(ANSA) Rome, May 29 - Campaigning for weathervane regional
elections being held across Italy this week-end climaxed on
Friday as electoral and parliamentary officials braced to
eliminate Mafiosi and other suspected organized crime figures
from the lists of candidates.
Claudio Fava, deputy president of the parliamentary
Anti-Mafia Commission, said the number of so-called
"unpresentable" candidates to be banned from standing for the
regional governments in Sunday's polls across the peninsula
"will be a not insignificant packet".
In all 4,000 candidates have put their names forward for
election to regional councils, posing a major screening task for
electoral officials. Anti-mafia commission president Rosy Bindi
was due to announce details of crime-tainted figures excluded
from the contest.
The outcome of the polls is seen as a significant barometer
of popular support for the policies of the coalition government
of Premier Matteo Renzi, who is frequently criticized by
opponents since he was appointed by then President Giorgio
Napolitano to help cope with Italy's economic crisis and has no
direct electoral mandate for his cabinet.
Political experts said the outcome of the vote in three of
the seven regions - Liguria, Campania and Umbria - is expected
to be too close to call as candidates for Renzi's Democratic
Party and his allies are predicted to be neck and neck with
opposition hopefuls from the conservative Forza Italia, radical
Five Star Movement (M5S) and the separatist Northern League.
Renzi was due to hold electoral rallies at the port city of
Ancona and a final rally in his home city of Florence after a
week in which he carried out a rash of public appointments
including the inauguration of work at a major building site for
the Mater Olbia hospital at the Sardinian port of Olbia Thursday
which was possible due to an injection of capital from the Gulf
state of Qatar.
Also Thursday Renzi toured a Fiat Chrysler car plant at the
southern city of Melfi and said his Jobs Act labour market
reform legislation heralded "labour contracts that are ever more
solid and stable".
Renzi made his remarks after figures released by the OECD
this week showed that Italy has the highest youth unemployment
rate in the European Union except for Greece.
Former conservative premier Silvio Berlusconi claimed that
a heavy defeat for the government in the regional contest might
force President Sergio Mattarella to call a snap general
election.
"If it finishes 4 to 3 without doubt there would be
political consequences," he told Monte Carlo Radio, "I ask
myself what Renzi would consider a defeat - first he looked
secure but now I see him always more worried".
"Umbria and Liguria, regions historically on the left,
could change political colour".
Political commentators said the elections are also an
important test for Northern League leader Matteo Salvini, who
hopes to step into Berlusconi's shoes as leader of the
centre-right parties.
Salvini has fought an aggressive anti-immigrant and
anti-Roma campaign, pledging to "raze to the ground all the
gypsy camps," after a woman was killed in Rome in a car incident
involving Roma fugitives from the police.
Against this background, Senate speaker Pietro Grasso urged
18-year-olds to take advantage of the opportunity of
participating in the democratic process.
"Some of you on Sunday will be called for the first time to
express your vote in local elections-do it, don't leave it so
that others will decide for you".
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