Alternattiva Demokratika activist Arnold Cassola has lost his seat in the Italian Parliament as a result of the centre-right victory in the country's election and the failure of Green-Communist bloc (La Sinistra - L'Arcobaleno) to elect any MPs.

This left-wing group failed to make the four per cent threshold necessary to entitle it to parliamentary representation, winning slightly over three per cent of the popular vote in both the elections for the Chamber of Deputies (3.08 per cent) and the Senate (3.21 per cent).

Prof. Cassola was elected in the 2006 Italian general election as a Green MP representing Italians living abroad. The Greens were then part of Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition which meant that they did not require to reach a four per cent threshold for representation in Parliament.

However, this time, the main centre-left Democratic Party led by Walter Veltroni ran on a ticket only with the Italy of Values Party and excluded all the other centre-left smaller parties - resulting in their failure to achieve parliamentary representation.

Contacted by The Times, Prof. Cassola said Mr Veltroni's gamble to exclude other parties from his coalition certainly did not pay off, adding that he managed to destroy these parties without getting their votes.

Commenting on the results of the Italian elections, Monica Frassoni and Dany Cohn-Bendit, co-presidents of the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament yesterday said in a statement: "The catastrophic defeat of the La Sinistra - L'Arcobaleno of which the Italian Greens are part, does not reflect any less urgency in Italy than the rest of Europe in finding answers to environmental challenges, growing inequalities, the security situation and people's distrust of politics.

"European Greens will support all attempts to restore green priorities and proposals in Italian politics and to forge successful alliances to reach our common political goals."