Monday, May 21, 2012

Italy vote to tap austerity anger, gauge political shift

Italy is likely to register a strong protest vote against belt-tightening in local elections that will provide a fresh snapshot of Europe's changing political landscape a year ahead of a national ballot.

Taking place against the backdrop of a tense and somber national mood, the second round of voting to choose city majors involves nearly 120 local administrations.

Prime Minister Mario Monti - the architect of Italy's tough austerity program - is not standing, but the two main parties in the right-left coalition that support him are.

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Liberty (PDL) party took a walloping in the first round, while its left-leaning Democratic Party (PD) rival wrested control of dozens of city administrations though its support weakened.

The losses of the established parties that have ruled for nearly two decades have also been a boon for scruffy-haired comic Beppe Grillo. His Five-Star Movement has catapulted from a fringe group to become the country's third biggest political force.

That change of fortune for a proponent of alternatives to tax hikes and spending cuts echoes developments earlier this month elsewhere in Europe.

Greece is politically paralyzed after inconclusive elections in which the mainstream parties that engineered the country's international bailout failed to win enough seats to form a government, while in France Socialist Francois Hollande was elected to the presidency on a pro-growth platform.

While also a litmus test of the national mood, Monday's vote in Italy has been largely overshadowed by other events.

On Sunday, a strong earthquake struck a large area of northern Italy, killing at least seven, and a Saturday bombing in front of a school in southern Italy that killed a teenage girl ignited fears of a possible return to the political violence of Italy's "years of lead" of the 1970s-80s.

Early on Monday morning a small bomb exploded in a garbage bin in the main square of Rapallo, near Genoa, without causing injuries.