More than a quarter of a million people packed into the Piazza del Popolo – the piazza of the people – in Rome last weekend to protest against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s bid to fix local elections in his favour while in Milan and Turin workers walked out on a four-hour strike.
After Italian judges ruled that Mr Berlusconi’s right-wing allies in the provinces of Lazio and Lombardy were guilty of committing irregularities in their campaign for the regional elections to be held on March 28 and 29, he called an emergency cabinet meeting and issued a decree putting the candidates back on the ballot.
Mr Berlusconi said he was acting only “in the interests of Italian democracy”, but Democratic Party leader Pierluigi Bersani attacked him for “reshaping Italian law to suit his political party”.
As protests grow against the ruling centre-right coalition, opposition parties and trade unions are calling for “employment, education and health” to be at the heart of these elections.
