ITALY: Italians have given Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a severe political beating, leaving him just one year to recover before a general election he now looks in serious danger of losing.
Not even the death of Pope John Paul could keep Italians from delivering the chastening message to Mr Berlusconi at regional elections this week where his centre-right coalition was defeated in 11 of 13 regions at stake.
Defying fears that Catholics would desert the ballot boxes, the turnout was 71.4 per cent of the more than 41 million eligible voters.
"It is already clear that the defeat, a defeat so crushing that it cannot be talked down or excused, has caused a political crisis for the government," said Italy's leading daily, the mainstream Corriere della Sera.
Mr Berlusconi, Italy's longest-serving prime minister since the second World War, has not commented on the defeat. However, his rival, the former European Commission president Romano Prodi, basked in a result which at a stroke swept away what had been considerable doubts about his ability to unite the left.
"With this vote Italians are asking us to prepare to govern, to take the country forward," he said.
While Mr Prodi's "Union" showed it could hold together a broad swathe of opinion from centrists to staunch communists, one of whom was voted president of the politically important southern region of Puglia, Mr Berlusconi's coalition risks implosion.
"Berlusconi will blame his coalition partners and they will blame him," said Prof Franco Pavoncello of Rome's John Cabot University. "But if they go down that road it's going to be very difficult for them at the next election."
"There's a perception that this coalition is really a group of parties with very different ideas, held together by the need to keep power," Prof Pavoncello said.
One of the government's most divisive policies - the devolution of political power - pits the populist Northern League, which wants more independence for the rich north, against the right-wing National Alliance, whose support is drawn more from the poorer south.
Mr Prodi has said he intends to make opposition to the constitutional reforms a key part of his strategy to win the 2006 general election. - (Reuters)