Italian Right Falls Short of Clear Win in Regional Vote

Italy’s center-right parties, led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, ran strongly Sunday in close-fought regional elections but fell short of the decisive victory he had sought to force quick general elections.

Projections based on exit polls Sunday night gave Berlusconi and rightist allies about 45% of the popular vote of about 40 million Italians voting for the legislatures of 15 mainland regions.

Center-left parties, anchored by the former Communist Party, took about 36%, according to the exit polls. No votes will be counted until today in an election that also renewed 76 provincial and 5,136 municipal governments.

Of the 15 regional governments at stake, the right won six, the left won five, and four were too close for pollsters to call.

“The vote shows that we should go to a general election as soon as possible,” Berlusconi insisted, but analysts thought it unlikely that President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro would agree.

“The promised knockout of the left by the right didn’t happen,” said centrist Mario Segni. His own small party trailed badly in results that underlined a marked shift toward a two-pole political system after half a century of highly fractionalized politics.

Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (Go, Italy) finished first with about 24% in the exit polls, followed closely by the Democratic Party of the Left (the former Communist Party) with about 23%. Each improved its showing compared with the 1994 national elections that brought Berlusconi to power.

Berlusconi, a billionaire media magnate, has demanded immediate elections since the rebellious Northern League cost the right wing a parliamentary majority in December, forcing his resignation after seven tumultuous months in power. Voters Sunday punished the populist-federalist Northern League; it lost a third of its 1994 vote, ending with about 6%, according to polls.

The right wants general elections in June to replace the nonpolitical, technocrat government of Prime Minister Lamberto Dini. The left prefers to wait until autumn to give Dini time to enact a painful reform of Italy’s scandal-ridden pension system and sketch out a cost-cutting 1996 government budget.

It is up to Scalfaro to schedule the next elections.