The Electronic Telegraph 25 April 1995 WORLD NEWS
[World News]

Berlusconi faces surprise defeat

By Bruce Johnston in Rome

SILVIO Berlusconi's centre-right Freedom Front alliance was heading for a stinging defeat in Italy's regional elections yesterday. Computer projections suggested that the Centre-Left, led by the Left Democrats, also known as the PDS, had won nine out of 15 regions.

If confirmed, the results will help to extend the life of the limited reform government of technocrats led by Mr Berlusconi's successor, Lamberto Dini. They will also fuel a simmering campaign by Romano Prodi, the moderate economist, to challenge Mr Berlusconi in an early general election.

This will almost certainly not now be held in June, as Mr Berlusconi and his cronies have been demanding. October is a date favoured by PDS leader Massimo D'Alema.

Besides suffering a defeat in a majority of the regions which went to the polls, when everyone expected the opposite, Mr Berlusconi's alliance won only 43 per cent of the vote.

The PDS, the renamed and now softened Communists, emerged as Italy's largest party, with 25 per cent of the vote, outstripping Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia and its Popular Party allies by two percentage points. Although it lost in Lombardy, a key regional presidency race, it narrowly won another crucial contest in Latium, as well as staging unexpected regional presidential victories in Molise and Abruzzo, regions in Italy's poor South where the Right is traditionally strong.

Mr Berlusconi had confidently predicted that he would win by 10 regions to five.


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