(supersedes previous)
Premier Matteo Renzi's Democratic
Party (PD) was licking its wounds Monday after it lost its
northern stronghold of Venice in a run-off vote on Sunday after
two decades in power there.
Businessman Luigi Brugnaro, running on a center-right civic
list with support from Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI)
party, took 53% of the vote to beat former magistrate and
Senator Felice Casson, who got 46.7%.
This was a reversal of the first-round results, which saw
Casson taking 38% and Brugnaro 28.5%.
Analysts said the run-off outcome was due to a low turnout
of 48%, in which PD voters essentially deserted Casson while the
anti-immigrant, anti-euro Northern League electorate flocked to
Brugnaro's ticket after its own candidate ran alone and lost in
the first round.
Also weighing in was center-left voter disenchantment after
the arrest in June 2014 of former Venice mayor Giorgio Orsoni in
connection with a corruption scandal involving the funnelling of
25 million euros of taxpayer money into political campaigns and
away from MOSE, a 5.5-billion-euro system of retractable dikes
set to become operational in 2016 after decades of delays.
Brugnaro, 54, is the son of a schoolteacher and a factory
worker and in 1997 founded Umana SpA, one of Italy's first temp
agencies.
Preliminary results showed the center-right candidate
obtaining an absolute majority on the city council, garnering 17
members for his center-right civic list. FI has three council
members, the League has two, the New Center Right (NCD) has one
and other civic lists have two council members.
Casson's list seated five councillors, while the PD came
away with three and the anti-establishment, anti-euro 5-Star
Movement (M5S) garnered three.
Elsewhere in Italy, the ruling PD lost Arezzo, Matera and
Nuoro amid low turnout of just 47.11%, and prevailed in Mantua
and Lecco.
The current round of voting is continuing in parts of
Sicily on Monday, including the city of Enna, where the ballot
boxes are open until 15:00 local time.
Also on Monday, PD Deputy Secretary Lorenzo Guerini admitted
that defeat in local run-off votes in Venice and other cities
had "burned" the centre-left group.
But he also argued that, despite the losses, the PD
remained Italy's most widely supported party.
"The run-off featured areas of light and darkness," Guerini
said.
"Precise analysis (of the results) shows that the PD is
clearly Italy's top party...the defeat in Venice and in other
important cities such as Arezzo, Fermo, Matera and Nuoro burns".
"The fact that we won back cities of symbolic importance
like Mantua and Trani, while other good administrators held
their positions, beginning in Lecco, is not enough for us to
consider this result to be positive," he said.
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