Italian ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party (PDL) yesterday lost a key regional election in Sicily seen as a barometer for national polls due in April, handing victory to a centre-left anti-Mafia candidate.
With over 50 per cent of votes counted, Rosario Crocetta of the Democratic Party (PD) was leading with 30.88 per cent, ahead of the PDL’s Sebastiano Musumeci with 24.90 per cent, robbing him of what was once the centre-right’s stronghold on the Mediterranean island.
The outsider, the anti-politics Five Star Movement, surprised observers by garnering 18.46 per cent amid rising sentiment against the established parties and anger over rampant corruption, particularly in the Mafia stronghold.
“It’s the first time that a candidate for the left is elected as regional governor, it’s the first time that an anti-Mafia candidate wins,” declared a victorious Crocetta, 61, an openly-gay campaigner against organised crime.
“Today is more than an election result, it is a date with history,” Crocetta, who lives under police protection after threats to his life, told journalists.
Pier Luigi Bersani, head of the PD party, called the result “historic”.
The regional vote comes at a time of deep political uncertainty in Italy, with divisions and bickering within the main parties. Frustration is also running high over waste and corruption in the recession-hit country.
Italy’s economic crisis is particularly acute in Sicily, which came close to bankruptcy this year, and where nearly 40 per cent of young people are unemployed.
Talk of the day was the success of the Five Star Movement, whose candidate Giancarlo Cancelleri – a surveyor who has never held political office – came in third behind the two main parties.
The movement, founded by comic Beppe Grillo, advocates a “participatory democracy,” and promises to tackle waste and privileges in a period of tough financial sacrifices, and has done particularly well among the young.
Grillo swam across the Strait of Messina earlier this month in an election campaign stunt, and spent 17 days drumming up support for the movement in often-packed piazzas across the island.
The defeat comes as a blow to the beleaguered PDL party, which has been struggling with internal divisions and embroiled in corruption scandals.