Italy’s opposition alliance yesterday celebrated victory in Umbria, dealing a blow to the nation’s ruling coalition.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini had vowed to win the hilly region prized for its truffles and prosciutto in the first of several key region elections he hopes will sweep him back to power.
Salvini said the results of Sunday’s vote were “extraordinary,” expressing his “joy and emotion” after Donatella Tesei won with more than 57 percent, compared to 37 percent for the coalition government’s candidate.
Photo: AP
It was Salvini’s League party that had swept the board, bringing home 37 percent of the vote alone in a region that has voted left for 70 years, but has been hit hard by an economic crisis.
Salvini’s campaign trail allies — the Brothers of Italy and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia — won 10 percent and 5.8 percent respectively.
The government coalition of the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party — former foes — had joined forces for the regional vote in a bid to beat Salvini, but came up short.
The Democratic Party won 22 percent, but the Five Star Movement took home just 7.4 percent — a pitiful result that shook the party to its core.
Salvini said the “days are numbered” for Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and the coalition party leaders, who are accused of having betrayed Italians by forming an alliance to prevent Italy heading to elections they would likely lose.
“The center-right has the right and duty to govern the country,” Berlusconi said after the Umbria win, while Brothers of Italy head Giorgia Meloni said: “If I were Conte, I’d hand in my resignation faster than light.”
Political analysts had said a poor result for the Five Star Movement could spark an internal rebellion within it by those who were against the tie-up with the Democratic Party, or those who want Five Star Movement leader Luigi di Maio gone.
“We always considered the civil pact for Umbria to be a test, but the experiment did not work,” the Five Star Movement said on Facebook.
It said a tie-up with the Democratic Party at other regional votes was now in question, but brushed off suggestions that the coalition government could be brought down by the Umbria loss.
The Democratic Party said that it had been hampered at the ballot box by a health sector scandal: Umbria governor and Democratic Party member Catiuscia Marini quit in April following a probe into competitive exams for the hiring of hospital staff.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS