Missing Milan
May 30, 2011
As the final votes are being counted in local elections in Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is coming to terms with the fact that popularity is not on his side.
His center-right coalition party has suffered losses in several local runoff elections, including in Berlusconi's hometown of Milan.
Initial results showed leftist Giuliano Pisapia with 55 percent of the vote in Milan. Pisapia ousted right-wing mayor Letizia Moratti, on whose behalf Berlusconi ferociously campaigned. It's a victory that ends almost two decades of right-wing control of Milan, a city that's traditionally been Berlusconi's power center.
"It's clear we have lost. The only thing to do is to hold our nerve and carry on," Berlusconi told a group of reporters during a trip to Romania.
Stay until 2013?
Berlusconi's governing coalition also lost hold of the southern city of Naples and did not pose any threat to the incumbent center-left cities of Turin and Bologna.
Plagued by corruption and sex cases now moving through the courts, not to mention one of the weakest economies among Europe's bigger nations, Berlusconi is at the lowest he's ever been in the polls, with only a third of Italians giving him their approval.
This raises the question of whether or not Berlusconi and his coalition partners will be able to remain in power until the next scheduled national elections in 2013.
Author: Megan Williams, Matt Zuvela (dpa, Reuters)
Editor: Martin Kuebler