They had an election recently and not only did conservative Silvio Berlusconi come back for a third term, the two Houses of Parliament also had good news. Every single Leftist and Communist candidate was defeated, both incumbents and wanna-be's...
From Reuters:
No future for radical Italian left?
The Rainbow Left alliance, which includes remnants of Italy's once-mighty communist party, somewhat surprisingly decided to hold what was meant to be its election night celebration at Rome's Hard Rock cafe.
An apt choice for the DJ might have been "God Save The Queen" by the Sex Pistols, with its refrain of "There's no future, no future, no future for you".
The alliance failed to win seats in either house of parliament, a performance which provoked the headline "It's a Waterloo" in the moderate daily Il Riformista and prompted the resignation of alliance leader Fausto Bertinotti, speaker of the lower house during the last parliament.
It appears Silvio Berlusconi has won his long-term battle against the political opponents he lambasts as communist liars and accuses of eating children and priests.
Leading the hand-wringing, communist daily Il Manifesto ran the headline "Extra-parliamentary Left" and said the Rainbow Left had paid a very high price for not giving its supporters what they wanted during two years in the coalition government of former Prime Minister Romano Prodi.
Gennaro Migliore, a hard left lawmaker, told L'Unita (the newspaper founded by leading Italian communist Antonio Gramsci in 1924) that the election debacle constituted a "Ground Zero".
Il Manifesto columnist Valentino Parlato said the Left had failed to convince Italians worried about job security, who had instead voted in droves for Berlusconi and his anti-immigrant and protectionist Northern League allies.
Good news indeed! Italian politics have not been that stable in the last hundred years or so -- good to see the citizens coming to their senses and electing some conservatives. Build up the nations economy for a bit.
Gramsci was a singularly odious bit of work and his effects are still causing problems world-wide today.
