Italy vote a 'damning' verdict on elite - FT

(ANSA) - Rome, March 6 - The Italian elections amounted to a "damning" verdict on the country's elite and there are "serious" doubts whether the next government will continue on the path of structural reforms, the Financial Times said Tuesday.
    Sunday's parliamentary elections in Italy "could hardly have delivered a more damning verdict on the shortcomings of the political classes that have governed the nation for the past quarter of a century," leader writer Tony Barber said.
    The political order established after the collapse of Christian democracy and communism in the early 1990s is "buckling", Barber said, under the weight of policy failures and an arrogant, self-serving attitude to power that has alienated millions of Italian voters.
    If the result was a triumph for "populism", Barber said, it was also a defeat for "populism lite". Matteo Renzi and Silvio Berlusconi, two former mainstream prime ministers, each rose to power by deploying an artfully populist political style. But in this election they were trounced, he said.