Italian voters shun 5-Star as coalition gets needed electoral boost
Letta and Berlusconi's parties top local elections but comic's movement pays for political rebuff
Italian voters gave Prime Minister Enrico Letta's fragile coalition government a badly needed boost in local elections, shunning Beppe Grillo's anti-establishment 5-Star Movement just three months after its spectacular success in a parliamentary vote.
Letta's battered and divided Democratic Party (PD) won control of five of the 16 biggest cities that voted on Sunday and Monday, and is in the lead before run-offs in two weeks for the rest, the Interior Ministry results showed.
Its coalition partner, billionaire and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party, came in second.
The rival parties are uncomfortable bedfellows in a right-left coalition that is struggling to halt a slump in its popularity as Italians fret over how the country will emerge from the longest economic recession in its post-war history.
Fiery comic Grillo's 5-Star Movement did not win in any of the 564 towns and cities that voted and gained only 12.8 per cent of the vote in Rome, less than half its result in the capital three months ago.
"It's clear that this is good for Letta because it gives him a couple of months to work," said Maurizio Pessato, vice-chairman of the SWG polling institute. "Grillo's movement has suffered a setback."
In February, the 5-Star stormed into parliament for the first time by winning a quarter of the national vote as Italians turned their backs on traditional political parties, who they blamed for corruption, waste and mismanaging the economy.