian governmental instability and an Irish FG/Lab government! The nostalgia!

cordially,
Scofflaw

KyussBishop

Interesting commentary here, giving some more info on Beppe and his background, among more:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/invia-i-pagliacci-ci-devono-essere-pagliacci-extended-play.html

djpbarry

View wrote: »

Berlusconi is the Italian for Fianna Fáil I take it?

Give me a Bertie-led autocracy over Berlusconi any day.

KyussBishop

Some more great analysis on this:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/germans-and-eurocrats-throw-hissy-fits-over-italian-elections.html

It's interesting that Italy could credibly leave the EU, whereas for Greece, this would be extraordinarily costly for the country; so the potential for EU/German pressure for austerity to backfire with Italy, and have them consider exiting, is worth a close look.

The Corinthian

I was playing scopa with a few Italian friends yesterday evening and other than the usual banter, this was the principle topic of discussion. None of us, including me, had bothered to vote, BTW.

It's easy to view Berlusconi with disdain even if you're not familiar with Italian politics; the guy is a buffoon, and clearly a corrupt one at that. Problem is that the entire political class in Italy is just as corrupt; they just tend to be less colourful, so the foreign media doesn't really pick up on it.

Remember, regardless of political party, the Italian political class has failed to introduce any kind of significant reform in Italy since the collapse of the 'first republic' in the early 90's. Instead, popular perception sees this class as self-serving and corrupt, regardless of whether they identify as left or right wing (historically the most corrupt post-war Italian politician was actually a socialist, Bettino Craxi).

So, as a result, there is very little difference between Bersani and Berlusconi morally speaking. Both are seen as representative of a corrupt and discredited political class, so it largely comes down to which is the more competent crook, not whether they're crooks to begin with - that's assumed.

That combined with a last minute media blitz by Berlusconi, saw his fortunes rise far beyond what would have been believed a year ago. Yet this was also marked with a low turnout (less than 75%, where historically over 80% is the norm) and a huge protest vote in favour of Beppe Grillo's M5S.

Of course Grillo has ruled out a coalition, and this now leave a Bersani-Berlusconi pact the only viable solution, which frankly will not last long. Grillo himself has repeatedly stated that the M5S is not a political party and depressingly appear to have absolutely no clear plan for what they want to do when in parliament.

So my feeling is that unless Grillo can negotiate some political reforms, his 'movement' will lose steam in the next election, which is more likely to take place within the next 24 months as the options for alternative coalitions simply are not there.