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General Election in Italy 2006: Great success for the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista in Italy!

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 12 April 2006
4 comments

Edito Elections-Elected Italy European Left Italian 2006 elections

Information on General Election in Italy 2006

The result of our party is excellent: Rifondazione has increased its votes everywhere, both in percentage and in absolute votes: from 5% achieved at the 2001 election to 5.8% at the Chamber of Deputies or lower house (from 1,867,712 votes to 2,229,604) and 7.4% at the Senate, the upper house (from 1,707,175 to 2,518,624). 41 MPs will represent our party at the lower house (instead of 11) and 27 senators at the Senate (instead of 3). This is the largest parliamentary representation ever achieved by Rifondazione. We are moreover the second-largest party at the lower house and the third-largest one at the Senate within the Union coalition.

On last 9 and 10 April elections for the lower house and the upper house (for voters over 25) took place with about 47 million Italians eligible to vote. The turnout was very high: 83.6%, which is the largest participation in the past fifteen years.

Under new election rules introduced in December, at the lower house each party is able to elect a certain number of MPs depending on the amount of votes it takes according to proportional representation (PR).

But the new system favours party coalitions, so that parties belonging to a coalition have to get more at least 2% of the vote to be represented at the parliament. Moreover, the winning coalition is automatically granted a so-called “majority award”, that is a minimum 340 of the 630 seats for a commanding majority. For the Senate the new rules are still a PR system, but the number of senators (for a total amount equal to 315) allocated to parties depends on the vote reported in each single Italian region and a regional “majority award”.

Furthermore, for the first time Italians residing abroad (about 1 million) had the possibility to cast their ballot in Italian consulates, representing six Senate seats and twelve deputies for the lower house.

Polls and a large majority of people predicted that the centre-left coalition, L’Unione (the Union), led by Romano Prodi, was due to win easily over Berlusconi’s ruling right coalition, Casa delle Libertà or House of Freedoms. After a long counting night, where the vote seemed to contradict what polls had predicted, there came a very close victory: the Union won over the centre-right coalition in the Senate thanks to the votes cast by the Italians abroad (4 senators for the Union, 1 for the right coalition, one independent, who has declared he will support the winning coalition). So, in spite of a majority of votes for the right coalition, the Union is granted a Senate’s majority of 159 to 156 seats allocated to the House of Freedom.

The situation at the lower house has been clearer and favourable for the Union, although the centre-left won for 49,8 to 49,7 by a very small margin equal to 25,000 votes. However, the Union now has a majority of 340 enabling it to rule the country, according to the programme the coalition parties wrote together.
During the next few weeks the MPs’ agenda will include the installation of the new parliament which is to elect a new president of the republic, and finally, the new government has to be formed.

We will support a government with Romano Prodi as a prime minister and our party will take part in it.

A very important step has been made: we defeated Berlusconi. Now we intend to rule Italy towards a change and to help the rise of a new political subject of the alternative left in Italy, which is now stronger after this election outcome and commits us to building an Italian EL section.

Rome, 11 April 2006

Direzione Nazionale Area Esteri e Pace

Forum posts

  • Congratulations, that is indeed good news. But watch out for George Bush. He will be quite unhappy with you Italians for tossing out his good buddy, Berlusconi.

    • Well done for ousting the Mussolini/Imelda Marcos love child. Does it mean all those journalists and media people sacked by the revolting spiv will be reinstated ?

  • Congrats! Now let’s hope the new guy doesn’t take a liking to humping police officers from behind like Berlusconi did-how discusting. Not mind you, that George Bush has better manners or anything.

    But those kinds of things count-there are good leaders on this earth, who don’t act like spoiled punks.

    • The Italian banks and the Catholic church have been involved with Berlusconi’s mafia operations before, during, and likely after Berlusconi; and now he has been ousted, and the criminal charges will follow and some really nasty business will be revealed. Even the CIA will be implicated.....isn’t it a shame that so called democratic governments are really being run by the crime families around the world, and even include the so called morals keepers.

      People of the earth need to evolve and declare themselves free from governments/religions that do not include them, represent them, or care about them except to exploit them. These so called democracies/religions are nothing but organized crime institutions that never were designed to "represent" the people. Just ask any American if they think their government representatives "represent" them, and they will all say the same thing...NO...the "representatives" only represent themselves and their corporate sponsors.