The 'Right Nation'

Mid-term elections, in the US, are generally unfavorable to the party in control of the White House. Well, here in Italy these regional elections, not unlike the regional elections which took place in France one week ago, were the closest thing to the US mid-terms elections. But while in France the results were a disaster for Sarkozy and his ruling party (UMP), in Italy the center-right ruling coalition won 6 out of 13 regions, including the most populous and/or prosperous and developed (Lazio, Lombardy, Veneto, Piedmont, Campania).

It’s also to be noted that in 4 out of the 6 the center-left was in power, and that in Lazio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party was excluded from the ballot in the key Rome province, which has more than 2 million voters, after it failed to submit its list by the deadline! That’s why there is no doubt about who is the winner, as Antonio Di Pietro, the leader of the small Italy of Values center-left party, surprisingly said tonight while his allies were desperately (and ridiculously) trying to deny the evidence of the facts.

What this election shows—apart from the obvious consideration that Berlusconi is “a formidable campaigner, able to pick up votes despite a weak economy, a corruption investigation involving some of his closest aides and suspicions that he was trying to influence state television ahead of the vote,”—is that the country is irremediably… fed up with the left! And that Italy has become a “right nation,” more conservative, more Christian (and less politically correct) than most of the other European countries. Because if Italy can afford Berlusconi, with all his faults and imperfections, what we cannot afford is the left—not any more.